I remember it like it was yesterday, how many gamers saw Mighty Number 9 as the second coming of Mega Man, a classic game franchise that Capcom had been neglecting up to that point. In the year 2013, the game was hyped to hell and back, and chances are, you DID hear about it. Now it's 2016, and few, if any people, are as excited for the game as they were. In fact, Mighty Number 9 is more of a joke than anything. What happened?
The fall of Mighty Number 9 did not begin immediately. In fact, the game is notable by how successful its Kickstarter campaign was. Keiji Inafune, the creator, asked for 900 thousand dollars but fans gave him over four MILLION to make the game. Inafune added a great many stretch goals, including promises of another playable character. The hype was real.
Then along came a girl named Dina Abou Karam. I've spoken about her here: http://vidgameanalysis.blogspot.com/2014/01/mighty-number-9-few-thoughts.html. For those of you not in the mood to read another entry, the summary: a girl with no reputation in the fan community was given a position of power thanks to having connections. She alienated everyone by imposing her feminist politics unto the community, then alienated the community further by admitting she was no fan of Mega Man. Then she kept alienating everyone EVEN MORE by censoring comments and banning dissenters from the backer's forums. It was a disaster.
Throughout the year 2014, this controversy kept going on. There were people who were angry that Dina's involvement would derail the game's original artistic vision, and there were those who defended Dina. As the year went on, the backer's patience began to thin out. And then, of course, Gamergate happened, and suddenly the backers had some teeth to fight Comcast with.
At around this time, Dina's abuse of her power as Community Manager got out of hand. She began to delete any and all comments critical of Zoe Quinn and supportive of Eron Gjoni. The message was clear: the girl in power had a bias, and what she says, allegedly goes. There was just one teeny, tiny problem: access to the forums was a prize that backers got for DONATING TO THE GAME! Suddenly, many backers began to demand their money back. Not willing to wait around for a refund and an apology, many former backers simply canceled their donations. They did this by simply calling their banks and telling them "cancel this charge on my credit card, please." And that is how Dina dealt the first major blow to Mighty Number 9.
Gamers expected Mighty Number 9 to come out sometime during 2014. When that year came and went, there was some worry. And then came 2015. Every month, it seemed like the game was either just around the corner, or delayed AGAIN due to X or Y reason. Some trailers promised a release date just four months away, only to receive an announcement by Comcept that the game got delayed AGAIN. An example is the trailer released on November 30, 2015. Said trailer promised a released date of February 9, 2016. Well, that date came and went, and still no game.
This continuous cycle of promises and delays has grated gamer's patience. As if that were not enough, the footage released of the game showed NOT a Mega Man style game for the new decade, but a game that looked 16 years out of date. Explosion graphics that looked like pizzas, enemies that barely moved. flat level designs, poor color palettes. The game looked CHEAP.
Many backers looked with horror at the product they helped fund. "THIS is what I spent money on!?" They said to the world. Indeed, the product looked disappointing; no trailer could help make it look good, or at least look like the kind of game one could spend money on and be satisfied with. This was the second major blow to Mighty Number 9.
The third blow was undoubtedly the most recent. In may 26, 2016, Deep Silver released the Masterclass trailer for Mighty Number 9. As of this writing, the trailer has over 8 times more Dislikes than Likes, and may well be on its way to become the most disliked video game trailer in Youtube's history.
But why was it bad? For one, the writing is inane. Take for example this line: "See that's your dash. There's a short dash, a long dash, jump dash, spiral, slide. There's probably a dash that makes you breakfast, I don't know!" Many viewers cringed at that line, myself included. Likewise, as all other trailers before it, the game didn't look like a game that had 4 million dollars invested into it. It looked like a Dreamcast game, for crying out loud!
But the ONE line that offended everyone: "make your enemies cry like an anime fan at prom night." One thing you do NOT do is offend your audience. It NEVER works! And yet, there we have it, a trailer that tried to sell a product by insulting their audience. Even the new Ghostbusters trailer didn't sink this low!Paul Fiege did that plenty by himself.
Comcept SHOULD have released the game by July 2014, one month before Gamergate and two months before Dina Abou Karam started getting Orwellian with the backer's forums. Were that not possible, they should have released the game during December of that same year. The absolute LAST good date for release, in my opinion, was May 2015, one month after Dina's resignation. Had they done this, Dina Abou Karam would have been Comcept's scapegoat, because at the time a good deal of the backer's disillusionment was directed at her instead of just the company. But it's too late now.
Mighty Number 9 is the joke of gaming culture. It's the biggest Kickstarter failure since the Ouya; in fact, much of what made the game fail is what made the Ouya fail as well. When developers make big promises they can't keep, gamers remember, and they PUNISH the developers for it.
Many backers looked with horror at the product they helped fund. "THIS is what I spent money on!?" They said to the world. Indeed, the product looked disappointing; no trailer could help make it look good, or at least look like the kind of game one could spend money on and be satisfied with. This was the second major blow to Mighty Number 9.
The third blow was undoubtedly the most recent. In may 26, 2016, Deep Silver released the Masterclass trailer for Mighty Number 9. As of this writing, the trailer has over 8 times more Dislikes than Likes, and may well be on its way to become the most disliked video game trailer in Youtube's history.
But why was it bad? For one, the writing is inane. Take for example this line: "See that's your dash. There's a short dash, a long dash, jump dash, spiral, slide. There's probably a dash that makes you breakfast, I don't know!" Many viewers cringed at that line, myself included. Likewise, as all other trailers before it, the game didn't look like a game that had 4 million dollars invested into it. It looked like a Dreamcast game, for crying out loud!
But the ONE line that offended everyone: "make your enemies cry like an anime fan at prom night." One thing you do NOT do is offend your audience. It NEVER works! And yet, there we have it, a trailer that tried to sell a product by insulting their audience. Even the new Ghostbusters trailer didn't sink this low!
Comcept SHOULD have released the game by July 2014, one month before Gamergate and two months before Dina Abou Karam started getting Orwellian with the backer's forums. Were that not possible, they should have released the game during December of that same year. The absolute LAST good date for release, in my opinion, was May 2015, one month after Dina's resignation. Had they done this, Dina Abou Karam would have been Comcept's scapegoat, because at the time a good deal of the backer's disillusionment was directed at her instead of just the company. But it's too late now.
Mighty Number 9 is the joke of gaming culture. It's the biggest Kickstarter failure since the Ouya; in fact, much of what made the game fail is what made the Ouya fail as well. When developers make big promises they can't keep, gamers remember, and they PUNISH the developers for it.
No comments:
Post a Comment