The Kickstarter funded Mighty No. 9 developed by Keiji Inafune launched this week, and the reviews have been less than kind. Last I checked the game was sitting at 58% on Metacritic. The people that teamed up to give more than $4 Million have been raging about it all over the internet saying things like, “He took our money and ran!”, or “People have created better games with a lot less money!”, but neither of the those statements are fair.
It is true that other games made with less money have been better, I could list several, but those teams were small being made up of one or two dedicated people, not full dev teams. Large development teams like Inafune’s Comcept cost a lot of money, so if things go sideways they burn through money fast, and it seems clear from Inafune’s interviews that is what happened with Mighty No. 9. Not many developers would ever utter the words, “It is better than nothing.”, if things went well. Things went bad and Comcept pushed through and published a game for their backers. Was it the game they wanted? No, but it was indeed better than nothing. Which is more than a lot of failed projects produce. Nothing. Leaving backers empty handed.
I am not saying people should be happy with Might No. 9. It is clearly not a great game, but they shouldn’t be so mad at Keiji Inafune and the rest of Comcept either. They tried their best and failed. A lot of good dev teams have created bad games, and I think that is the case here. What people should be taking from all of this is to remember that backing any creative endeavor on Kickstarter can go sideways, even ones with a lot of talent and knowhow. Which is why you should always spend your money and back projects wisely with the understanding you may end up with nothing, or something that is better than nothing.