Lessons to Learn from Mighty No. 9

After 3 long years, the release of Mighty No. 9 has come and gone. To say the game failed to deliver would be a gross understatement. Mighty No. 9 managed to be one of the fastest successful Kickstarters, only to be managed horribly, have multiple delays and disappoint both fans and critics with both parties blasting the game in reviews. And yet, there are  number of things to be learned from Mighty No. 9's failure.

Keiji Inafune and his team were trying to do way too much. They tried to put Mighty No. 9 on far too many systems, do an anime series before the game was even released and went ahead with another Kickstarter, Red Ash, which, much like the aforementioned anime series, was something that came about before their first project, Might No. 9 was out. Rather than try to accomplish one goal at a time, Inafune set about to accomplish multiple tasks. Now maybe having your eye on more than once prize works well when you're with a multi-million dollar game company but the Indie field is a different ball game. Inafune may have approached  Mighty No. 9 with that mindset and it certainly didn't pan out well for him. If anything, I do hope the man will go about his next game project differently. Yes, crazy as it sounds, I think it would be foolish for him to throw in the towel after such a huge debacle.

Shovel Knight, one of many reasons why you
shouldn't lose faith in crowd funding.

"Mighty No. 9 should have turned out better than it did! It had 4 million dollars behind it!" While it is true that nearly $4 million was raised for Mighty No. 9's Kickstarter, not all of that money actually went into the game's development. We've seen games with much smaller budgets turn out to be far superior products than Mighty No. 9. X amount of dollars don't guarantee a spectacular game. True, creators can make a game's scope and whatnot more broad with a large budget, but all the money in the world doesn't mean anything if the talent behind the product is lackluster. Mighty No. 9 may have been unofficially billed as the next Mega Man, but it epically failed in the execution department. It has terrible level layout and a forgettable soundtrack, two key areas just about every Mega Man game excels at.

If Mighty No. 9 was the first game you ever gave money to on a Kickstarter, I can understand why you'd have a bad taste in your mouth. This whole ordeal has painted Kickstarters in a bad light. Of course Mighty No. 9 isn't the first Kickstarter to give us a disappointing game but considering who it came from, it really is a low blow. However, I'd advise you not to give up on Kickstarter games. Shovel Knight and Undertale were both crowd funded titles that turned out to be excellent. Neither one of those games would have been possible if not for generous gamers opening up their wallets. You won't always get a winner but the same is true for triple A publishers. I took a risk with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan and man, was I ever let down with that purchase. As the saying goes, they can't all be winners,