06-23-2015, 12:04 AM
(This post was last modified: 06-23-2015, 12:22 AM by JadePharaoh.)
Sorry if I'm necro-posting a bit, but the latest Kickstarter hype du-jour is raising some questions as to what does it even MEAN to Kickstart a game project anymore:
It was already revealed that Bloodstained is not going to be 100% crowdfunded. IGA has other investors backing the project; the main purpose of the Kickstarter was mostly to gauge interest from fans. Now it appears that the equally high-profile Shenmue 3 Kickstarter is doing the same thing. It does certainly raise the question of what they even NEED a Kickstarter for in the first place. It certainly has a bit of dishonesty to it as well. If they're trying to see how many people would be interested in it, that's all well and good, but they should lead with that, not this "The fate of Shenmue 3 is in YOUR hands!!" crud. I fear it may also taint peoples' opinions of actual indie upstart developers trying to Kickstart their project if people are just gonna start asking "Why should we give you money when you already have investors giving you all the money you need?"
I think this also goes back to some things I was talking about before, about so how so many developers are afraid to take risks anymore. We have some of them using Kickstarter and other means to gauge fan support for a game before they start on it. Square-Enix keeps remaking older Final Fantasy games and going back to the Kingdom Hearts well instead of coming up with anything new anymore, and that's what the fanbase seems to want from them (their reaction to FF13 illustrated pretty well what happened when they tried to mix things up a little and stray from the formula). Capcom is focused on updated versions of Street Fighter and HD remakes of the Resident Evil games, maybe rereleasing some Megaman games every so often to spice things up a little. Sega is now all Sonic, all the time; they seem to have abandoned all of their less famous franchises. Everyone is playing it way too safe anymore. (Though I can't entirely blame the developers for this; I can also blame the fans' narrow-mindedness seeing how the FF7 remake apparently trumped the entirety of Nintendo's more diverse repertoire.)
It was already revealed that Bloodstained is not going to be 100% crowdfunded. IGA has other investors backing the project; the main purpose of the Kickstarter was mostly to gauge interest from fans. Now it appears that the equally high-profile Shenmue 3 Kickstarter is doing the same thing. It does certainly raise the question of what they even NEED a Kickstarter for in the first place. It certainly has a bit of dishonesty to it as well. If they're trying to see how many people would be interested in it, that's all well and good, but they should lead with that, not this "The fate of Shenmue 3 is in YOUR hands!!" crud. I fear it may also taint peoples' opinions of actual indie upstart developers trying to Kickstart their project if people are just gonna start asking "Why should we give you money when you already have investors giving you all the money you need?"
I think this also goes back to some things I was talking about before, about so how so many developers are afraid to take risks anymore. We have some of them using Kickstarter and other means to gauge fan support for a game before they start on it. Square-Enix keeps remaking older Final Fantasy games and going back to the Kingdom Hearts well instead of coming up with anything new anymore, and that's what the fanbase seems to want from them (their reaction to FF13 illustrated pretty well what happened when they tried to mix things up a little and stray from the formula). Capcom is focused on updated versions of Street Fighter and HD remakes of the Resident Evil games, maybe rereleasing some Megaman games every so often to spice things up a little. Sega is now all Sonic, all the time; they seem to have abandoned all of their less famous franchises. Everyone is playing it way too safe anymore. (Though I can't entirely blame the developers for this; I can also blame the fans' narrow-mindedness seeing how the FF7 remake apparently trumped the entirety of Nintendo's more diverse repertoire.)