The Red Ash Kickstarter Is A Disaster
In 2013, game producer Keiji Inafune earned gamers’ hearts worldwide by promising to bring back
Mega Man in the form of
Mighty No. 9. Two years later, he’s launched a sloppy, misleading new Kickstarter that threatens to squander all that goodwill.
Red Ash, which took to crowdfunding earlier this month with promises of launching a successor to the beloved
Mega Man Legends series, has been a disaster from the start. There was confusion over whether this campaign was for a full game or a prologue; there was a great big mess when the campaign organizers
promised a console port but wouldn’t say which console; and few fans were happy that the
Red Ash team had launched a simultaneous second campaign to collect even more money for a companion anime based on the game.
Now, with four days left and just under $500,000 raised out of their $800,000 goal, the
Red Ash team has
a new update: turns out they’ve got a publisher (the Chinese game company FUZE) and they’re going to release the game no matter how much they crowdfund. If the Kickstarter
is funded—which at this point seems unlikely—all of that money will go toward stretch goals. What kind of stretch goals? Says the update (emphasis mine):
The Kickstarter campaign is going 100% towards more content! Consider your pledge a contribution to stretch goals from here on out.
Exactly what are those stretch goals? We’re sorry to say that will have to wait a little while longer! Like we said, we’re very busy with many behind-the-scenes things over here, and we apologize if you feel left in the dark. As you can see, the things we have brewing that are keeping us occupied are BIG, and all for the purpose of getting you RED ASH in its biggest, bestest form. That’s the reason we’re less communicative than we’d like to be!
We know we’re in the final days of our campaign, but we’d like to ask fans to continue their support of RED ASH! Your money is going towards 100% content now, so please look forward to the revised “stretch goals”!
In other words: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you think this is all sketchy—and you’re wondering how a Kickstarter campaign can suddenly shift from “we need this money to fund the game” to “this is now for stretch goals!”—you’re not alone. When I reached out to Kickstarter this morning, a rep told me that this wasn’t in violation of their Terms of Service, even though it appears to at least go against the spirit of
rule #2: “Projects must be honest and clearly presented.”
I reached out to Comcept for clarification on how this publishing deal had happened and got back the following statement, from a spokesperson:
Inafune met FUZE at E3 this year, but they approached them only after the KS started. Comcept wanted to make Red Ash no matter what, so if the Kickstarter failed, they would find a different way. They were hoping to entice investors with the attention they were getting from the KS, even if it failed. They didn’t necessarily try to hurry up the deal since the KS was still at 50% for some time. The timing happened to work out nicely and then we made the announcement. The timing really wasn’t up to them, it was in the investor’s court. And the [stretch] goals will go out before the KS’s end for sure.
So now, whether or not
Red Ash is funded, the game will happen. They’re promising an eight-hour campaign—
The KalKanon Incident, which they’ve hinted is a prologue to the main
Red Ash—that will be published for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. They say that even though they’re getting funding from FUZE, they’re keeping all the rights to the game and characters.
If you’ve never heard of FUZE before, their website is quite an adventure. The China-based company says they’re working on new gaming hardware—”coming soon”—and their pages are full of
bizarre digs at Microsoft and Sony:
Pretty funny that they’re now helping publish
Red Ash for both PS4 and Xbox One. (Maybe the folks behind PlayStation and Xbox haven’t looked at their website?)
Meanwhile, today Comcept released a speedrun of the opening level for
Mighty No. 9, which is currently slated for release in September. It looks... rough.
Maybe some day time is ripe for someone to make a western game without space, magic or post-apocalypse.
