Keiji Inafune : Kickstarter a presque ruiné Red Ash

Mega Man creator, Keiji Inafune believes that the power of Kickstarter may end up derailing games from their initial vision.

Inafune had successfully funded his Mega Man spiritual successor, Mighty Number 9, through a Kickstarter campaign that managed to collect nearly $4 million instead of the target goal of $900,000. On his subsequent attempt however, Inafune barely collected $520,000 of the $800,000 required to develop Red Ash.

Interestingly enough, the famous game director believes that failing at Kickstarter might have been in the best interest of the game.

“One thing I noticed about the Red Ash campaign, or rather about the team, is that up until the Kickstarter campaign started, the team really wanted to make the game—it was all about making Red Ash happen,” he told .

“But once the Kickstarter began, the goal became to make the Kickstarter a success. The goal sort of shifted toward that side. All the decisions then were based on the Kickstarter, not based on Red Ash. I think that’s one of the big things—bad things—that happened to the team.”

“So I gathered the team members together, and I told them, “Doing a successful Kickstarter is important, but that’s not our final goal. Our final goal is to make Red Ash happen, to make this game. So even if we fail at Kickstarter, that’s totally fine; that’s one option we’ll explore. It if doesn’t work, we’ll go to the next option. We’ll find something else.”