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This month, Kickstarter faced one of its biggest challenges in the form of Keiji Inafune’s Mighty No. 9, his long-gestating Mega Man clone that raised just shy of $4 million back in 2013. Three years later, the massive amount money hurled at the game seems excessive, as it was poorly received by both critics and players alike. Were backers naive to think that the final game would look and play as gorgeously as the original concept? While companies like Nintendo manage to successfully trade on nostalgia, it seems this homage to Inafune’s beloved character has forgotten to add anything new into the mix, leaving players with a bland, uninspiring journey. The reception was not surprising, but the reaction made me look at Kickstarter with a more critical eye.

I had found a great game called Ikenfell to feature, but it managed to achieve its funding days before I posted, and has now achieved double its initial target. This left me to trawl through a myriad of projects whose campaigns were either dull, confusing, or tragically launched in a premature state. Rather than single one out, I’ll go through a handful to underline exactly what I mean.

Take Rise of the Infection: it has no video; its poster is a stock image of a city; and upon reading the project entry, I found it had no game whatsoever. The developer, Joseph Rottet, teases a promise of a game “that starts as the world ends… with fully destructible environments, creature decay, and RPG elements.” And yet, there are no assets here at all… there’s just a pitch. It is a Kickstarter project in the purest form, as he is asking the world to invest $100,000 in an idea, and to give college graduates an opportunity to show their skills. He is not looking for funding for a game, as is promised; he is looking to fund a company that will then make this game in five years.

Five years.

This one project depressed me on a whole other level, because it is essentially someone asking for money in exchange for literally nothing. No work has been put into this idea, no assets have been created, no pitch has been recorded… absolutely nothing. The world seems to be rewarding the effort in kind, with zero donations thus far.

Is it a con? Who knows. Kickstarter has had its fair share of controversial projects, both funded and cancelled, which were later found to be the poorly conceived abominations spawned from less than reputable individuals. Yet there are other projects in a similar state to this one. Indigo Park has no video, and its handful of screenshots look fake, with the protagonist Laura placed in environments that do not match the style of the character.

At this point, I stopped looking at Kickstarter. It was becoming an irritation, a sea of badly run campaigns that may or may not be funding someone’s lavish lifestyle, while the rewards I would receive may later prove to be inferior, if I received anything at all.

And yet, I still believe in the notion of crowdfunding. I guess we have to take the good with the bad, and trust our own judgement, but if we cannot rely on industry veterans like Inafune to deliver what they promised, who can we trust?

The answer, it seems, is an Australian bloke named Luke Miller. (more…)