Topic: -sigh- I'm so Sorry...

[Belmontoya]

I don't think many people realize how much 4 million dollars is chump change in the current game development industry to make and market a new product. I especially laugh at the people who think they were going to get an HD resolution 2D animated game on that budget. they'd go broke after the first level.

Dragon's Crown at the time was Vanillaware's most expensive project to date and was the first game they made that barely went over 1 million with it's budget.

Those are beautiful 2d graphics. Muramasa The demon Blade is an absolutely gorgeous and wonderful game and cost under 1 million to make.

There's no excuse for this bullshit. Better looking games are made with ZERO dollar budgets.

[DarkPrinceAlucard]

Dragon's Crown at the time was Vanillaware's most expensive project to date and was the first game they made that barely went over 1 million with it's budget.

Those are beautiful 2d graphics. Muramasa The demon Blade is an absolutely gorgeous and wonderful game and cost under 1 million to make.

There's no excuse for this bullshit. Better looking games are made with ZERO dollar budgets.

My thoughts exactly, there are games out there that work with a lower budget and still can pull off graphics MUCH better than what we are being shown with Mighty no. 9, there is no reason for Mighty no. 9's graphics to be comparable to the likes of Mega Man X8 which is a PS2 game.

At best I would say its only a bit better in the graphics department then Mega Man X8 which is a game that uses the same 2.5D format as it does, but that is not good at all considering this is supposed to be a current gen game with a 4 million dollar budget and Mega Man X8 was released for the PS2 many years ago.

[uzo]

Compare the complexity of the level designs and level lengths of Muramasa and any Megaman game. Now compare the enemy diversity. There is where the difference lies. Muramasa especially basically uses the same rooms over and over. The level design is especially simple. This all makes the art needs MUCH lower.

Also remember the game's budget as you state there doesn't include the marketing budget and other considerations. MN9's was the total budget as we know it. It all adds up, there are tons of costs people just don't realize.

And yeah some devs have "zero" budgets, but they're not supporting their family by working on the game. You have to pay your people if that is the job that is supporting them. You seriously are going to compare that?

[Belmontoya]

Compare the complexity of the level designs and level lengths of Muramasa and any Megaman game. Now compare the enemy diversity. There is where the difference lies. Muramasa especially basically uses the same rooms over and over. The level design is especially simple. This all makes the art needs MUCH lower.

Also remember the game's budget as you state there doesn't include the marketing budget and other considerations. MN9's was the total budget as we know it. It all adds up, there are tons of costs people just don't realize.

Right but Muramasa has heart and a vision.

Inspiration doesn't cost a penny. I see none of that here.

[uzo]

OK, that's fine, but we were talking about budgets and graphics...

[Belmontoya]

OK, that's fine, but we were talking about budgets and graphics...

How much of MN9's budget do you really figure has gone into marketing?

I'm not going to pretend to have any idea but it seems to me that advertising online is cheaper than it's ever been.

It just rubs me the wrong way when bad games get free passes for the excuse of low budgets.
Especially when those budgets are in the millions.

There are too many talented devs out there doing this stuff for free these days for guys with budgets like these to drag their asses.

That's all I'm saying.

[uzo]

Hard to tell. Each company does different things. The usual % of the budget ranges from 10% to 40%. Deep Silver probably picked up the tab once they signed the publisher deal. It's difficult to say how much had been spent. Though you have to consider now that their website, the community interactions, etc. These were all jobs and people that had to be paid to maintain and run it. Translators too for every communication. That all falls under marketing. Shit balloons quickly.

[zangetsu468]

Uzo has a point regarding paying employees to actually operate the machine that is game development.
What I will say though Belmontoya is that your point regarding inspiration and the vision/ direction of MN9 is a good one and seems to be the major let down here. Seeing that the game is taking a lot of inspiration from the Megaman series one could argue that it should be competing directly rather than appearing as an inferior product?

[Super Waffle]

Was that trailer made by the same people who did that anti-smoking ad where everything was a reference to internet memes?

[KaZudra]

OK, that's fine, but we were talking about budgets and graphics...

Shantae, $776K
Undertale, $51K
Freedom Planet, $25K
Hyper Light Drifter, $645K
Darkest Dungeon, $313K
SUPERHOT, $250K
Mercenary Kings, $116K
Banner Saga, $732K
Risk of Rain, $30K
Legend of Dungeon, $32K
Valdis Story, $49K
Shadowrun Returns, $1.8M
Wasteland 2, $2.9M

Yet at $4M, Mighty No.9 is somehow worse than all these shoestring budget games?

[Belmontoya]

And yeah some devs have "zero" budgets, but they're not supporting their family by working on the game. You have to pay your people if that is the job that is supporting them. You seriously are going to compare that?

That's right. The freeware devs who aren't supporting their family through their game work have to do so by other means. This basically means that they have to work twice as hard on top of developing the game for free. I don't think there's any comparison there at all. In fact, it gives paid developers even less of an excuse for putting out crap. They can spend all of their time focusing on the game and not worrying about another job that has nothing to do with it.

Just look at the remake of Castlevania 1 being made in unreal. That's one man that made that in 4 months. Why is it one man who hasn't been paid a cent can put out something that looks that great, yet here we have an entire development team with a 4 million dollar budget and they can't even get the game to look halfway decent? I'm sure he has bills to pay just like everyone else, and has a life.

I'm not sure if I'm making points anymore or not.. haha. Sorry if I'm ranting, and I do understand what you're saying Uzo... You know I have a lot of respect for you.

I just get frustrated when it seems like people who are getting paid to make video games don't give a fuck about the quality of the games they're putting out. They literally have what I consider to be the coolest jobs in world...

I got really pissed like this when I played Mirror of Fate too... I almost felt cheated.

Anyways, I'm gonna stop posting about this before I say something stupid.

But to anyone who contributed to this game on Kickstarter, I'm very sorry if you feel cheated. It's not fair to you guys. People who fund their games this way should be held accountable to the quality of their final product.

[uzo]

Typically with 'zero budget' games someone is supporting them. Be it a spouse or whatever. Otherwise it just comes down to simple math of staff and time. Either they have high quality and long dev time (5+ years), or low quality and short dev time. MN9 is a studio project, it needs to keep a schedule. Of course delays happen, as it did, but their intent is to keep the game structured and scheduled. This isn't a charity business, and they need to find the balance of how much money they need to pay how many employees for x amount of time to get what they need on the game done. Its less time more money, or less money more time. One or the other. No magic involved.

Do I think MN9 looks the best it could be? Hell no. It has issues with art direction, but most of them have pretty simple fixes. Does it look like something that could come out of the budget they have, taking into account all the other costs and issues with game dev for a startup? Yes, I can easily see how this is the result.

So what is out breakdown?
Game Employees
Tool Licenses
Marketing
Community Forum Creation & Management (more employees)
Kickstarter's 10% cut
Kickstarter rewards cost of manufacturing and shipping
Kickstarter reward management (more employees)

Shit adds up quick doesn't it?


And do you want to really put this into perspective?

Bloodstained's base budget was 5 Million. What did it end up with? 10.5 MILLION. Given what they promised out of this game? They will need ever fucking penny.

[zangetsu468]

Bloodstained's base budget was 5 Million. What did it end up with? 10.5 MILLION. Given what they promised out of this game? They will need ever fucking penny.

I was thinking about BS earlier and now I'm sort of worried about it. I know Iga has made great games with a low budget, but we've barely seen anything to do with how the game will run. It's probably going to be delayed quite a bit imo, which is fine because I've got stacks of other games to play.

[Aceearly1993]

Now I'm neither over positive nor over negative to the nowadays kickstarter thingy

But it seems that Inafune's behavior enraged core fans in its very ways according to the descriptions of mass media and the fellow cv dungeon friends here, but my attitude is I care "only a very few part" of it because I want to see the final result of MN9 after such a whole lot of mess in the sight of mass media

Talking about MN9 there's another game called Gal＊Gunvolt or something on PSN, there're 3 players to choose with, one is the main guy fron Azure Gunvolt, the other is the main heroine from Gal＊Gun, the third is the one served as the main character (was he named Beck?) of MN9 project ; Gal＊Gunvolt did come out as 8-bit era style/formula, the control scheme is amazingly solid and intact like I pretented myself playing a new official Mega Man title; but the difficulty is horned and merciless like there's no tomorrow day of Inafune left Capcom situation and the same hell of MMZ series/MMZX/MMZXA era combo from the Inti Creates I suffered from went all over again, though this time the difficulty is FAR beyond what I can take which is REALLY a bad thing for me, personally
In short I' m disappointed that Gal＊Gunvolt SHOULD be a masterpiece and I think I can finally fit the game to my user habit little by little , it HAS the potential everything seems OK BUT it ends up too tough that I can't beat and never gave me the chance to fit my usual habit; I don't want to see MN9 fell in the similar old cursed rings like that (or I'd like MN9 to be ANYTHING BUT that)

I donated few bucks to IGA's Bloodstained project anyway; it's simply because I want to PAY for the awesomeness of awesome past project like Castlevania Chronicles (PS1) and I can't find the reason to add any more attention (personal emotion? eagerness of new app product/games?) to care about the actual games of the project THAT seriously. Maybe It's just a "project" thingy and it lacks the thing that makes me to be "moved" or "touched" so my attitude is I can't treat it with any further attention, as a turn back

Maybe unrelated, but the craziness of how fast mass media/"mainstream" Internet media can spread informations sometimes can be a problem to game devs or whoever

[Dracula9]

Issue's not really about money, as the lists of better games made cheaper shows.

Issue's more Inafune (who I will more or less place sole blame on since he's the head of his own company and a 30-year veteran of the industry, because I obviously am not privy to the performance and personality of every person on Comcept, and because I will ultimately consider Inafune to be the final word on keeping or removing employees and assets and thus having the control over whether his team sucks or not and whether or not something they produce gets approved) being out-of-touch with what his core fanbase wants--which isn't entirely his fault as the Megaman fanbase is indecisive and divided as fuck as to what it collectively wants and will likely never agree on a singular direction they unanimously want the series to take--as well as deciding to rely on shitty fanservice things like literally Roll being a character and obnoxiously blatant design rips off his past character babies, rather than introduce new elements to the franchise's now-standardized formula and focus on solid and enjoyable gameplay design.

Obviously it would be silly to just assume Inafune's a big asshat out to fuck up everyone's Sunday, but there's no longer the chain-of-command overhead he had at Capcom to fall back on--can't say "well maybe he didn't want to do that but his bosses made him do it anyway" because Inafune is the boss now--nor can we presume to know the actual process of approval and design within the Comcept studios. What we do have is the work of a 30-year veteran with which we can draw some fairly reasonable conclusions, and that's how I'm looking at this whole thing.

Maybe Inafune's got a shitty team. Maybe Inafune has no real idea what he's doing anymore or just doesn't give a fuck. Maybe he's genuinely plagued with problems that could have been avoided or better managed by proactive planning early on.

Whatever the case is, I continuously see it all come back to Inafune and something he should or shouldn't have done.

He's the big dog in his own yard now. Mistakes he makes now fall squarely on him as the head of the company and studio.