What we can learn from Mighty No. 9’s troubled launch

Here at Ars Technica, we're used to crowdfunded projects failing to live up to expectations. Even by the standards of Kickstarter projects, though, this week's release of Mighty No. 9 is becoming a case study in launch debacles.

The full list of problems is quite lengthy, and middling to awful reviews for the game itself are just the start of it. Many backers and watchers began to worry last month when a tone-deaf, borderline insulting trailer showed a game with graphics reminiscent of those fan-made Net Yaroze games on the old PlayStation Underground discs.

A Eurogamer comparison video this week demonstrates that the final game looks markedly worse than the "evaluation test" showed to attract Kickstarter backers roughly three years ago. Considering the test footage reportedly took seven days to create and didn't have millions of crowdfunding dollars behind it yet, the difference is a bit baffling.

There have also been technical issues with actually getting the game into backers' hands. The Xbox 360 version of the game was delayed at the last minute for recertification, and the promised Linux and Mac versions have been pushed back a couple of days for fixes as well. Promised 3DS and Vita versions are still planned for some nebulous time in the future. All of this comes after the game already faced numerous delays from its originally planned April 2015 launch date.

For players on platforms that did actually receive the game, many are complaining of incorrect DLC codes being sent out or codes not working at all. And Wii U owners are complaining about extreme graphical glitches and other performance issues, with some even reporting that running the game is bricking their consoles (publisher Deep Silver says a Wii U patch is already going out to fix these issues).

It's a mighty fall for a project that rode the participation of Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune to over $4 million in crowdfunding from 67,000 backers. What can we learn from this once-promising project's eventual fate? Here are a few quick lessons:

Kickstarter is not a store

We've pointed out in the past how the very structure of Kickstarter encourages projects to overpromise to get funding and then underdeliver when it turns out that they were a bit optimistic in the original pitch. Judging by the responses to Mighty No. 9, though, some people still consider Kickstarter to be more of an indie game store, where you buy interesting titles in the same way you might preorder a big-budget release just before Christmas.

That's not to say there aren't plenty of successful, satisfying Kickstarter gaming projects or that crowdfunding can't be a valid way of taking a game from idea to reality. But when you back a game on Kickstarter based on nothing but an idea when development has barely started, you're taking a risk that's much larger than preordering a traditionally produced game. While the satisfaction of helping a project in the early stages can be great, the Kickstarter rewards themselves often aren't enough to balance out the risk of such early funding.

Funding is not a guarantee of success

Most people see Mighty No. 9's $4 million in funding and think that number is a ridiculously large amount of money to make a "simple" 2D game. In reality, the actual budget reportedly ended up being just 60 percent of that amount after Kickstarter's cut and other costs, according to producer Ben Judd. And even a small professional team of developers can burn through that kind of money incredibly quickly building high-quality art, sound, and programming assets.

At this point, though, the development budget shouldn't be seen as having any relation to the quality of a game. Crowdfunding often makes it seem like all that's needed to convert an ambitious idea into reality is enough people voting with their wallets and wishing it were so. But all the money in the world won't help a developer if they don't spend that money wisely, putting it toward the right people and tools to make a good game.

A sizable budget isn't even a necessary condition for making a quality game, as countless successful projects from small hobbyist teams have shown. There may be some correlation between a game's budget and its eventual quality, but there's not enough linkage to assume anything about a game just based on its crowdfunding success.

Don’t spread yourself too thin

Many of Mighty No. 9's problems seem to stem from the game's insistence on trying to launch simultaneously on 10 different platforms: Xbox 360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4, Wii U, Windows, Mac, Linux, 3DS, and Vita (the Nvidia Shield is also listed at the bottom of this publisher page, but there's not much indication of that version actually being developed). Even with the help of the Unreal Engine, which makes porting much simpler, working on so many ports takes away limited resources that could be spent on the core game itself. At the very least, versions on less popular platforms could have been given less priority and given a Retro City Rampage-style staggered release over time.

Platforms aside, developers have to know their limits. As producer Ben Judd said in a recent livestream, the game "ended up being a huge amount of work, more than they actually estimated. Definitely, when they looked at the project, they were wrong about a lot of things. They underestimated how much work, time and money was going to be necessary. All of those things create a huge amount of pressure."

In addition to knowing your limits, be realistic about your goals.

Be careful with your messaging

Many of Mighty No. 9's launch problems were exacerbated when Inafune went on a pre-release livestream and seemed to say that, despite the launch problems, "at the end of the day, even if [Mighty No. 9] is not perfect, it's better than nothing."

Later on, it became clear that this quote was an artifact of Judd inserting his own personal thoughts in with Inafune's translated comments. In fact, later in the stream, Inafune actually said, "I own all the problems that came with this game and if you want to hurl insults at me, it's totally my fault. I'm the key creator. I will own that responsibility."

But the damage was already done at that point, with numerous headlines casting Inafune's "better than nothing" comments as an uncaring and callous response to real gripes. As always, it's much harder to take back a misstatement than to never say it at all.

Don’t badmouth fellow developers

Congrats on the launch, @MightyNo9!

It's better than nothing. pic.twitter.com/WsXHWtAlaX

— Sonic the Hedgehog (@sonic_hedgehog) June 21, 2016

Sonic the Hedgehog's confirmed Twitter account is one of the better corporate brands on social media, tweeting with a self-awareness and irreverence of a company that doesn't take itself too seriously. But yesterday, amid Mighty No. 9's launch woes, the account seemed to mock developer Comcept for the problems with Mighty No. 9 (and the company's "better than nothing" mistranslated statement.)

It's not a great idea for any developer to pile on a fellow game maker when they're having problems. But it's a particularly bad look for the Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter account, which represents a series that has seen its fair share of critically panned games in recent years. Tend to your own house, @Sonic_Hedgehog.