Koji Igarashi needs your help...or maybe not (1 Viewer)

The man who created one of the greatest games of all time Castlevania Symphony Of The Night(and many other Castlevania games since) Had a $500,000 goal on Kickstarter to fund his new Gothic horror game-Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night

He is currently at about a million dollars over his goal in just a couple days.

The video is very funny, and cool. Check it out:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night


I'm pledging for the physical copy on the PS4. Some of the higher tier packages are insane(create your own room in the game, have a digitized portrait of yourself immortalized in game etc.)

Looks like the publishers are wrong that gamers are no longer interested in the style of game he makes. Almost 2.1 million over his initial 500,000 goal and still 5 days to go.

I am generally of the opinion that any time a AAA-quality developer moves to crowdfunding for a game, what they're really doing is getting super early preorders and nothing more. There have been a few good articles written about this subject, but basically there is absolutely no way that this game would have been made for $500k. Assuming he had made ONLY his $500k budget and the only guaranteed thing was a PC release with no extra features, they still have several million dollars already given to them by some financial partner(s) to fund this.

What everyone just did by giving them money is effectively a preorder. The game was going to be made no matter what.


This is generally a problem because it creates unrealistic expectations from consumers. If Koji Igarashi can promise to make a full game for a minimum of $500k, then why does a no name indie dev need $2 million to start? IIRC, Iga already has like $5-7 million in backing before he even went to Kickstarter, and he's making a 2D Metroidvania-style game, not something like GTAV or Destiny. A $10 million budget is probably more than enough. But for a small developer with only a handful of people looking to get the entirety of a game funded from the ground up, $2 million is on the low end of what they're going to need.


So when Iga asks for $500k, people assume a game only costs $500k. That's bad.


However, I generally think that crowdfunding isn't special. The success rate is not so good for Kickstarter games. And if a game looks promising but has been unable to get financial support from a publisher or other source, it's either because it's not actually going to be good or the developer is arrogant and refuses to agree to a contract.

I thought about getting the extended pre-order too for the physical copy, but I am going to wait until it is actually released as I feel it will still be available in physical form at that point.


Not that they need my money anyway...thing will probably break 4 mil by the time it ends.

Most of this is a profitable scalper business though, make no mistake. You watch the specialty items from the $300 tier on up(official map, signed copies, and soundtracks etc.) go for 10X what the the specific tier was paid for.. or more on E-Bay when the scalpers have them in hand. Why? Because they are rare, and the cult following of Igarashi.

$4,517,000 with 24 hours to go. This project has legs. Will it break 5 mil when all is said, and done?