"Maybe there's someone else getting ready to do their own Kickstarter and surpass everyone else," said Keiji Inafune at this year's E3. "Maybe it's me."
Well... no, it's not. Inafune, the longtime producer of the Mega Man series did indeed launch a new Kickstarter just a few weeks after making that comment, for a new game called Red Ash. But it's not going to break the record for the most-funded game on Kickstarter. In fact, it doesn't look like it's going to get funded at all.
There's an important lesson here, not only for would-be crowdfunders but for everyone else besides: Kickstarter success is not guaranteed, no matter who you are.
Red Ash seemed like a fairly simple recipe for success. Inafune funded his game Mighty No. 9, a spiritual successor to Mega Man, at $3.8 million in 2013, making it the third most-funded videogame ever at the time—and by a fairly small margin, at that.
His fans had also been clamoring for a spiritual successor to Mega Man Legends, an RPG-style spinoff of the series. Capcom had greenlit an official sequel in 2010, but it was canceled shortly after Inafune departed the company.
