Days of Future Memory

What does it mean to be human?

More specifically, what do we understand of our own humanity? Is it our perception of free will? One that allows us the ability to lead a life of compassion and self-sacrifice for the betterment of our species? Is it our conception of thought and intelligence? One that allows us the ability to understand right from wrong, and know what path we take in our lives? Or perhaps it is our notion of something even more intangible than that. Something more…. divine in nature.  This common notion that we all possess a soul. Something so abundant in our lives that we measure it in the billions. But something so precious, something so cherished, we mourn, deeply,  its passage.

Perhaps it is a little of all of these things.

But what if we were to teach those ideals to a creation of our own? A creation that felt, and thought, and lived just as we do? Something not made of flesh and blood. But of metal and circuitry. Something that possesses a soul, one of silicon and software, but a soul nevertheless. Would it use these experiences to better our lives, or seek to destroy it? Would it sacrifice itself, if needs be, to protect us and ensure that our legacies live on, or deem us unworthy and seek our ultimate destruction? Would we consider these creations a beacon of hope, or an instrument of war?

Perhaps, depending on the hand of its creator, a little of all of these things.

The notion of good and evil is what defines a hero and a villain. And the ability to accept either right or wrong in our lives is what makes us human. But the lines blur when it attempts to define what we, through our own experiences and by our own hands, create to emulate the good and the bad about our lives. And what gives rise to our greatest threat.

Or our most revered hero.

Twenty five years of a person’s life devoted to a single purpose is a noble, notable pursuit for any one person. Most marriages in our modern lives fail to see even past the twenty five day mark. But even devotion can lead some down a less than desirable end. Keiji Inafune, one of the main architects behind the Mega Man character and franchise, apparently found that out the hard way.

“The company, for better or for worse, is determining a lot of the content that the end user is going to get to consume, and sometimes it’s not what the creator wants to make for the end user,” Inafune says. “Probably nowadays even more than before, the company is putting more restrictions and making more of the judgment calls than they have before in the past….. Basically, they’re handicapping their creators from doing what they really want to do as far as making really great games. What Kickstarter represents is being able to have that pure creator/consumer connection unlike there ever has been in the past.”

Leaving his position at Capcom to form his own developer studio, Comcept, was not a decision that Inafune made easily. He admits that the company treated him well, and provided him with most of the resources he required. But being unable to try something new with the IP under his control lead to a difficult, but amicable split.

“Sometimes having that big publisher umbrella protects you,” Inafune readily admits. “There are risks with Kickstarter. You really must go in knowing that you are doing this for the fans. Your heart must be with them and you must be willing to go all out and make some key decisions that you otherwise would not have. You’re going to have to connect with them on a person-to-person level in a way that a lot of creators haven’t. There might be times you’re going to have to apologize. Unless you’re able to bring that level of openness to Kickstarter, then you’re probably not going to do a good job with it.”

When Inafune initially began his Kickstarter for his upcoming Mighty No. 9, he never expected the overwhelming support from his many fans would launch the original $900,000 proposal into the stratosphere. By the end of the campaign, Mighty No. 9 had reached $4,000,000 in pledges. And while Inafune has promised an “unprecedented” openness to the public during the game’s development, he has admitted that it is a daunting task to undertake.

“Working with the fans sounds attractive and cool and great on paper. But in reality, the logistics behind it are quite difficult,” he admits. “If you’re going to interact with the fans and make sure you’re getting the most clear-cut, concise information you can from them, you need to structure it in a way in which… Do they choose between two or three different choices? Are they able to make certain key selections? You can’t just throw out a huge wide net and say, ‘Give me your best character design,’ or something like that, because then you’re going to come up with 8,000 different ideas and there’s no way to manage that sort of information.”

But for someone who committed 25 years of his life to something great, Inafune makes it look easy. “The fans, the backers, they’re not game creators. They’re fans. They’re people who love the content. They’re going to have great ideas, but they still need to be funneled in a way that the people building the game will be able to use them in the best way possible. Finding that solution set, finding those logistics, is going to be key to making sure that this project provides the most for both the creators and the fans that are so interested in it.

“But I will say this: One of the things at the macro level that I find to be 100 percent original about this, compared to other titles I’ve worked on, is the level of depth to which we’re going to work with the backers to create something that they really appreciate and that we can support as creators. That should give us a totally different perspective as far as designing the game that we never would have had if we’d just been designing it internally or working with a publisher to design something that they wanted. So that, we think, will definitely lead into some really interesting new concepts.”

Speaking of design, some of the video diaries that have popped up during the development of Mighty No. 9 has shown Inafune at his best; mainly being hands-on with the game’s character and level art concepts. However, Mr. Inafune was quick to point out that this is a team effort, and he was only one part of the greater whole.

“There’s a specific character designer on the team, a guy named Kimoto, who is extremely talented,” Inafune says. “He understands my essence. He understands my art style very well. It’s up to him to create the base character designs. However, I would say, much to his chagrin, that on this title – probably more than on any other title in recent years – I’m a lot more hands-on. I’m providing feedback and guidelines on the specifics of smaller details of the character, how parts should look, what should be added. But I feel very comfortable with the fact that I know what Kimoto-san… I know what his strengths are. I know how to maximize his strengths, while also being able to infuse what I consider my creative spirit, my art style, into his designs as well. We have a nice collaborative art design process that’s going on.”

And while he has been comfortable with fans and critics comparing Mighty No. 9 as a “spiritual successor” to Capcom’s Mega Man, he was quick to point that this is where the similarities end. “All artists have their own style” he says. “So if you were to look at a Picasso you would know it’s a Picasso even if it’s a different painting because that is Picasso’s style. Because every artist has their own style, when you look at [Mighty No. 9 protagonist] Beck some people think the character design looks similar. That’s because it’s the same guy who’s creating the character, right?

“Ultimately both characters may look similar if you look at them with a precursory glance, but if you really drill down and you look at the different details – like the coloring, the goggles, the fact that one has a gigantic cannon for an arm and the other doesn’t – there’s actually tons and tons of differences between both character designs. What it is is that people are looking at the silhouette of the character and thinking ‘oh, it’s the same,’ but it’s really not. And if you’re going to say that a character is the same because of its silhouette is the same, then the same could be said about Astro Boy because he also has a very similar silhouette. Is Astro Boy the same character as Mega Man? I would answer ‘no.'”

Thanks to financial backers during their initial Kickstarter campaign, the team was able to reach the stretch goal of introducing Call, Beck’s co-op partner in the game itself. And while the full extent of her role in the game has yet to be fully revealed, the fact that gamers had a hand in her design is a testament to how open Inafune has been with the game’s development and the will of its many fans.

While Inafune and his team are hard at work making Mighty No. 9 the best he can possibly make it, he hopes that in the ensuing months prior to the game’s release, this experience spurs on other Japanese creators to reach out to its fans, to open a dialogue of trust between the two, and eventually strengthen the bond of trust between gamer and game maker. “I want more Japanese companies to use Kickstarter,” he says. “That is why I’m leading by example. I’d like to open a path for more Japanese creators to be able to use Kickstarter to make great work.”

Mighty No. 9 is currently slated for an early-April 2015 release for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Nintendo Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and OS X. *Whew*

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