Category: Game

When Comcept CEO Keiji Inafune announced a third delay for the game Mighty No. 9, he knew it was time to take his licks. He’d been there before.
He’d seen the goodwill cost of pivoting when you have crowdfunded money from 67,226 fans in your bank account, and he was ready to do it again. So he wrote a letter to fans, pointing to his team’s “miscalculations" in finalizing the game, saying "we have no excuses for disappointing our fans and especially our backers once more."
In a Polygon news story covering the delay, readers responded quickly.
"At this point I don’t think I care anymore," wrote Polygon user Imerty.
"This is insanity, and has shaken my faith in Comcept more than any of the previous shenanigans," added FiXXXerX.
In 2013, Inafune was a crowdfunding poster child, a top example of a brand-name developer going an alternative route to make a passion project. In 2016, he’s become a symbol of crowdfunding "shenanigans" that include delays, unclear messaging and changed plans.
Yet while this has been happening, Comcept has also been running a busy non-crowdfunded business. While not generating the same sorts of controversial headlines for it, the team has worked on a wide range of mobile, portable and console projects. And currently, it’s overseeing one of Microsoft’s big 2016 titles, the action game ReCore, amongst others.
A few days after Comcept’s recent five-year anniversary, Polygon met with Inafune to look over the company’s progress to date.

Keiji Inafune

Inafune’s approach
For many, it’s hard to separate Comcept and Inafune. He started the company, runs it and serves as its public face, often appearing at game industry conventions and doing press interviews. But in some ways, his role is different from those of other well-known game industry figures.
Even going back to the early days of his career, Inafune says he’s taken an unusual path, starting as an artist and working his way up through Capcom over more than 20 years.
"When an artist starts out, they’ll actually tell you that eventually you’ll hit this wall that you can’t ever get over," he says. "For me, that kind of stuck in my head."

Mighty No. 9
Inafune says that idea motivated him to work his way out of being "just an artist," so he dabbled in game design and production before becoming the producer in charge of the Mega Man franchise, and eventually overseeing all game development teams at Capcom.
Because of his different roles, his specific contributions to games can be hard to pinpoint. Many call him the "creator" of Mega Man, which isn’t true — he worked on the original game as an artist, and says the best way to define his role is that he "nurtured" the Mega Man franchise, taking it over after creator Akira Kitamura and others left the team.
People also credit him for the Onimusha, Lost Planet and Dead Rising series. But some fans take issue with that, often citing a 2012 tweet from former Capcom coworker Hideki Kamiya saying, " is a businessman. Not a creator." Given Kamiya’s phrasing, some saw the tweet as an insult, an implication that Inafune focuses on the wrong parts of his job.
Kamiya, who often tweets literally, followed up with messages saying that he meant the statement as a clarification of what Inafune does rather than how he does it, and that he respects Inafune’s skill as a producer on the business side. Later Kamiya posted a photo of himself with Inafune, giving a thumbs up.
Regardless of Kamiya’s intent, the comment gets at the issue of how to define the role of a producer in the game industry, and specifically how Inafune approaches it. At some companies, a producer focuses primarily on business aspects like budgets and schedules. At others, they play more of a creative role. Some prefer for a producer to largely stay out of the creative side of development. Inafune thinks that’s the wrong way to approach the job.

Twitter trouble
In 2015, three years after his quote about Inafune being a "businessman," Hideki Kamiya (above) again took to Twitter to talk about Comcept. This time, his target was Mighty No. 9, which he called "a copy" of Mega Man and "an insult to their old home," referring to Inafune and others at Comcept formerly working at Capcom.
"You know, that’s his opinion, and he’s free to say what he wants," says Inafune. "However, I’m not sure if making negative comments towards another game creator is necessarily a good thing, because we’re all in the same boat. We’re all in the same industry, working together. …
"Also, I’m not sure if he had played the game when he wrote those tweets. Because if he’d actually played the game after it came out, and then said something like that, then I’d say, ‘Yeah, sure. That’s what you think.’ But at this point, I don’t think he’s played it yet. And maybe that’s why he said it’s a copy of my old game. But hopefully when the game comes out, he’ll play it and have a different opinion."

"I didn’t pay too much attention to comment, because as a game creator you have to think about both the creative and the business sides," says Inafune. "Neither of those can survive without the other. I’m the kind of person who thinks about both sides. And if he thinks that I’m more of a businessman, that’s fine."
In practice, Inafune often spends a lot of time developing a game’s creative concept up-front, and then brings in others to help see it through.
This is one of a handful of philosophies Inafune brings up in his interview for this story, theories that he says define Comcept’s approach to making games. They include collaborating with external studios — Comcept is a design and production team that aligns with other studios to make games, rather than a team that does everything internally — developing its own game ideas rather than taking work-for-hire jobs, working on multiple games at once and working on a variety of game types rather than specializing in a specific genre.
Those last two points, Inafune says, come from a survival mentality.
"Making multiple titles at the same time, it’s not because I’m greedy or anything like that," he says. "I have to do it for my company to survive. Because I myself, I’m not a director or an art director or anything like that. I’m a producer and the CEO. So I have to look over my company as a whole."
He gives a similar response for why Comcept jumps between different sorts of projects.
"I want the company to have lots of flexibility," he says. "Because nowadays when you think of a company, you might think ‘If this company is doing this genre of game, it should be trustworthy.’ But I think that’s kind of dangerous, because if people stop liking those sorts of games, that company is done for, period.
"So I don’t want Comcept to have that kind of reputation. I don’t want people to think, ‘If Comcept is doing this kind of game, it’s good. But if Comcept is doing this other kind of game, it’s kinda bad.’ I want the company to be flexible and able to produce any sort of game, because when a company can do that, it’ll survive for a long, long time. That’s the philosophy I’ve had for a long time, even going back to when I was at Capcom."

Comcept at 5
To date, Comcept’s output has been consistent in its inconsistency — by design, Inafune says.
Its list of released games includes a batch of of mobile titles aimed at the Japanese market, a PSP visual novel game called Sweet Fuse, an experimental 3DS minigame called Bugs vs. Tanks and others. Each game a collaboration with a different development studio, and each game in a different genre, for the most part.
The two highest profile games on that list are Soul Sacrifice, a Monster Hunter-style cooperative multiplayer action game that was successful enough to lead to a sequel, and Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, a stylish side-story in the Ninja Gaiden hack-and-slash series that sold and reviewed poorly. Even in the latter case, though, Inafune says he’s proud of the result.

"There are a lot of reasons why that game didn’t become successful, but I think the timing was a big part of it," he says. "That game came out right as the console transition was happening, and people were moving from PlayStation 3 to PlayStation 4, for example. I think that was one of the biggest reasons the game didn’t do too well. But as a game, gameplay-wise, I think it’s pretty damn good."
"Reviews these days are kind of confusing, because leading up to the release we saw a couple different reviews from the media, and they weren’t all bad," Inafune adds. "Some of them were actually good. So it gets kind of confusing, because we see good reviews and then we see bad reviews, and we really can’t come to a consensus. Some of the user reviews were bad, so that could be what people thought in the end. But I don’t usually look at reviews too much, because they can confuse you."
Yaiba was a collaboration between Comcept, Japanese development studio Team Ninja and Western team Spark Unlimited, which shut down shortly after the game’s release. Craig Allen formerly served as CEO of Spark, and has plenty of good things to say about Inafune’s approach in spite of how things turned out for his team.
Spark originally signed on to work with Inafune on Lost Planet 3 back in Inafune’s Capcom days, and then about halfway through the project, Inafune left the company. Allen says the team felt a substantial change when he left.
"I think that there were still some very good people that we worked with at Capcom, but I think you saw after he left a big change in their development strategy. As any change of regime leads to, it was not necessarily the same environment to create what we had been creating under Inafune-san’s guidance. … The priorities around the business definitely shifted back to going deeper on a few core brands as opposed to supporting external Western development. So a lot of the projects that were started by Inafune, and some of them that weren’t necessarily publicized, were changed significantly or were canceled. So he definitely was missed."

Comcept included Beck from Mighty No. 9 as a bonus character in Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z.
Allen speaks highly of Inafune’s process in general, saying he’s heavily involved in the early stages setting clear goal posts for the team, then steps back in the middle to let the studio find their way before coming back towards the end to help pull things together.
"The analogy would be, if Kennedy said, ‘I want to go to the moon,’ there were a lot of things that had to happen to get there, but you knew you weren’t going to Mars," he says. "… And then it’s just a question of working the problems to get there."
"I think, is a great way for a creative executive to work with a team, because the team finds its own space in the middle," he adds. "Good management is kind of setting where the goal posts are, so that people know where they need to go to be successful. And if you’re doing too much micromanagement, it’s really hard to do that from afar without leading to a lot of frustration and disappointment."
Allen says he also likes Inafune’s willingness to take risks, and to back projects that feel right, even if they haven’t been commercially proven. And thus far at Comcept, Inafune and team have tried a mix of proven and unproven concepts, spreading their bets into different buckets and seeing different reactions from players to each.

The next five years
Now five years in on his plan for Comcept, Inafune says he’s happy with how things have been going, despite a few setbacks.
Asked to rate Comcept’s success thus far, he says, "I can’t say we can give Comcept , but I think we’re doing alright as a five-year-old company. We haven’t had to take any work-for-hire jobs, and we’re actually making our own IP in this day and age. I think that’s kind of rare in the industry."
With Mighty No. 9 and ReCore scheduled to release this year, and Red Ash — a spiritual successor to the Mega Man Legends series that went through its own chaotic crowdfunding attempt before finding a publisher — in the works as well, Comcept has a lot on its plate.
As time goes on, Inafune hopes players will focus more on the games themselves and less on the crowdfunding hiccups — both so players can enjoy the work, and so he can continue to make the kinds of games he wants at Comcept.
"I always like to challenge myself, so when I think about making a new game, I don’t think about putting a spin on an established genre. I think about making a totally different game," Inafune says, perhaps exaggerating slightly. "I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years, and I’ll probably keep doing this for the rest of my life."
Photography: Jonathan Castillo

Someone get on the Batphone to Sony Many PlayStation Network users are currently reporting problems using the service, including issues with signing into the network and accessing the PlayStation Store.
We booted up a PlayStation 4 and were unable to load the PlayStation Store, check out our friends list or profile, or even see the trophies we had earned. The store is also currently inaccessible via a web browser:

Some NeoGAF users are saying they’re seeing a message notifying them that the PSN is currently offline for maintenance on both PS4 and PlayStation Vita. The downtime appears to be affecting users in North America as well as Europe, according to that NeoGAF thread.
For what it’s worth, Sony’s PSN status page says as of this writing that “all services are up and running." The network was down for about 12 hours on Jan. 4, and Sony later extended PlayStation Plus subscriptions by one day as a make-good for the outage.

It’s like a stimpak for the game Fallout 4 developer Bethesda Game Studios is releasing a new patch for the game this week, an update that includes fixes for bugs of all kinds — both annoying and beneficial ones, the company announced today.
The patch, which brings Fallout 4 to version 1.3, is now available for the Windows PC version of the game and will be available on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One later this week.
Update 1.3 delivers a few PC-only features, such as a new ambient occlusion setting known as HBAO+, but the bulk of the patch consists of bug fixes. If you’ve been bringing MacCready to firefights just because of his game-breakingly good Killshot perk, well, you’ll have to find a better justification for keeping him around — he’ll no longer provide a guaranteed 95 percent chance of nailing headshots. Companions also won’t get stuck in a down state, or in a state of perpetual radiation poisoning, anymore.
An entire section of the patch notes for update 1.3 is dedicated to quest fixes, some of which solve issues that had prevented players from being able to complete quests. Such quests include “Underground Undercover," "Human Error" and "Tactical Thinking." Other fixes involve companions, like Preston Garvey and Dogmeat. The final section of the patch notes addresses the workshop, which now allows players to see provided power and build workbenches in their Diamond City house.
Check out Bethesda.net for the full patch notes. You can read our Fallout 4 review for more on the game.

Franchise’s first ARPG leaves Oceania Ubisoft has launched Assassin’s Creed Identity for iOS, the company announced in a press release. Developed by Ubisoft studio Blue Byte, the mobile game is available on the App Store for $4.99. You can see it in action above.
Assassin’s Creed Identity stands as the franchise’s first action-based role-playing game, in which customizable assassins take on missions throughout Renaissance-era Rome. Players can control their characters by tapping the touchscreen, with a virtual set of analog sticks or using an external gamepad.
Ubisoft soft-launched Identity in Australia and New Zealand back in the fall of 2014, a release that coincided with the announcement of a future worldwide launch. During this initial release period, the game was available as a free download with microtransactions.
Ubisoft confirmed on the Assassin’s Creed Identity Twitter account that an Android version was in the works, but no release date has been given for that version of the game. A post on the game’s Facebook page suggests the development team ran into unexpected roadblocks while working on the title, but confirms it remains in development. The Twitter also shows a steady stream of updates since the game’s soft launch, although it has remained mum on the game’s planned international release.

Worst of the worst of the worst, sir Suicide Squad has been holding fans riveted since the first footage of it hit the web (or maybe even when the first pictures of Jared Leto as a tattooed Joker hit).
And speaking of tatted-up Joker, part of the reason that Suicide Squad hype has not slowed down in the intervening months is that the production has made some wild choices, in design and tone. For once, it seems like Warner Bros. is producing a DC Comics movie that isn’t retreading tropes and hero arcs we’ve already seen a dozen times in previously released superhero films. But the question remains: Will Suicide Squad ultimately fly at the box office, or will it trip on those wild choices and fall flat on its inked-up face?
Who knows? But with that kind of attention from fans, combining Suicide Squad with footage from Batman: The Animated Series, Justice League Unlimited and other fan-beloved shows in the DC Animated Universe can’t go wrong.

American Harry Potter fans have a new acceptance letter to look for J.K. Rowling has named three other schools of magic in the Harry Potter canon, following a teaser at Universal Orlando Resort’s Celebration of Harry Potter last weekend. The author shared new writing on the Pottermore website about Ilvermorny, Castelobruxo, Mahoutokoro and Uagadou, each one an institution devoted to educating young wizards around the world.
Rowling has said the least about llvermorny, the North American school, thus far, but she did offer backstories on the other three schools. Castelobruxo is, appropriately, a castle tucked into the Brazilian rainforest; the palatial Mahoutokoro stands on the Japanese island of Minami Iwo Jima; and Uagadou is the largest magical institution across the African continent.
These are just three of what Rowling claims are 11 wizarding schools in total. Uagadou represents the largest of all 11 schools, while Mahoutokoro is the smallest. As to where these other schools are located, Rowling has yet to say, nor is it known whether she’ll ever reveal them.
This news came shortly before a new look at the latest tale in the Harry Potter franchise, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. A behind-the-scenes featurette, below, is meant to warm fans up for their winter return to the cinematic wizarding world.

As the adaptation of a 2001 side story, the film marks the first in a planned trilogy of movies deepening the Harry Potter lore. It premieres Nov. 18, with the second and third films to follow in 2018 and 2020, respectively.

The first-of-its-kind campaign is still pending approval by the Feds The crowdfunding campaign for Psychonauts 2 successfully reached its $3.3 million goal nearly a month ago, but the team at Double Fine has yet to receive more than $1.8 million dollars in equity investment. That’s because the related filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission has yet to be approved.
Double Fine Productions launched the campaign for Psychonauts 2 on the novel new crowdfunding platform called Fig, which allows for traditional rewards-based funding alongside equity investment. The Psychonauts 2 campaign was especially unique in that it allowed anyone, not just high-net-worth individuals, to invest in the game.
Fig tells Polygon that the first-of-its kind campaign raised $1,954,524 in rewards-based money as well as $1,874,500 in equity investment. But while the rewards-based money has been collected, the equity investment portion is still outstanding because of an additional round of clarifications requested by the SEC.
“The SEC filing must be qualified before we can collect the investment reservations placed by unaccredited investors," Fig told Polygon via email. "We received comments back from the SEC on Jan. 17, which was 26 days after we made our filing, and the number of comments we received were low. As a result, we currently expect to be able to complete the unaccredited process in the next 4 to 8 weeks."

Must Read

Storystream: Fig is an equity crowdfunding platform built for video games

Fig’s first campaign, for the award-winning space exploration title Outer Wilds, was able to land $75,000 in equity investment on its way to a successful campaign. The campaign served as a proof of concept, and also attracted nearly $1 million in investor interest.
However, Fig’s second campaign — for a free-to-play title by the developers of multi-platform hit Scribblenauts — failed, coming in $400,000 short of its $500,000 goal.
The campaign for Psychonauts 2, unveiled during a December broadcast of The Game Awards, caught many in the industry by surprise. After quickly reaching more than a million dollars in funding, it took the balance of its month-long campaign to cover the $3.3 million ask. The final tally was more than $3.8 million. Fig says that the majority of rewards-based backers contributed an average of $81, while investors were more likely to fall in the $500 to $2,000 range.
"We already emailed all the investors with an update letting them know we’ve received comments back from the SEC and outlining next steps," Fig representatives said. "Once the filing is qualified, they can complete their investment profile, which includes collecting , and sign the final investment documents. Once that’s complete, money is transferred, their shares are qualified and we collect info on where to send their payments."
Double Fine told Polygon that the total budget for Psychonauts 2 was between $10 and $13.5 million, with funding coming from the studio itself, the Fig campaign and an as yet unnamed silent investor.
Are you an investor in Psychonauts 2? I’d like to hear from you, and stay in touch until the expected 2018 release. Send an email to charlie@polygon.com or via Twitter.

Also stars Steve Buscemi! Louis CK may be taking a break from his award-winning series Louie, but that didn’t stop him from launching a new web series over the weekend.
CK emailed his subscribers over the weekend about Horace and Pete, his new miniseries with Steve Buscemi. Much like Cheers or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the show follows a group of people at an Irish bar also called Horace and Pete.
The first episode is about 70-minutes long and also stars Alan Alda, Edie Falco, Jessica Lange and many other actors and comedians.
Horace and Pete’s debut episode is available on his site now for $5.

Here are some of the big games coming out this month
Here are some of the big video games releases for the month of February 2016. What are you looking forward to playing? Did we miss anything? Let us know in the comments.
Unfortunately not all games being released this month have firm dates so those are not included.
Feb. 2:

Gravity Rush Remastered, (PlayStation 4) – One of the very first PlayStation Vita games is getting remastered for the PlayStation 4 —check out our review of the original. Its sequel was announced at TGS 2015 and is set to come out in 2016. Check out the reveal trailer.
Feb. 5:

XCOM 2, (Linux, Mac and Windows PC) – After a three-month delay, the PC-only sequel to XCOM: Enemy Unknown is just about here. Check out the game in action.
Feb. 9:

Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: Russia, (PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Windows PC and Xbox One) – The final installment of Chronicles is set in 1918 Russia and tells the story of Nikolai Orlov. The Assassin’s Creed Chronicles Trilogy Pack will be released the same day, with the PlayStation Vita version coming April 5. Here’s our review of Assassin’s Creed Chronicles: China.

Dying Light: The Following expansion (PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One) – Dying Light’s long awaited dune buggy expansion is here, albeit with a price increase.

Firewatch, (Linux, Mac, PlayStation 4 and Windows PC) – Starting with just one painting, Campo Santo’s first game comes to you from veterans of Telltale Games (The Walking Dead) and Klei Entertainment (Mark of the Ninja) who founded the studio.

Unravel, (PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One) – The adorable demon-cat Yarny stole our hearts at E3 2015. We can unravel Yarny’s adventure on Feb. 9, just remember to call your mom.
Feb. 16:

Street Fighter 5, (PlayStation 4 and Windows PC) Capcom’s deal with Sony is giving us a more cinematic Street Fighter experience along with our multiplayer fix, unfortunately we’ll have to wait until June for the single-player add-on.
Feb. 19:

Fire Emblem Fates, (Nintendo 3DS) The newest release in the strategy RPG series features three different versions of the game, each one containing a unique storyline. With the English version comes a myriad of localization changes, including 100 percent less face rubbing.
Feb. 23:

Far Cry Primal, (PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One) The new Far Cry allows you to travel 12,000 years into the past to stab prehistoric badgers. Unfortunately PC gamers will have to wait until March 1. Watch us play the first 50 minutes.

Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2, (PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One) – Featuring the ability to be played offline and a new four-player co-op mode, this sequel looks to build on the surprise hit its predecessor was.

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My favorite moment in any RTS is when I’ve amassed a giant force and I draw a big box around my entire army and smash it into a single enemy. While satisfying, I understand that this is not always the most effective strategy. But in 10-Minute Barbarian from Studio Puffer, it’s the only strategy.
With almost no resource management and a souped-up pace, 10-Minute Barbarian is all about snatching up as many soldiers as you can find and blasting through the opposition. Oh, and with every step you take, you hasten the apocalypse, as I taught Nick Robinson in the video above. The game released on Steam for Mac and PC last week, but you can play a demo in your browser right here.