It took Castlevania Producer Koji Igarashi less than one day on Kickstarter to get the $500,000 of funding needed for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, an upcoming PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC Castlevania-styled game.
Impressively, even though the game still has 31 days of funding left and was just put up on Kickstarter on May 11, it has already raised over $1,600,000 at the time this was written. In a recent PlayStation Blog post, Igarashi posted an apparent screenshot of Bloodstained, and mentioned that players will play as Miriam, a young girl who has been inflicted with a curse, as she explores a demon-filled castle with the help of a friend in hopes of finding a cure.
Despite being so busy with Bloodstained, Igarashi also recently found some time to criticize Konami about how it is handling its fallout with Hideo Kojima. Speaking through an agent, Igarashi answered a question posed by IGN that asked if, as a former Konami employee, Igarashi had seen the fallout coming.
He’s heard what’s happening, but mostly it’s been through the news and not people directly at Konami, because that company has a way of bullying their employees not to give out too much information – to say the least,” he said. “But as a top-level creator who also was put in difficult situations in which he had to make difficult choices, it’s always sad when really interesting franchises or really talented creators end up not being able to make the thing they’ve made in the past that has made the fans so happy, speaking brutally honest, that has generated revenue in the first place. So for him, it’s kind of a sad day to see that’s happening.
But while it is sad, he understands that Konami is a corporation and they naturally and organically chase money. That’s a business, that’s the key definition of it. He understands their casino and sports club business…that’s organically what makes them money. If you’re a creator with a fan base that wants a certain game that isn’t hitting that profit bar, or isn’t necessarily as profitable as a casino or sports clubs in this situation, he’s fortunate to have another option like Kickstarter to allow the fans to directly support his idea and help it come into fruition.
What do you think of Igarashi’s comments towards Konami? And what do you think of Bloodstained?
[Source: Kickstarter via Polygon, PlayStation Blog, IGN]
