Set up a Suikoden Kickstarter

[BadPotato]

You guys know about Kickstarter?

This is usually a great place for any sort of indie game developpement. Thought, any kind of project that can make a good enough presentation can successfully raise some fund in order to reach their goal.

Recently I found out, that Kickstarter helped to get this Japanese studio in "better contact" with their "non-japanese" fanbase. It seem this got enough interest to produce some extra content for their series. How great!

As you may know, right now Konami doesn't really care much about their "non-japanese" suikoden fanbase, since they believe that translation and game shippement for the must recent game doesn't really worth it.

So, why not try to contact some people at the Konami staff and try to get their input on the Kickstarter subject and get them to showoff a Suikoden concept that might interest us as fan?

Thought, we shouldn't have any delusion. Sometime game designer have so much pressure by deadline project that they end up by making a crappy scenario with poor game mechanics. Since you can't buy time with money, the game designer end up working overtime and these kind of element might play an important role on motivation while working on such a complex game as the suikoden universe.

My point is that since the suikoden team is pretty much disbanded since quite a while, maybe the new Konami structure and standard that might have poped up since the last decade are simply incompatible for making a good jrpg. Before you needed around "key" persons on a full time schedule in order to make a good rpg, but now any game sound like a real mega production where game designer spend more and more time managing other task for people than focus on how the game is really doing gameplay-wise and the feeling that the player may have as he play the game.

Konami have the policy to alway use the console hardware as effective as possible(we just got lucky with S2 been 2D). This kind of thinking is just wrong I believe, but I can understand that innovation-wise their some positive aspect. But from all these perspectives, maybe the suikoden fanbase should really reconsider how Konami might one day work actively on Suikoden VI game.

Anyway, that said my point is that it would be great if some people could contact Konami in order to know if there could be any interest for some non-japanese (re)-release if the fan would be personally involved with a Kickstarted movement.

Thought, since you may have some serious doubt about some sort of new Suikoden release, maybe we should directly contact the real man(Murayama) for the job, since he may have thinking about some suikoden idea since S3? Only way to contact him in english though, might be by spamming his bluemoon studio mailbox, since I don't recall anyone being able to contact him personnaly, but I have no idea seriously.

Last point, if there no interest from these high instance maybe we should simply make a kickstarter for any suikoden-fangame such as Exit Fate.

In any case, if there any Suikoden-like kickstarter, I'll certainly being look at it and if the people the project seem to have a the right ressource and motivation, I'll probably back it.

[TMan]

I think if anyone were to put themselves in a position where they might make some real actual money from Suikoden (kickstarter or otherwise) Konami lawyers would be pretty unhappy. Or happy, I guess, since lawyers love this stuff probably.

[Neclord X]

The problem of kickstarter is that Konami should be the one starting it.

[ChannelF]

A Suikoden kickstarter is a great idea. But it should be done Mighty No. 9 style. Since Suikoden and its 108 Stars of Destiny concept was drawn from a centuries-old Chinese novel which would have to be in the public domain by now you could likely start a kickstarter videogame project called Suikoden where you bring together the 108 Stars of Destiny without infringing on Konami's intellectual property. Granted, you wouldn't be able to actually have the game set in Konami's Suikoden world. So there would be no True Runes or returning characters. But like Mighty No. 9, it could be a videogame that serves as a spiritual successor to a franchise that has largely been abandoned by its creators.

[freshmetal]

But like Mighty No. 9, it could be a videogame that serves as a spiritual successor to a franchise that has largely been abandoned by its creators.

Actually, Mega-Man has only been abandoned by Capcom as a company, but not by its creator. The original creator is making Mighty No. 9 because Capcom won't let him make a real Mega Man game.

[ChannelF]

You're right, Metal. Keiji Inafune still believes in the Blue Bomber even if the company holding the copyright to him doesn't.

[tovath]

Actually if we were to ask Konami how much it would cost to buy the rights to make a Suikoden game, then after agreeing on a price we can ask permission to raise the money using Kickstarter. I believe that OCRemix has done something like this for the remixes they release.

[Neclord X]

Probably the rights to make a Suikoden would be so high no kickstarter could afford it. I mean, just the lisence to print T-shirts of any minor product is stupidly high, imagine buy the trademark itself.

[tovath]

I do believe that the trademark has lapsed, not that we want to buy that. What we would be buying is the rights to produce one game of a franchise that they haven't done anything with for quite a while now. That one right is not going to be that expensive since it is not going to stop them from doing anything. They will still be able to make Suikoden games themselves if they so desire.