Gamers who have used Kickstarter to fund gaming projects know that there's inherent risk involved in crowd-funding games. For example, although fans of the Mega Man series once poured money into its Kickstarted spiritual successor, Mighty No 9, that game ended up being a disappointment for many. It's a bit of a surprise, then, to see smash-hit rhythm game Friday Night Funkin' using a similar approach for its newly-revealed (and already-funded) Kickstarter.
Namely, both campaigns have enormously ambitious stretch goals. There's no reason to doubt that Friday Night Funkin' can realize its vast ambitions, but its developers need to recognize the challenge inherent to making hard-to-keep promises.
Looking Out for the Trap of Hype
Games that use Kickstarter for funding need to navigate a delicate balancing act. Namely, they must find a way to preserve their original vision while expanding the project through stretch goals. Friday Night Funkin''s Kickstarter page includes stretch goals that would dramatically expand the scope of the game. The base product will offer 20 levels, or 60 songs, while meeting all stretch goals would expand the game to 45 levels, or 135 songs.
Friday Night Funkins' website-crashing popularity is likely sufficient to see the game meet all these goals, which raises the question of whether the development team has the patient and dedication to make all of these things in a timely fashion. That's not even mentioning the addition of many playable characters, a tough new difficulty mode with all-new mixes of each song, and more.
This brings to mind the initial excitement for Mighty No. 9, which gained funding so quickly back in 2013 that its developer kept adding stretch goals once the initial stretch goals were exceeded. It eventually pledged to add extensive side content to the game, and promised ports for every major game system available at the time. As the game was still developed by an indie studio, in spite of its blockbuster funding, all the demands were simply too much to handle. After multiple delays, Mighty No. 9 released to middling-to-poor reviews, poor sales, and a bitter rejection from its fanbase. The game's momentum faltered so massively, in fact, that the developer never ported it to PlayStation Vita and Nintendo 3DS as promised.
Reasons To Be Hopeful
In all fairness, there are a few reasons why a direct comparison between the two games is imperfect. Friday Night Funkin' listed all of its stretch goals at the start of the Kickstarter launch. This means that, unlike Mighty No 9, promising so much content was not a spur-of-the-moment decision. Plus, the team has proven that it knows how to make a game. Mighty No. 9 had no demo for Kickstarter, but if the currently-available, free Friday Night Funkin' is seen as a demo, then its popularity as a demo cannot be understated. Just as there is a precedent for poor Kickstarter game outcomes, there's a precedent for good ones, too: some of the best-received and best-selling games of all time, like quirky RPG Undertale, were funded this way.
One game that promised a similar amount of content to Friday Night Funkin' and actually succeeded was breakout hit Shovel Knight, which ended up having 4 standalone full-length campaigns. While Shovel Knight has become a cultural phenomenon and a mascot for indie games as a whole, the developer's ambitions did come at a cost. Namely, Yacht Club Games had to spend several years creating DLC campaigns after the initial release of Shovel Knight. These campaigns are well-regarded, and Yacht Club Games deserves enormous praise for sticking to its commitments, but the developers' time could have been spent developing new, exciting games, instead of iterating on content from a commitment made years prior. It wouldn't be surprising if Friday Night Funkin' took a similar approach. In particular, one stretch goal promises a 10-level epilogue story that would be perfect for post-release DLC.
As the saying goes, it's better to under-promise and over-deliver than over-promise and under-deliver. Mighty No. 9 ultimately ended up over-promising to impossible levels, but time will tell if Friday Night Funkin' can avoid this trap. If the developer can execute its vision, it will have a rhythm game to rival or exceed the scale of Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory. But if that's not possible, the dev needs to recognize it early on and communicate with fans as much as possible. The fan goodwill is already there; it's just a matter of sustaining it over the course of development.
Friday Night Funkin' is available to play for free on Newgrounds and Itch.io. A full retail version is currently in development.