Watching KI cup on Saturday made me think a few things: For one, I love this game and the things people can do with these characters. For another… I really don’t want this run to end. Not yet. Not while there are so many great character ideas from the survey still out there, plus more stages, skins, accessories and so much more fun to be had.
I love post season 3 content, but it’d be great to know more of a long term plan for future content beyond skins and Ultimates (which are both awesome).
KI has been this little engine that could for years now and the community still loves and supports the heck out of it. For my part, I’ve purchased the Shago skin XBL card, ultra packs of seasons one, two and three, all post season 3 content and more KI Gold and booster packs than I’d ever care to admit. I also tell everyone I know that’s in to gaming about it, I speak it’s praises on other boards, comment sections etc.
I’m not saying ANY of this to brag. There are a lot more people that do a lot more than me to support this game. But I really enjoy it and I’d love to have more of it. So what can we do to help make that happen? What will get us a 4th season?
If any of @TempusChaoti, @rukizzel, or any @developers could respond, it’d be greatly appreciated. Love the work you all do and just want more of it. Thanks!
SIDE NOTE: Please do not derail this thread by debating whether we should get a new game or a new season. There have been other threads for that and this isn’t that thread. For one thing, we have no idea if that’s the choice MS would make, as for all we know, MS could just throw KI back in the vault for another twenty plus years.
But also, I’m coming from this as a person that wants more of a great thing and wants any help in insuring that happens. Pardon me for saying this, but anything else outside of that is noise.
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Season 4 makes sense if it can find a critical mass of customers willing to throw enough money at content.
I’m not in a position at all to put accurate figures on any of this, but for some idea, probably on the order of 1-2million people with purchases ranging from characters to (hopefully mostly) entire seasons and ultra edition bundles. Off that they could maybe gross ~$20million, out of which come things like taxes, dev salaries and support costs (at a rough guess, ~$10million could cover in the vicinity of 50-100 staff for a year?), and a whole lot of other stuff, and hopefully leftover after that is a healthy profit for Microsoft so the endeavor of signing off on more development for the franchise continues to make sense for them.
And that’s probably about it. Microsoft might make content for the game at a loss for some specific reasons, but they’re obligated to maximize shareholder value, so mostly your question has to be about how to help Microsoft break even on production, which means finding people to buy the content.
As for how you do that, as a member of a small group of die-hard KI fans whose friends and family combined are but a drop in the bucket of how many people you’d need to make the difference between break-even and commercial failure? You could try making content. Youtube videos and Twitch streams (particularly video/steams that somehow rope people in for non-KI-related reasons and then get them interested in KI), guides a la Infil’s amazing KI Guide, quirky comic series that people get into and which also get people interested in checking out KI. Support and help grow the competitive scene. If you’re one of these “hardcore casuals” who ■■■■■ on the tournament scene because “the competitive scene isn’t the entire community” then cut that crap because it’s creating an unnecessary division and the competitive scene is probably still doing more to popularize the game than most of the constituents of this forum are. Do (or support the doing of) amazing things with KI that are worthy of the attention of games journalists so that KI stays in the public consciousness, you’ll notice that SightlessKombat got some news coverage KI’s way because playing a fighting game blind is super impressive. Actually, help make KI an inclusive space for people with disabilities, and also women while you’re at it, because they’re major untapped demographics who tend to hide out in whichever game community seems actually welcoming and not horrible to them.
Basically, do anything you can to get KI noticed and to get people to see the awesome parts of the game that’ll keep them interested, on a mass scale.
Play the game as much as humanly possible and buy every piece of content you can afford post-season 3.
Based on this weekend it sounds like we just need to keep playing and supporting the game, and attempt to get other people to try out the game too. Spread the word. Tell people it is on XB1 and PC. Tell them it is free to play. Tell them how great the net play is. You know, make people interested and want to try out the game for themselves.
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