IGA open to expanding the IP

""A lot of the key designs, concept arts, etc, like the overall sandbox of knowing what we need to do to create this game, all that information is pretty much locked in place. So we're heading to the full production, just mass asset creation cycle. I would say what you're seeing here [at E3] represents maybe 10 percent of the full game."

This is why I had such a hard time judging the early E3 demo build!

As for expansion, that is pretty cool to hear that companies are showing a genuine interest in Bloodstained. I'm sure that as a creator(IGA) that is great news but it needs to be handled carefully I'd assume 

Well, he said something along the lines of being very receptive to offers from other companies, but that, being a game developer, his focus right now is on the game itself .

So I'd say he's doing it right.  

I couldn't make out further details because the audio of Ben's translation was in the way (really wish they didn't do that, overlay the translation with the audio - when the translation's not quite accurate, it leaves you with no options).

I'm not bothered or worried about IGA's focus being divided or tie-ins being made before the first game is made. Getting a foothold in multiple forms of media before the main property is established is a normal thing to do.

-Sega had Sonic games, comics, and cartoons coming out at roughly the same time back in the 90's
-Microsoft released a Halo book about what Master Chief did on Reach before the first game and original Xbox launched in 2001
-Mass Effect, Dead Space, and Assassin's Creed had tie-ins in production while the first games in their series were being made
-The Pokemon cartoon is pretty much synonymous with the games to a lot of people
-Capcom and Archie published Mega Man comics to help keep the brand alive when there weren't any games in development
-DC's Injustice comic kept the brand awareness for the fighting game alive for the past 5 years, has been received as a good comic series in its own right, and has been able to take risks the normal DC universe can't by having deaths and changes stay permanent.

There's nothing inherently bad about it, it's just the way things are. If anything, it's a bigger risk for an IP to stay in just one meduim forever.

The tie-ins are also something I welcome since my first exposure to Mega Man was an action figure from the Ruby Spears cartoon, I didn't have a Sega Genesis as a kid but still watched the Sonic cartoons and read the comics, and Valve's "Meet the Team" videos got me interested in playing TF2.

Everything should be fine as long as IGA doesn't go "I feel like spending $100 million on a live-action Bloodstained movie with John Leguizamo wearing a wig and doing a silly high-pitched voice as Miriam and Zombie Dennis Hopper as Gebel. I wonder if David Hayter feels like writing a script for it within two days."

You just described the best movie setup of all time. A script by David Hayter and the risk of a real life zombie apocalypse? GENIUS!

I've been doing some thinking and I've changed my mind.

If IGA does happen to get in the mood where a $100 million Bloodstained movie gets approved, it shall be the best "beer, pizza, and friends" movie since the David Hayter werewolf movie that had Khal Drogo, Jennifer Hale, and the guy who played Havok from the more recent X-Men movies in it. And the best movie to feature both crossdressing and John Leguizamo since that one 90's Romeo and Juliet adaptation. And hopefully Michiru Yamane will compose the score and it'll be the Dennis Hopper movie with the best music since Easy Rider.

Go ahead IGA, do everything in your power to make Bloodstained: The Highly Enjoyable B-Movie happen.

There's not a word here I disagree with. A lot of the complaints about MN9 making a cartoon before the game came out reminded me of when I was in elementary school and a bunch of other students got panicked because they found out "water goes to the sewers!" without being aware it was a normal thing or how plumbing and sewage actually worked, but at the same time, the lack of communication didn't help and it could've really alleviated a lot of fears people had.

Hopefully none of that will be an issue since Bloodstained is avoiding all the mistakes MN9 made so far and Mana and Ben Judd have been doing a great job with communication.



I'd argue that it's "safe" to plan tie-ins or transmedia stuff at this point since the demo has been well-received and the improvements/changes that carry over to the beta will continue to cultivate even more positive feedback, goodwill, and confidence towards Bloodstained.

I also saved this post reply for last because I really like western comics, and so people who aren't interested in them can just skip the rest of it if they think they'll get bored.

If/when a western Bloodstained miniseries, graphic novel, ongoing series gets made, I'd like it (or them, if there's multiple miniseries) to tell a different story than the game in order to stand on its own two feet, and so people don't have to end up experiencing both the comic and game in order to understand what's going on. The game would cover one story in the universe and a miniseries/graphic novel could cover a different story.

I don't really know much about UDON other than they've been doing a pretty good job with the Street Fighter comics, do a lot of artbooks, published manga in the USA, designed a costume for Marvel's Taskmaster that everybody really liked, and they're named after a Japanese noodle. I have no strong feelings one way or the other towards them, but wouldn't be surprised if IGA and ArtPlay ended up doing something with them since they've collaborated with a lot of Japanese artists.

This feels like wishful thinking at the moment, but I hope DC is one of the parties that approached IGA to work on a Bloodstained project. I think it'd be really neat to see a Bloodstained series from them given DC's history with publishing horror, supernatural, and fantasy-related work such as Swamp Thing, American Vampire, Sandman, Hellblazer, Fables, House of Secrets, and House of Mystery, and the New 52 version of Animal Man. However, I can't think of any recent licensed work they've done that doesn't involve things owned by Warner Bros.

I think it'd look really good for Bloodstained if Marvel published a tie-in comic since they're one of the most powerful brands/entertainment juggernauts out there right now. However, I can see it leading to a lot of confusion for non-comic readers if they pick it up and don't realize that just because something's published by Marvel, it doesn't mean it's part of the larger Marvel universe. Glorious, beautiful confusion, such as "Where does Bloodstained fit in with Marvel?" "Are Miriam's alchemist crystals early attempts at making Infinity Gems? Is Thanos in this?" "Is Miriam going to get transported to modern day and become an All-New, All-Different Marvel Now Avenger?" "Why did the series numbering reset to #1 after two months?" "If Zangetsu fights Dracula, would it be canon to both Castlevania and when the X-Men fought Dracula, and more importantly, how would Jay and Miles explain that and the David Hayter connections on an episode intro for their podcast where they explain the X-Men? (...WHAT?!)".

Dark Horse Comics would probably be good to work with given their history of working with licenses (Nickelodeon's Avatar, pre-Disney Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Alien, Predator, Halo) and independent creators like Mike Mignola (Hellboy and all its spinoffs like Abe Sapien, BPRD, and Lobster Johnson), Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo), and uh... Adam Warren (the Empowered and Dirty Pair guy). They also used to publish manga.

Or, Bloodstained could go the route Valve did with their TF2 and Left 4 Dead comics where they're published for free online, released in story-related chunks with varying length, and on their own schedule. That would also be cool.

There's also a bunch of writers I'd like to see involved with writing a Bloodstained comic if they're enthusiastic about it and their schedules/contracts allow it, such as Tom King (my #1 choice right now), Grant Morrison, Neil Gaiman, Chris Claremont, Scott Snyder, Garth Ennis, Gail Simone, Mark Waid, Ed Brubaker, and Joe Kelly. I would probably make the Chris Pratt face if one of them had their involvement announced. But there's probably someone out there I didn't mention or know about who's just as talented as them and could end up being a better match for Bloodstained.

I would love it if somehow Alan Moore ended up writing since Bloodstained already involves some of his favorite things; horror/supernatural elements and England, but I can't see him agreeing to write a comic based on a video game, especially if a large publisher like DC was involved. I would also think it'd be cool if David Hayter wrote it since he's already involved with Bloodstained and a writer. After all, writing experience is writing experience and lots of writers dipped their toes in multiple forms of media.

As for which artists end up drawing a comic... I don't know where to begin since there's so much talent in Japan and the west I'd like to see involved. Maybe IGA could just end up going "Hey Mana, do you feel like doing art for the Bloodstained miniseries?" "Sure." "Cool. You're hired. Here's David Hayter's email address. He's writing. Have fun. Get to work."

Goob, I still say you're like a human entertainment media Wikipedia. Wow.

I would...be for any of that lol. I think I'd prefer it if the art style of the comic stayed close to the concept art/a Kojima-ish style, or how Mana draws...but something more Western would actually be interesting, too.

I also agree on the MN9 media assessment. Part of Red Ash and these decisions also were due to needing to keep folks' jobs and the brand moving along after the game was pretty much done. From what I recall, Mighty had been completed quite a while ago, and a smaller separate group was just working out smaller online functionality details. It's too bad that they didn't take that time to focus on play testing the game for the various bugs and lock-ups it's having, though...

While I'm sure many will disagree, I think there is a more basic danger in multi-media franchising than most people realize.

The way I see it, consumer products respond to consumer hunger: if the hunger is there, consumers will eat the products up; but if you're stuffed, then you won't be eating anything, no matter how good the product is.

So, if you launch a game and it's successful, you'll leave people hungry for more, which justifies the existence of the tie-in; but if you launch a game with too many tie-ins, you risk stuffing the consumer base before it's gotten a chance to develop a real hunger for the franchise.

With well established franchises like Batman, Spiderman, Star Wars and such, the amount hunger for tie-ins is already well known - and note that these did not exist when the original property was launched. It's similar with Final Fantasy XV: while the game itself is new, the franchise itself is old (and the original property did not have any tie-ins).

When you attempt to launch a property as a multimedia franchise, you're making the initial acceptance of the product that much more difficult, because there's already all this "food" before you're even hungry. You've had enough of the game before you've even tried it. This is the gut reaction, I think, but it needs a rationalization. So, the rationalization becomes something like this: which is the main property? The game? The comic? The anime? The book? Why does it need so many mediums? Do I get the full experience if I just get one, or is each designed to lure me into buying others?

In the case of a Kickstarter, the rationalization becomes much more straight-forward: they're using my money without my permission. This may not be the case, but it doesn't matter - people are trying to rationalize their dissatisfaction.

Most powerful of all, I think, is this apparent contradiction: if this is a property that needed crowd funding to get off the ground, why is it suddenly a franchise? Now, you can argue that the answer is simple: the crowd funding success is what enabled the property to become a franchise in the first place. But that's not the way people's perception works: the sight of an "independent" game being marketed like "fully-established" property makes the "independent" label seem like a scam, even if it isn't.

This is what I ultimately think marketeers misunderstand: it's one thing to bring out tie-ins with the latest installment to an established franchise, and another to launch a new franchise with countless tie-ins to begin with. It goes double for crowd-funded projects.

I've no reason to doubt him either - I was actually just trying to express the risks inherent, in terms of public perception, in franchising a kickstarter project too much, too early.