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Capcom on Mega Man Legends 3's dev room success/failure, still no hope for MML3
A portion of a 1up interview with Capcom USA President Christian Svensson and Community Manager Brett Elston...
1UP: Would you characterize the Mega Man Legends 3 Dev Room as an attempt to take that to the next step?
CS: It was. To be fair, that concept was something that Japan pitched to us. They said, "We like what you've done to incorporate this into our development." I was super supportive of that. I loved the concept. As history would prove, unfortunately, it didn't quite work out exactly the way that we hoped. Through no fault of the community or what-have-you. It was purely business and development-related issues on those fronts. Those are still things I'd like to see us do more of in the future, in terms of engaging our fans in the middle of development. The only thing I would stress along the way is, we have to make sure we're going to deliver a product in the end before we open up the kimono.
1UP: If you could do the Mega Man Legends 3 thing over again, making everything work out better -- not necessarily with the release of the game, but just the whole approach, the process -- how would you do that differently? Or what would you recommend that people do differently?
CS: Oh, God. I don't know that there's anything we would have done differently from the Dev Room side in terms of its existence and the involvement of fans and what we were asking of them. The only thing I think I would have suggested we do differently is not to undertake that process until we were fully in production, as opposed to in the prototype approval phase. When something is in production, there's a very high likelihood that it's going to be a finished product.
1UP: That approach, I think, is very smart, but I also think a big part of the appeal of the Legends 3 prototype is that it was so early on, fans could really get involved and contribute a lot of ideas that might not have otherwise been possibly contributed to the design of the game. Do you think there's a way to balance that?
CS: It's a trade-off. There could be a balance point. It's tricky, no matter how you slice it. There's nothing I hate more than disappointing fans, especially those who are so passionate as to have participated in what that experiment was. Those guys were invested, deeply. It's unfortunate that we had to stop the project.
1UP: I'm sure you're asked this all the time, but you would assume that the Legends 3 project is dead, kaput, gone, there's not a chance of revival for that.
CS: That would be an assumption that's probably safe to operate under.
Full interview here
1UP: Would you characterize the Mega Man Legends 3 Dev Room as an attempt to take that to the next step?
CS: It was. To be fair, that concept was something that Japan pitched to us. They said, "We like what you've done to incorporate this into our development." I was super supportive of that. I loved the concept. As history would prove, unfortunately, it didn't quite work out exactly the way that we hoped. Through no fault of the community or what-have-you. It was purely business and development-related issues on those fronts. Those are still things I'd like to see us do more of in the future, in terms of engaging our fans in the middle of development. The only thing I would stress along the way is, we have to make sure we're going to deliver a product in the end before we open up the kimono.
1UP: If you could do the Mega Man Legends 3 thing over again, making everything work out better -- not necessarily with the release of the game, but just the whole approach, the process -- how would you do that differently? Or what would you recommend that people do differently?
CS: Oh, God. I don't know that there's anything we would have done differently from the Dev Room side in terms of its existence and the involvement of fans and what we were asking of them. The only thing I think I would have suggested we do differently is not to undertake that process until we were fully in production, as opposed to in the prototype approval phase. When something is in production, there's a very high likelihood that it's going to be a finished product.
1UP: That approach, I think, is very smart, but I also think a big part of the appeal of the Legends 3 prototype is that it was so early on, fans could really get involved and contribute a lot of ideas that might not have otherwise been possibly contributed to the design of the game. Do you think there's a way to balance that?
CS: It's a trade-off. There could be a balance point. It's tricky, no matter how you slice it. There's nothing I hate more than disappointing fans, especially those who are so passionate as to have participated in what that experiment was. Those guys were invested, deeply. It's unfortunate that we had to stop the project.
1UP: I'm sure you're asked this all the time, but you would assume that the Legends 3 project is dead, kaput, gone, there's not a chance of revival for that.
CS: That would be an assumption that's probably safe to operate under.