5 Times Gamers Fought The Developer And Won

5. Doing Away With “Poop” Visuals - Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night

Ever since video games started advancing visually and mechanically several decades ago, there’s been an ongoing debate regarding which is more important: graphics or gameplay. Of course, every player has their own opinion on the topic – so there’s no obvious answer – and it’s safe to say that most of them want titles that are pleasing to play and look at.

Someone should’ve told developer ArtPlay that before they started working on their spiritual successor to Castlevania, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, as people really didn’t like what they were seeing when they got a good glimpse at it in 2018.

Specifically, myriad complaints were made across social media about its 2.5D aesthetic looking “bland” and “cheap,” with many pejorative comparisons to mobile games as viewers voiced their issues with character models, the lighting engine, environmental details and overall art design. Most famously, at least one person outright said that the game “looks like poop.”

However justified, the negative reactions Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night received from the public were surely disheartening for everyone involved.

After all, it’s the first game developed by ArtPlay, which was co-founded by beloved Castlevania producer Koji “Iga” Igarashi after he left Konami in 2014. Therefore, hopes were high that he’d prove himself as a master of his own destiny after cutting ties with the maligned publisher.

In fact, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night became the most successful video game software Kickstarter campaign ever in 2017, having raised about $5.5 million from nearly 65,000 backers. Even though it’s subsequently been beaten by properties such as Shenmue III and Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues, that’s still impressive and telling!

Beyond that, the game had already been delayed numerous times.

Primarily, it was postponed in 2016 to sometime in 2018, with Igarashi – who had a major hand in the title’s writing and creative direction – telling IGN at the time that the decision was fueled by his need to sustain the “very high quality” regarding the “good” graphics that were “better than a traditional Iga-vania game.”

“It was either drop the quality bar one notch in order to get it out sooner, or it was to be satisfied with the quality and continue to make sure it was going to be maintained throughout the project. At the end of the day, I want to go with the quality. This is important to me,” he also explained.

In 2017, he told IGN that the team “decided to make some changes to the way the visuals worked,” including “implement[ing] procedural generation to . . . backgrounds” to ensure that “the world feel[s] more believable, or more real.”

Unfortunately, he released a developer update video in August of 2018 to say that Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night would be delayed again until 2019 to “raise the quality level” following “the very valuable feedback from the Beta Backer Demo.” Whether or not he’s referring to the aforementioned complaints about the graphics, said complaints arose around the same time.

In mid-2019, and soon after the game’s release date announcement trailer arrived, Igarashi told PC Gamer: “It was obviously pretty disappointing to see those sorts of comments, but that was what made me make the big decision to go okay, we need to do some research and make this better. And it turned out pretty well.”

He also specified that “there was a big difference in how the Japanese fans reacted and US fans reacted,” with many people in Japan saying that they preferred “the old version.”

Luckily, he had a sense of humor about the backlash as well since the trailer – which showcased a reworked lighting engine and additional assets – focused on Igarashi directly confronting what naysayers said. In particular, it featured images of various social media criticisms before showing Igarashi drinking wine and vowing to “prove them wrong!”

The trailer even called the old art style “poop”!

Clearly, Igarashi and his team’s willingness to revise the project’s visuals paid off, as Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night released in June of 2019 to rave reviews and multiple award nominations/wins. It’s since sold millions of copies, too.