The Olden Days of Gaming
It used to be that game development companies were at the mercy of publishers. A publisher evaluated a game and decided if they wanted to fund the development and then distribute the game. Many games were originally developed in Japan and thus would be in Japanese. This created a problem for US gamers that wanted to play these games. They could either wait, and hope that a publisher would decide it was worth it to translate and import the game.Or gamers could import the game themselves. Imported games usually required an imported gaming console, or a modified US console. The entire process was rather expensive. There were many times a popular game would not be translated by a publisher because they did not think it would make any money.
Enter crowd funding.
Recently, Koji Igarashi, game producer for many Castlevania games, was inspired by fans to create a new Castlevania game. He wanted to make this in the style of the classic games as a 2D platformer. He approached several publishers for funding the project. Unfortunately he was denied because they thought it wouldn’t make any money. He then started a Kickstarter campaign originally set for $500,000. The game was so well received additional stretch were added and reached… repeatedly. In all, he was able to raise more than $5.5 million. The game is expected to release in March 2017.
More about the game can be read at here.