I've never been someone who was very active on forums, or twitter, and have never pledged money to a kickstarter; but Shenmue III has changed all of that, and I'm trying to do everything I can to support Shenmue III and all those involved. I've been trying to spread the word and get people's Shenmue videos as much exposure as possible (big channels, and small channels). I'll try and link some of my favorite ones in the forum after I get back from my long weekend. Here's my series of 3 to start:
Part 1 (My reaction to Shenmue III as a gamer, and what it means to the industry)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6YrL9mR4Io

Part 2 (what Shenmue means to me beyond just being a gamer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBggQbNTmms

Part 3 (my thoughts on the kickstarter itself)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDihfW-n5_s

There's no fighting at all. Happiness and optimism only!

Relax guys. This explains everything.

Guys, I've been working feverishly today to get this site up. It's collaboration between me and my wife. She does the design, I do the coding. I think we make a good team. So, as you tweet and share about $30 on the 3rd please direct people to this website that will explain the campaign to people who may not understand:

http://www.30onthe3rd.com/

Peter wrote: You guys know he has an account here

Perma-ban

I prefer that he's upfront about it, otherwise the backlash might be huge for some people. Some people would be pissed if he wasn't. It makes it more exciting for me, since it means 3 won't feel like a rush to the finish. We all like Shenmue because it takes its time, right?

I'm going through a complete disbelief phase right now, which will pass, but right now, I feel disgusted at the Kickstarter being ran by this "Awesome Japan", that they are handling the KS page and also looking after the rewards etc.

Right now, it's honestly put me off pledging anything.

Of course anyone who knows me and has seen some of my comments knows I am going to donate, but how things stand right now, it's all just a question of how much I will be donating, which is out of my hands right now.

The point I am making is this Twitch stream was an opportunity to promote Shenmue, it's Kickstarter, and also entice people who may not be as huge a Shenmue fan as we are, to consider contributing. However thanks to the schoolboy amaturish nature of last night's broadcast, I can't help feel there will be people who will have switched off and lost interest in the project. Or just laughed at how unprofessional it was and will decide not to back.

Either way, the broadcast will have done more bad than good I feel.

In fact... For a long time I've been tempted to do a video like James Reiner does, as well as a few other people from the community do in terms of just talking about their thoughts etc. And I am tempted to do my first ever video on my thoughts of Shenmue 3, and the Kickstarter campaign up to this point. Will see what happens.

I've bitten down on my criticism of this Twitch stream thus far, as negativity and losing of focus are not the things you really want in the middle of a campaign. But suffice to say, the communications and Kickstarter management through Awesome Japan, from things like the delay and confusion on the Reddit posting and timing and right the way through to this stream have been completely lackluster. YS Net themselves are a Japanese team, presumably working hard right now on development, who need a bridge between themselves and the global community. That bridge, when you're talking about millions of dollars and thousands of backers, needs to be airtight. It seems like Awesome Japan are comprised of about three people and one, now infamous, native speaker. The Kickstarter page has about 21,000 comments, largely in English. They couldn't even get through any follow up questions on the stream and cut it short.

But I don't think now is the time for a postmortem of what went wrong. We need momentum and to move forward. Hiring a new PR team at this stage is out of the question, if not for the matter of fees alone.

I've noticed that Cedric Biscay, as co-producer, has been pretty solid and professional in following up when asked. He insisted on direct answers and clarity to the fans. As soon as someone said to him, move the stretch goals to the top of the page, it happened almost immediately. They seem to on point and they've just got their Japanese office. Biscay is the CO-PRODUCER of the game. I think they need to absorb AJ's operation into their own and co-ordinate it themselves, or at least TAKE CHARGE of it. It's the most economical option I can think of.

Biscay on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CedricBiscay

Shibuya Productions: https://twitter.com/ShibuyaProd

Awesome Japan have done a truly terrible job.

Firstly the campaign started at too low of a goal. If it had been, say, a 5m target, then we would have 5m+ raised right now. As soon as it hit 2m on the second day, all the urgency was gone. All the publicity was gone. The target had been reached and Shenmue III will be a reality. Yet a week later we find out that 10m is the real goal to aim towards, but who really cares other than us guys? Shenmue III is funded and the story is done and dusted for all the major press...

I'm not going to go into detail about all of the problems with the actual Kickstarter. We all know the video, poor rewards, lack of communication, lack of promotion, lack of description, lack of clarity regarding Sony's involvement etc. have held the project back massively. I actually had a decent level of optimism when I saw that they were doing a Reddit AMA and later a Twitch stream. 'Hey, they're actually promoting via relevant avenues!' I thought. But the AMA got off to a false start and the Twitch 'interview'...oh God...

And then when you realize that these guys, who are managing one of the biggest Kickstarters we're ever going to see, are taking the weekends off... Well all optimism has gone for the KS to reach a target we want. It is quite alarming how naive and incompetent they have been.

When we're sitting down to play Shenmue III and notice all those stretch goals we missed out on, all we'll be thinking is: "fuck you Awesome Japan."

The question is "What in the world happened with the KS today?", and the answer seems to be "The team running the KS campaign is entirely inept, so donations are grinding to a halt". I would say it's rather on topic.

19 days to go. It's still the moment to fire them. I wish.

I really never considered leaving, but I found South Carmain's rebuttal just as immature - if not more - than my own outburst. I have no idea what his problem is.
Well since you don't give a fuck about this game anymore and I can't remember you posting here when the game was dead I assumed you would be leaving now.

I didn't say i don't care about the game. Also, I can easily still contribute and see where it goes without getting emotionally invested and waiting for disappointment. This doesn't mean I don't "give a fuck" about the game anymore at all, and you can fuck off, personally.
Contribute as in complain people were calling you negative after spending an entire thread telling someone to not be negative?

Anyway in your own words: "this game is fucked" so there's not much point in you hanging around just so you can try and tell people "I told you so". That jab at peter was pretty unwarranted too considering you took a lucky guess and all he was saying was that you're no expert so shouldn't speak with so much certainty on the subject.

I have been streaming Shenmue on the Dojo twitch daily to try to raise awareness to interest new players.

I have posted numerous news, articles, and opinions on III and Shenmue.

I have not seen you do a single thing except ride my tits.

Has nothing to do with that. It's pretty clear that I'm not really a good fit for the Dojo or the general Shenmue community. I'll keep writing about and contributing towards it in my own venues and my own ways. I'm going to try to get a big piece done for The GIA soon. You can see me stream on my own account at http://www.twitch.tv/the_electric_lady

It was nice.

good news - KS worked. were getting shenmue 3 no matter what.

bad news - shenmue 3 is going to be a mobile phone game.

I wouldn't call it a "huge success". "Sufficient" at best, imo. Sure, it's broken records, but that is due to the game's notoriety and Sony's limited involvement. Everything else has been a failure on many levels. Personally, I find the facts of this whole affair very discouraging, and the only positive we have is "Well at least Shenmue III's being made."

I know a lot of you would've taken absolutely anything , but I don't fall into that category, and the whole "It's this or nothing" bollocks doesn't fly with me.

Main problem I have though is the utter lack of common sense and insight shown by a lot of people involved - both inside and out.

I think we need to look at this while noting that Shenmue's scope and targets are different from the other KS projects.
For example, for a 2D Platformer like Bloodstained, $5.5M is a huge success.

But for Shenmue which is an intricate open world franchise, having just $4M is not something special... Especially when considering the fact that Suzuki said he needs $10M to make the Shenmue 3 he wants to make, and the one people wanted to have.

If paypal is added post kickstarter then the fan community can run its own campaign to cover any shortfall (i'm optimistic, but 10 mill is a big ask). this new campaign could coincide with the tweetathon every month and we could create a 'fund-o'-meter' telling us exactly how much is required to reach the 10 million. it might take a year or more - who knows - but its definitely possible for fans to generate the funds required to make the game what it deserves to be.

My only worries for the character models is if they make the characters look less Asian in the final release, or more cartoony/anime. I could probably take more anime, but if they make Ryo and Shenhua look white.... [-X Ideally, I really them to look like more realistic versions of their DC counterparts, which I know is expecting a lot. :sad: But in Yu I trust!

How much development was actually done on the Dreamcast version of Shenmue III? Will we ever see some more of it?

ElephantStone wrote: Virtua Fighter 3TB, hands down.

http://i.imgur.com/PZDaNhg.jpg

Hey everyone, my brother and I decided to contribute $20,000 for the making of Shenmue III. We spent many hours thinking about whether this is a good or bad decision. We spent $10,000 in 2012 to get our school off the ground and that went a long way. Because of our initial $10,000 pledge, the school received an amazing amount of attention in China, social media and gaming websites. I'll reiterate, We are not wealthy! This was a hard decision. We could have given $20,000 directly to building the school and it's programs but we feel that this pledge will lead to more exposure and support than what we could do through other mediums.

For those who don't know our school yet. We are called The "V.E.T. Program" (Volunteer English Teacher). You can find us on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/VolunteerEnglishTeacher?fref=ts&ref=br_tf We teach children and young adults English to help in their educational and career pursuits. Many of these kids come from small villages in the Guilin area and may not have an opportunity to learn elsewhere. You can go to the "about" section on the Facebook page to learn more.

We really need help in reaching our goals. We would love for you to like us on Facebook. We will eventually look outside ourselves and setup a way for donations to be made but we didn't want to distract from the Kick Starter or be overbearing donation hunters.

We decided to make the second $10,000 pledge a character in the game. We don't want to be a character attacking Ryo though. We are going to try and ask Yu Suzuki to let us have one of our Volunteer Chinese teaching assistants be a character in one of the villages. They deserve to be recognized for their hard work. They are volunteers and many of them come from poor rice farms.

We are also hoping that since we will be listed in the credits as a special sponsor that it can have our school with a logo and a website rather than our names.

I don't think any of this would be asking too much. I think it would help get attention to the school. We would love any assistance in helping us achieve this. We also would love to have Yu Suzuki come to the school some day but we won't don't want to be greedy.

Please, help our little school!
http://i.imgur.com/GS7Iwrq.jpg

They need to add some stretch goals between $5.1m and $6m. That's too wide of a gap to not have one.

Just imagine Ryo, Ren and Ghuizang beating the fuck out of dozens of Chi You Men goons in some little rural chinese village..

this is pretty much my fantasy too... I hope it happens. those three all teamed up for a huge fight would be epic. I bet Gui Zhang and Ren are constantly annoying each other with Ryo in the middle.. lol

One has to be delusional to think Shenmue III KS results are somehow "disappointing".

Its a 14 years old abandoned niche IP, making his way to be the most funded KS game ever versus giants like Castlevania and Megaman.

You should copy and paste the article contents because I'm not going to click that shit.

You gotta be kidding me if you think I'm going to click that. Kotaku should be put out of business.

They left a freelance in charge of their site who created a negative clickbait article that tried to discredit the Shenmue Kickstarter. That's just sheer incompetence. And then they take the reins back and offer "sympathy" to Shenmue fans? Fuck sympathy, how about support?

Looks like the story is starting to gain some momentum! I'm glad this caught his attention.

https://twitter.com/CedricBiscay/status ... 9781383168

This is well deserved and very moving to read/see.

Johnny come lateleys like me who always passionately loved the games but never thought there was any point in participating in such communities as this one once the industry appeared to orphan the series, owe everything to those of you who have been truly active in the last 14 years. Without you, none of this would be happening right now, and I'm so grateful.

Toward the beginning of the campaign I sent an email to the channels Maximillian Dood/Yo Videogames asking for their support.

Matt just uploaded:

to me, the free battles were the real meat of the game - but what made them so enjoyable was the buildup and detective stuff (which of course were wonderful and immersive in their own right) which surrounded the fights

the fights themselves, especially since they were somewhat uncommon, became extremely exciting by punctuating the story elements

See, i know i am probably in the minority here, but the free battles were my least exciting bits of the game. I prefer detective work, exploring, mini games, QTE sequences and cut scenes. The free battles aere just OK to me. Like the 70 man battle, or the Beverly Hills Wharf fiasco, or the black suits in the Yellow Head Building. I could leave most of that.

One more good reason to enhance the combat system, right ? Apart for VS fighting fans, Shenmue battle system is hard to handle smoothly while for example Virtua Fighter 5 is much more accessible and pleasing without sacrifice the gameplay depth.

ElephantStone wrote: Shame the comments are already a shit show.

Tried to correct a lot of people, but it's basically falling on deaf ears with these 12 year old trolls.

Yea good one. Make a topic even suggesting something like this again and you will be warned.

Sadly, while in supporting the campaign itself I tend to be boundlessly optimistic, when it comes to the video game industry itself, I take a more pessimistic view. I can't assert that there's not any truth to this of course, and I find myself HOPING you're absolutely right. But allow me to lay out my fears.

Yu Suzuki is unquestionably a genius of video game design and an innovator and visionary. However... with all deference to his genius and all the love in the world for his creations... I must concede that it has been a long, long time since he made anything. Let alone anything the magnitude of a Shenmue. And what he's best known for, at least from an industry standpoint, are two commercial failures that ended up going grossly over budget.

That makes it hard to secure funding as it is. But then on top of that, you have to consider what Shenmue itself is. A 14 year old, highly slow paced adventure game with strong martial arts themes, and a hyper-detailed world featuring quasi-life-sim elements. That may sound amazing to those of us who love it, but it doesn't scream "mass market potential" to publishers and business partners. Not in 2015. The landscape, frankly, has changed dramatically.

So you've got several factors that make securing funding quite challenging. And then you've got the fact that the potential audience for your product, even if you CAN get it off the ground, may be quite small indeed. That's a massive risk. You find an angel donor of sorts in Sony, and you secure some limited funding from them. But it's clear they aren't willing to commit to such an unproven, massive financial risk. So you end up with a huge budget shortfall.

So what do you do? You play it safe. You come up with a Plan A, and a Plan B. Plan A: Set a minimum realistic goal so that you can, almost no matter what, at least continue to tell the story in some way, shape, or form. I believe that's what he meant by "Story oriented Shenmue," and by saying that at the most rudimentary funding level, "This will be the STORY you have been waiting for." I do believe that was a literal statement. As in, at $2 million, that's ALL we'd get.

Plan B: Come up with some rudimentary design goals that would at least flesh the game out as much as the first Shenmue if you get even halfway to them, so that it could stand up at least to that legacy, if not to the second game. But then at the same time, also go for broke and create a "pipe dream" set of goals that if somehow, some way get funded, will result in the ultimate fulfillment of your vision.

That way if you reach Plan A, you at least have something to show for it, some way to continue the story. If you make it half way to Plan B, you've at least got a GOOD game, a decent Shenmue game that you can still pack full of content and detail and make people feel they've played a game at least on part with the first Shenmue. And if you make if ALL THE WAY to plan B, then you've got the whole shebang, and the true Shenmue game people have been waiting for. Hence, "the full on Shenmue experience you have dreamed of," if we reach 10 million.

It would be wonderful if all of this was some brilliant marketing subterfuge on his part. I wouldn't feel at all deceived. On the contrary, I'd be overjoyed! But I seriously doubt this is the case. Given the issues they've had with Awesome Japan and how poor that company's track record is, given the insane level of the stretch goals, and given the generally poorly implemented nature of some of the campaign (not all of it by any means!) I really do feel they're desperately strapped for cash even with Sony and others' aid. And that the Kickstarter really is transparently exactly what they estimate they need to make the things they say they can at each stretch goal.

Which is why it's soooo frustrating and lamentable to me to see the campaign taken out of context, misconstrued, and battered in the press and the rumor mill. Because I feel like they really are just struggling to fulfill an artistic vision we've waited almost two decades for, and all anyone can do is talk about why it's not necessary or not needed. I feel the complete opposite is true.

As is almost always the case though... I hope I'm wrong. And I hope we get a robust PayPal campaign after the KS ends.

I'm not personally panicking. We're certainly close to the $5 million and the campaign is in top 10 most successful of all time (and second game only to Bloodstained). It's all good

Just hope we top the $5M mark. It could be close.

Does anyone remember that fight in Shenmue 2 on top of Yellow Head Building when Dou Niu is running toward Ryo with 400 lbs. of force behind him? This is the climax of the Shenmue story thus far. Ryo has one last chance and takes it. He delivers the final counter elbow assault to Dou Niu.

http://www.30onthe3rd.com/images/dounui.jpg

With that one blow the next phase of his journey can continue without interference.

We are on top of that roof right now with the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter. This campaign is our Dou Niu. In order to give Yu Suzuki the chance to make the best Shenmue 3 possible we have to deliver that blow.

As I’ve said many times before, if you’ve donated to this Kickstarter you are a Shenmue saint. If you can squeeze out a little more from your budget great! If not, no worries, you've done your part and I know Yu is grateful. But if you’re holding out for PayPal, don’t! We have one last chance to make this happen. Don’t be deceived into assuming PayPal will happen. It very well could become a reality after the Kickstarter. But we just don’t know. All we know for sure is this Kickstarter ends July 17th. It all comes down to that day: The Final Blow.

Here is our new campaign logo:
http://www.30onthe3rd.com/images/tfb_logo.jpg
So spread the word far and wide. This is a critical period at end of the campaign when decisive action is needed. Pledge or upgrade your pledge NOW! - or possibly lose your chance forever! The quality and scale of Shenmue 3 is dependent on the Kickstarter’s overall success. The fate of Shenmue is in OUR hands now. Make your dreams come true!
#SaveShenmue #TheFinalBlow

EDIT
The website http://www.30onthe3rd.com/finalblow is now live! Let me know if you have any translations or corrections. I'll try to get the various timezone times up ASAP.

Yeah, I considered that too, although the KS ends Friday at 18.51hrs Pacific Time, which for 90% of the world is plenty late as the US West Coast is behind the rest of the Americas / Europe / world (except Hawaii). In Europe it'd actually be the 18th by that time and even for the West Coast it's reasonably late to allow people to remember. But, to be safe it could be made the 16th --- and let the 17th take the spill.


Yeah, I don't think we should concentrate on a specific time to donate. We need to just push the last day or two.


I do think "$30 on the 3rd" owed a lot of its success to its specific date; it focused people. I like your idea of a guide to upping pledges, I just wonder if a "reminder" of a deadline is strong enough motivation for something called "The Final Blow" (as Himuro said, Kickstarter will be reminding people anyway).

I'm in complete agreement with you. $30 on the 3rd is only considered a huge success because of the already established day thunderclap day and with the announcement of the physical PS4 reward. So I don't take credit at all for the enormous haul the 3rd brought in. But I'm still very happy with my $30 on the 3rd campaign.

Fuck you Kuchera. At least there's positive Shenmue news in the air now.

I'm just grateful the game is being made. Couldn't care less if the kickstarter is run badly. As long as the game has a decent budget that's all I care about. I can only pledge 1800 dollars and might increase on the last day but I would like to say is think of this as more like a Shenmue 3 charity where what you get back doesn't really matter. The rewards for me are just a bonus.

I have a similar point of view and sentiment for Kickstarter projects. I look at my pledge number as the max I can donate or contribute to make this happen. I do appreciate that they are offering me something in return like credits in the game and my name 1 or 2 places, but I also understand where backers can get confused and frustrated because it seems like the higher they donate, the fewer things they get credited or given back.

For example some of those new technique scroll tiers allow for the contributor to get exclusive (or seemingly exclusive) in-game content that someone pledging twice as much cannot get. Not only that but they also get to put their name in the hotel guest registry which was exclusive to the $1500 tier, $4000 tier, and some $10,000 tiers. Now, in terms of the $1500 tier, all that it has going for it is that those backers can have a signed photo of themselves in the game (nobody knows how that will look exactly). And the reasons why have not really been given or explained. And that's where it gets a bit murky and disheartening for backers that are pledging 4 figures for something that they deeply care about.

Most Kickstarter campaigns seem to keep things simple by using the logic that the more you pledge, the more cool stuff you get because "we, the people asking for your backing, appreciate that you're willing to throw that much of your hard earned money at us." And what I've observed is that if new tiers are added, they are usually focused on the lower end of the tier list, and that is probably to encourage the larger number of backers to bump up their pledges a bit. In the case of this Kickstarter, it seems that they are almost doing the opposite, they keep adding tiers on the high-middle and high-end of the list. And in the way they have shaped these newest tiers, it seems to have led to confusion across all backers at the various tier levels.

What would help is if we had better explanations and visuals for some of these items so the fans can see why they would want these / why they should have them as long-time fans of Suzuki-san's and co.'s work.