AwesomeJapan - postmortem performance

[code l name]

If it hadn’t been for you, there never would have been a KS video in the first place!

Doesn't anyone see that's part of the criticism? The fact AJ relied upon fans to create content at the most basic level (i.e. explaining what the series is while at the same time asking for those fans money). I mean as I said the community rallied together and admirably so but when a chunk of our money is going to these people who have proven to be beyond incompetent, that's when I tend to draw the line.

I think Awesome Japan actually hurt the campaign. Things mentioned above like the Sony funding should have been put to bed within hours and not weeks. It felt like no preparation had gone into making the campaign at all past writing up the Kickstarter page and interviewing 5 people. I honestly think you could have just put up a page with a title just saying Shenmue III and got the same amount of money.

The thing that leaves me thinking is how much more money could have been made if you had a competent team. If Yu had been on every E3 livestream and interviewed by every video game website (rather then just Japanese ones or that French guy). Had decent livestreams and let's plays every week. Just clearer messaging alone would have been better.

I concur, there was so many missed opportunities and that will bother me. The fact we could have soared to higher levels and got more money to Suzuki for development was cut short because AJ were tone deaf, frankly out of their depth and poorly managed. However I also level some of the blame for the people that employed them starting with Suzuki and Ysnet.

I can only hope Suzuki who I think it's been proven isn't the greatest manager, really starts putting things together.

[johnvivant]

paypal not being up immediately after the kickstarter ended was a huge opportunity missed.

the kickstarter was raising by 1000's even at the very end. at least some portion of those would have hopped straight onto paypal.

shenmue is trending huge on twitter today and there is still no paypal for people who might only be finding out about the kickstarter now.

[Dragon St.]

If AJ gets to handle the long term funding, it will be a disaster. They need to go!! I'm sure their team was way too inexperienced to handle a campaign like this, but that's really no excuse for the number of fuck ups they produced. Many of them were out of pure laziness. How can you ask for sums of money people have to work months for while you don't even bother to proof read your own updates? Or keep the FAQ up to date? Or update the rewards list? Actually search for some high quality pictures that really are from the first two games and not Shenmue Online? The list goes on and on if you take a good critical look.

This success is only thanks to the hard work of the fans and the help Sony provided by giving us the stage on E3 and the physical PS4 edition of the game.

[punkmanced]

If it hadn’t been for you, there never would have been a KS video in the first place!

Doesn't anyone see that's part of the criticism? The fact AJ relied upon fans to create content at the most basic level (i.e. explaining what the series is while at the same time asking for those fans money). I mean as I said the community rallied together and admirably so but when a chunk of our money is going to these people who have proven to be beyond incompetent, that's when I tend to draw the line.

Dude, we all see it; you're essentially preaching to the choir ;)
The community did virtually everything...including making cosmetic improvements to the actual KS page (which is ridiculous when you really think about it).

[code l name]

paypal not being up immediately after the kickstarter ended was a huge opportunity missed.

the kickstarter was raising by 1000's even at the very end. at least some portion of those would have hopped straight onto paypal.

shenmue is trending huge on twitter today and there is still no paypal for people who might only be finding out about the kickstarter now.

Exactly. We are not going to get anywhere the same media attention/coverage as right now. There's dozens of different articles on the record breaking amount and if there was link those people could pledge additional money through Paypal, you can beat your ass they would be receiving more funding as we speak.

Again you had to question how poorly run and managed are things there, that this opportunity is slipping through. Again Paypal was requested from Day 1 of the campaign, they knew fans wanted it. I can understand they wanted emphasis on the KS campaign, fair enough. However to not have this ability ready to launch right at the end of the campaign really speaks to the all around ameatur effort by those involved.

[sand4fish]

I think Awesome Japan actually hurt the campaign. Things mentioned above like the Sony funding should have been put to bed within hours and not weeks. It felt like no preparation had gone into making the campaign at all past writing up the Kickstarter page and interviewing 5 people. I honestly think you could have just put up a page with a title just saying Shenmue III and got the same amount of money.

The thing that leaves me thinking is how much more money could have been made if you had a competent team. If Yu had been on every E3 livestream and interviewed by every video game website (rather then just Japanese ones or that French guy). Had decent livestreams and let's plays every week. Just clearer messaging alone would have been better.

I actually think the contrary happened. Because the campaign was too big for AJ team to handle at first, we as a community worked twice as hard to promote and show our support for the campaign. There's no PR team in the world that could have matched the passion and reach of what each individual Shenmue fan showed. We knew the brand better than anyone else and because of fear of failure by the work of an unknown team, it motivated us all to work together and make this project a success. In any case,I think AJ pulled themselves up and did a great job for Yu in the end.

And maybe this all was all intentional by AJ... as if they knew this would happen. After all is this really the look of a fool to you?

[DEVILLE_David]

Awesome Japan could have done a better job but they tried to fix things during the campaign and that's a good point.

Now we made it to the 6 millions+ because we have a strong community. I am not sure if YsNet is going to hire people from AJ to handle the communication about Shenmue via the official website but that's unlikely to happen.

I am looking forward YsNet communication from now on as japanese people tend to be serious about how they work.

Paypal has to be added as fast as possible on the official website so we can start donating (whoever has the possibility to that is).

[colacube]

I agree with every criticism against AJ, but I have to say a major disappointment was the scene with shenhua and ryo, with their incorrect modelling and bad voice acting. That would have been directed by Suzuki and I doubt Awesome Japan would dare ask for changes. That scene should have hinted at things to come in part 3. Plus the concept-art could have been more descriptive or enticing, and that's also Suzuki's domain.

Overall I'm happy though. I think 6.3M is a brilliant result.

[code l name]

If AJ gets to handle the long term funding, it will be a disaster. They need to go!! I'm sure their team was way too inexperienced to handle a campaign like this, but that's really no excuse for the number of fuck ups they produced. Many of them were out of pure laziness. How can you ask for sums of money people have to work months for while you don't even bother to proof read your own updates? Or keep the FAQ up to date? Or update the rewards list? Actually search for some high quality pictures that really are from the first two games and not Shenmue Online? The list goes on and on if you take a good critical look.

This success is only thanks to the hard work of the fans and the help Sony provided by giving us the stage on E3 and the physical PS4 edition of the game.

Very good post. I didn't even get into all the grammatical errors and typo's that were littered through the campaign and updates. It was extremely sad that the community would post full transcripts with less errors or mistakes right after a Q&A yet AwesomeJapan would often taken 48 hours or longer to produce something similar littered with errors.

If it hadn’t been for you, there never would have been a KS video in the first place!

Doesn't anyone see that's part of the criticism? The fact AJ relied upon fans to create content at the most basic level (i.e. explaining what the series is while at the same time asking for those fans money). I mean as I said the community rallied together and admirably so but when a chunk of our money is going to these people who have proven to be beyond incompetent, that's when I tend to draw the line.

Dude, we all see it; you're essentially preaching to the choir ;)
The community did virtually everything...including making cosmetic improvements to the actual KS page (which is ridiculous when you really think about it).

I wasn't speaking to you directly just trying to make a broader point. I think you and I are on the same page.

Keep in mind is fans didn't lobby Cedric directly, the rewards probably would have been buried at the bottom of the page where no one would have seen it. This is coming from a company that supposedly professionally runs KS campaigns. How pathetic is that?

[Jibby]

Seem like a bunch of nice people with good intentions who were just in way over their head. No hard feelings -- time to move on I think.

[code l name]

I agree with every criticism against AJ, but I have to say a major disappointment was the scene with shenhua and ryo, with their incorrect modelling and bad voice acting. That would have been directed by Suzuki and I doubt Awesome Japan would dare ask for changes. That scene should have hinted at things to come in part 3. Plus the concept-art could have been more descriptive or enticing, and that's also Suzuki's domain.

Oh I completely agree. I'm sure AJ at times were held back with what Suzuki and co were able to provide.

I thought the initial KS launch video was a giant mess. You have Yu's initial comments and then he rambles on about the 'technique scrolls' in vague, unclear language which frankly is confusing to new and existing fans alike. In addition if we've learnt anything from his subsequent interviews, mechanics like rapport system or character perspective system seem much more important to the overall design of Shenmue 3 yet are barely mentioned in the campaign itself!

It all seemed so rushed. I mean they get the original statue busts (a rare and highly sort after item from Shenmue fans) at the 11th hour and offer it at a tier way below market value, especially compared to the other 100 tiers they seemed to offer at a repetitive and predictable pace.

Suzuki was tweeting cool art-work of Shenmue 3 throughout the month. Was that integrated into the campaign? Nope. Like I said it's abundantly clear these guys had zero media strategy, not forgetting their absolute pitiful footprint on social media.

[Dragon St.]

If AJ gets to handle the long term funding, it will be a disaster. They need to go!! I'm sure their team was way too inexperienced to handle a campaign like this, but that's really no excuse for the number of fuck ups they produced. Many of them were out of pure laziness. How can you ask for sums of money people have to work months for while you don't even bother to proof read your own updates? Or keep the FAQ up to date? Or update the rewards list? Actually search for some high quality pictures that really are from the first two games and not Shenmue Online? The list goes on and on if you take a good critical look.

This success is only thanks to the hard work of the fans and the help Sony provided by giving us the stage on E3 and the physical PS4 edition of the game.

Very good post. I didn't even get into all the grammatical errors and typo's that were littered through the campaign and updates. It was extremely sad that the community would post full transcripts with less errors or mistakes right after a Q&A yet AwesomeJapan would often taken 48 hours or longer to produce something similar littered with errors.

Exactly. It was very obvious that their entire team just took whole weekends off after a Q&A, only to deliver a rush job in update on Monday/Tuesday. What kind of work ethic is that when you get to run a campaign like this? Do they take their own business serious at all?

[code l name]

Seem like a bunch of nice people with good intentions who were just in way over their head. No hard feelings -- time to move on I think.

Good intentions doesn't cut it when this is a professional business and more importantly that business is 100% reliant of crowdfunding.

Again I don't place the entire blame at their feet but there was systematic issues from the start that were never resolved.

If AJ gets to handle the long term funding, it will be a disaster. They need to go!! I'm sure their team was way too inexperienced to handle a campaign like this, but that's really no excuse for the number of fuck ups they produced. Many of them were out of pure laziness. How can you ask for sums of money people have to work months for while you don't even bother to proof read your own updates? Or keep the FAQ up to date? Or update the rewards list? Actually search for some high quality pictures that really are from the first two games and not Shenmue Online? The list goes on and on if you take a good critical look.

This success is only thanks to the hard work of the fans and the help Sony provided by giving us the stage on E3 and the physical PS4 edition of the game.

Very good post. I didn't even get into all the grammatical errors and typo's that were littered through the campaign and updates. It was extremely sad that the community would post full transcripts with less errors or mistakes right after a Q&A yet AwesomeJapan would often taken 48 hours or longer to produce something similar littered with errors.

Exactly. It was very obvious that their entire team just took whole weekends off after a Q&A, only to deliver a rush job in update on Monday/Tuesday. What kind of work ethic is that when you get to run a campaign like this? Do they take their own business serious at all?

Which from what I read is in stark contrast to typical Tokyo working hours. Again no campaign is perfect, mistakes do get made and KS due to its very nature is a fast, fluid moving thing. However they had zero contingency plans and the fact the fans and community were lobbying the co-producer of the game instead of AJ with their suggestions and questions speaks to frankly how unresponsive and slow AJ were during the entire campaign.

[LucBu]

I think Awesome Japan actually hurt the campaign. Things mentioned above like the Sony funding should have been put to bed within hours and not weeks. It felt like no preparation had gone into making the campaign at all past writing up the Kickstarter page and interviewing 5 people. I honestly think you could have just put up a page with a title just saying Shenmue III and got the same amount of money.

In regards to that misinformation thing, I think Sony have more to answer for there. Cedric Biscay himself said (I'll try and find the place/link tomorrow - think it was Twitter?) that he was irritated at Sony's statement. Sony obviously wanted the good PR without any of the risk: They knew it would be considered a low move.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful that Sony gave Shenmue a chance, but they should have been straight with their statements and said "we've got the marketing but the most of it has to be done through the Kickstarter ie. the Kickstarter is no gimmick." Sony themsleves should have put it to rest. Sony's guy in that early interview saying "we're behind Shenmue all the way" was just a vague brush off which was easily misinterpreteted. I'm sure Yu can't criticize them publicly for risk to the project so he has to just go silent. Awesome Japan may have been able to address this somewhat and sooner but hell, even today there are articles going up post-Kickstarter claiming Sony are backing the majority of the project. What was that Forbes one? -$20 million they said.

The bottom line for me: I'm not fond of either Sony, the media or Awesome Japan. Two failures by greed and one by incompetence. Thankfully, Yu, Cedric and the fans were so capable they made up for those three miscarriages and then some.

[Mystere]

Seem like a bunch of nice people with good intentions who were just in way over their head. No hard feelings -- time to move on I think.

This.

And let's not forget Awesome Japan were hired by Suzuki / YsNet so a judgement really has to lie there. If you buy a Casio, do you expect a Rolex?