Lessons Shenmue III can take from recent indie game failures

[Himuro]

Recently released a lot of hyped indie games have been failing to live up to exceptions. No Man's Sky and Mighty No 9 are two of these. No Man's Sky promised the universe; Mighty No 9 promised...rough concepts it could never deliver. Shenmue III isn't promising the world, but there's a large worry that certain games just don't work with smaller indie teams, especially if they have large vision and scope. What can Ys Net learn from these games? NMS is seeing a vast amount of backlash due to its marketing over the years. I can only hope Sony pushes Shenmue III like they have with No Man's Sky. Personally though, seeing NMS' and MN9's backlash, I'm really glad that Shenmue III's development so far has been modest and reserved. When we get Kickstarter updates, we don't see Suzuki-san talking about grand visions and empty promises. He gives us a little snippet of the games development. Also, Inafune blamed the fact that they had to developer MN9 for every system under the sun to its bad performance and the fact it never really felt finished. The team had to dedicate time and resources to porting to so many systems rather than game development. Again, I'm extremely grateful that Shenmue III seems to be in the right direction here in that it is only being developed for one system by Ys Net. Shibuya Productions is handling the PC port, but Ys Net is dedicated to the ps4 version first and foremost with no other systems to account for. Of course, Shenmue IIII also runs on Unreal 4, which makes porting it easier, but the point still stands.

So far I'm not seeing any of the warning signs that inflicted these two games in Shenmue III. This gives me a lot of hope. Anyone see any warning signs from III yet? And do you feel there are lessons Shenmue III could partake from these two games' controversy?

[Kiske]

The only tangible warning sign I personally see at the moment is the "time factor".

Not that I feel the development is going slow, but that Shenmue 3 would need more than 2.5 years (from scratch) to really allow Suzuki-San to deliver what he has he mind.

That said, I'm prepared to welcome a 6 month delay, if necessary.

[Kiske]

The only tangible warning sign I personally see at the moment is the "time factor".

Not that I feel the development is going slow, but that Shenmue 3 would need more than 2.5 years (from scratch) to really allow Suzuki-San to deliver what he has he mind.

That said, I'm prepared to welcome a 6 month delay, if necessary.

I'm prepared for a year delay. I just think they don't have enough time / budget to go that long to deliver what I think he will deliver.

I would like to say Shenmue 3 is different given Yu Suzuki's experience, but really scope and time are such big issues. I think when we are shown some real combat which is one of the cornerstones of Shenmue, then I will be able to make a better assessment.

Recently I played my first Kickstarter backed game which was backed in 2013, Hyper Light Drifter. Alex Preston had never made a game before, but he had on his team a number of semi experienced indie developers and also his unique vision and art work. The game was delayed for 2 years given Preston's health problems, but you know what, he delivered a stellar debut of a game. Hyper Light Drifter is one of my favourite games of this year and sits along side Dark Souls 3 comfortable. So while there have been failed expectations in Mighty No. 9 and No Man's Sky, it's not all failures.

I don't think and I do hope, Suzuki's experience will help put them put out a solid game. It's again with the assistance and persistence of Sony Third Party productions with Gio Corsi helping this along, so we'll see how strict they are with deadlines. So far Shenmue 3 still looks to be in very early days of development. The amount of time that planning is a part of a game's development can't be understated and even with the last Shenmue 3 update, Suzuki brought in Okayasu Keiji as sub-director to help with day to day affairs on top of his other production assistants. So really it's to ensure work gets done according to Suzuki's vision.

One other factor is Suzuki isn't doing what Inafune did, which was start the project, leave it and run 2-3 other larger projects at the same time. Suzuki also isn't jumping on the hype train like Sean Murray is, thankfully and cranking up expectations way above what they could possible deliver. Suzuki has been quite clear about what he wants to achieve as set out by some of the Kickstarter goals. Of course some of those KS goals were rather vague, but if you understand Shenmue then you have a decent idea what those goals are.

For me the key elements of Shenmue are 1. Story/Script 2. Combat 3. Models/Animation 4. Environment 5. Mini-games. It's gotta be fun, gotta be engaging, gotta look good.

With UE4 most of 2 - 5 can be taken care of, but story, it has to be right.. we've waited so long to see the story continue, so number 1 is really the highest priority.

[Sonoshee]

I can definitely understand the concerns raised in this thread, especially after the relative failure of No Man's Sky. Popular opinion on the internet is a fickle thing at the best of times, an adored Indy game can quickly become the most hated game on the planet if it's perceived as under delivering on the promises it's made. Still, I'm not worried in the slight about Shenmue 3 because I have complete confidence in Yu Suzuki's ability to create a high quality game.

On one hand No Man's Sky and Mighty No. 9 where both risky propositions. No Man's Sky was created by Hello Games, who's only previously work was a series of middling games in the Joe Danger franchise; quite a leap to go from that to an all-encompassing game like No Man's Sky, it's no wonder their abilities fell short of their ambition. While the torrid development of Mighty No. 9 is well known, Inafune greedily spent his company's resources on a host of extra projects before Mighty No. 9 was even released, resulting in a subpar and squandering the good will of his fans in the process.

Conversely, Shenmue 3 is the continuation of Yu Suzuki's magnum opus. Much of the pre-production work on Shenmue 3 was already completed in the early 90s. Plus, the act of creating Shenmue 1 and 2 further laid the ground work for Shenmue 3. Granted, it's taken far longer than anyone of us would have liked for Shenmue 3 to be made but that doesn't diminish the high quality of work that Yu Suzuki and so many others have already put into Shenmue 3 over the last two decades. Yu Suzuki isn't trying to simulate the whole galaxy or rip-off Mega Man; he's here to continue the Shenmue saga by simply picking up where he left-off at the end of the Dreamcast era.

[metalgearsurvive]

Don't include zombies, womholes and an alternate universe like Metal Gear Survive will.

[Hazuki00]

There's no possible comparison between Shenmue 3 and others projects, they are made by diferents teams and budgets.

I think maybe they will need more time to polish the game, but not as much as a year as I read. Unreal engine 4 makes more easy to do some things than before. For the same task it could take months when Shenmue 1 was release and now they can achieve the same in a few hours.
Besides, they are a legend team, many of them from Shenmue 1 team, they are a bit rusty but have the same magic of before.

If Nokon Kid could recreate some parts of Shenmue 1 alone, try to image what they can do alltogether...

[Zoltor]

The only tangible warning sign I personally see at the moment is the "time factor".

Not that I feel the development is going slow, but that Shenmue 3 would need more than 2.5 years (from scratch) to really allow Suzuki-San to deliver what he has he mind.

That said, I'm prepared to welcome a 6 month delay, if necessary.

I second this sentiment.

Yu is the only one, who can pretty much do anything, with a fair budget, well over 6m(realistically It's probally slightly over 8m, but anyway), is technically enough money, for you to basically make anything he wants, but that doesn't change the fact that even the living god him self, with a dream team, still need time to do such.

Just the base mechanics alone, can take a year to get fully implemented/hashed out, then there side quests, special event scenarios,ect, all of which require unique systems them selves, never mind the are which will take a long time.

Lol don't even get me started about the dialog. Yu already outlines/is basically promising more char depth as well as interaction, then Fangmei, and Shenhua from 2.


There's no way in hell, even Yu can pull off what he is claiming in under 3 years, so I really hope he was just spitting out a year that just sounded good, and not as deadest on such, that everyone of his interviews claims he is.

It's scare, because the 2017 statement, has been one of the most consistently translated statement, and omg boy has it been said a lot.

[Centrale]

The only potential parallel I see between No Man's Sky and Shenmue III is the problem of a vocal minority of haters who will parrot the opinion that the game is a "failure" when it is not.

The fact of the matter is that there was a contingent of people who got completely carried away with their expectations and their idea of what they wanted NMS to be and now they're furious because it doesn't match their unfounded expectations. There was also a huge number of people who seemed to resent the fact that NMS had a lot of promotion and hype surrounding it when they personally couldn't see the appeal of a quiet exploration game... the "what do you actually do in this game?" crowd, even though the game was demonstrated at length and the logical conclusion would have been, "well, this type of game simply isn't my cup of tea."

The most extreme of these rabid gamers accuse Hello Games/Sean Murray of lying about not delivering on promised features... e.g., the issue of planets rotating and orbiting their suns. Sean Murray stated before launch that playtesters had been consistently confused by the planetary rotation no matter how much they slowed it down, so it had been removed. The problem being that this statement was made through one media site and so the entirety of the playerbase didn't see it... it could have been handled better if it there was a central development blog that made official statements throughout the process.

In summation... there are a lot of gamers who are very happy and satisfied with No Man's Sky, as they kept expectations in check and got what they expected and wanted. So make sure the opinion of the game that you express is your own opinion and not something that you're repeating or gleaning from articles or forum threads. And think about how you will react when a similarly misguided and vindictive campaign to reduce review scores and shape public opinion about Shenmue III occurs.

[Testament]

I don't think we have to worry about Shenmue III falling prey to the "Mighty No 9" effect. Shenmue III is being directed by a man who is not only the primary driving force behind the franchise, its story and world, and everything in between, but also a seasoned project leader and creator. Inafune, while a cool and creative dude, was primarily the character designer for much of Mega Man's life, not its creator or producer--he was involved a fair bit later on in the series' life, but he was constantly surrounded by talented people who made those games as great as they were. Mighty No 9 was doomed from the beginning in his hands, especially with his overambitious squandering of money for stuff like films, anime, and merchandising. Suzuki will focus on making a beautiful product, and that's it.

[Himuro]

I have to say I do admit I've got Shenmue III in the back of my mind any time of these indie games get a massive backlash.

[Spaghetti]

I think the lessons to be learned are more in Mighty No 9 than NMS, NMS was shooting in an entirely different direction, but you can draw comparisons to MN9 because Shenmue III is a revival that has an existing fanbase to please.

I personally don't think they're making the same mistakes as either of these games, and that's being done consciously and smartly. We'll see how things play out as the game materialises more, but as of right now the "concerns" about the game are largely empty and unjustified.

[shredingskin]

What is the lesson in MN9 ? Don't make a shitty game ?

[Spaghetti]

What is the lesson in MN9 ? Don't make a shitty game ?

In broad terms, yes, but in terms of specifics more about keeping the project focused, having a talented staff, and ensuring the game ships finished when it's supposed to.

[Radar]

What is the lesson in MN9 ? Don't make a shitty game ?

Do not overpromise and underdeliver, underpromise and overdeliver instead.

[shredingskin]

What was overpromised in MN9 ? A decent action platformer ? Good 2.5D graphics ? The game just sucked and they were greedy as fuck.

At the end of the day SIII will only be successful if it's a good game (and that can vary depending people tastes).