Shenmue III teaser is FINALLY HERE!!

[Spaghetti]

So, i finally saw the trailer (was on vacation in a place with a really unstable connection) and... what the fuck? From all the comments i read last week i was expecting waaaaaaay worse. The environments are already at an acceptable level and just need some refining, while characters obviously are far behind but not totally terrible like the comments made me think.

And the atmosphere just screams Shenmue to me,which is one of the most important things.

It's the internet, and video games, so a healthy (or unhealthy, more accurately) dollop of hyperbole is always applied.

[Shenhua-Nani?]

So, i finally saw the trailer (was on vacation in a place with a really unstable connection) and... what the fuck? From all the comments i read last week i was expecting waaaaaaay worse. The environments are already at an acceptable level and just need some refining, while characters obviously are far behind but not totally terrible like the comments made me think.

And the atmosphere just screams Shenmue to me,which is one of the most important things.

It's the internet, and video games, so a healthy (or unhealthy, more accurately) dollop of hyperbole is always applied.

Yeah, it's almost like people wait for a chance to spit all the hate they have inside.

Meh, who cares anyway, they cannot impact development in any way now, and Yu has already stated they plan to significantly improve the graphics (and Gio Corsi looked relaxed the last time he visited Ys Net, not too long ago).

Almost 700k views for the trailer is great news though, we have the eye of the game community on us.

[Spaghetti]

Shit, has it really had that many views now?

I guess the benefit of this kind of exposure, partially negative as it is (likes outrank dislikes by 3:1 on YouTube), is that a portion of those people will come back when an improved trailer releases.

If it's a noticeable step ahead of the Gamescom footage then it might just win people over who were on the fence about the game.

[Kiske]

Well, isn't there a say in the marketing field saying that "Bad news is better than no news"?

You know what I mean, something similar to the Benetton commercials effect back in the 90s.

[Kiske]

I think it's more along the lines of "there's no bad publicity", but close enough.

I don't really want to venture into the YouTube comments for a more detailed assessment (because they're almost always trash in any case), but the ratio of likes is encouraging all the same.

The YouTube commentators looking for clicks are annoying, but y'know, they're going to do their thing regardless.

As long as YSnet bide their time for a while and come back with a splash, then it'll just be a bump in the road. People who saw the Gamescom footage and made their mind up probably did so long ago anyway, and it's just a case of confirmation bias. No matter how Shenmue III continues to improve they'll still be on its case about something.

[Shenhua-Nani?]

Shit, has it really had that many views now?

I guess the benefit of this kind of exposure, partially negative as it is (likes outrank dislikes by 3:1 on YouTube), is that a portion of those people will come back when an improved trailer releases.

If it's a noticeable step ahead of the Gamescom footage then it might just win people over who were on the fence about the game.

Thats exactly what i was thinking.

[mjq jazz bar]

Did the Slacker Backer pick up any money in the past week?

[Spaghetti]

Thats exactly what i was thinking.

Mm.

The upside of this is that the next trailer is absolutely going to be an improvement. Not only will YSnet be maybe more discerning with what they put out, but we know from the interviews the character models and animations are set to take a leap forward with more development time.

Best case scenario; this has set the bar of expectations lower so it'll be easier to hurdle later on.

Did the Slacker Backer pick up any money in the past week?

The Slacker Backer total hasn't been updated from the end of July.

[Riku Rose]

Yeah, it's almost like people wait for a chance to spit all the hate they have inside.

There aren't armies of Shenmue haters waiting in the shadows to come out and shit on the game. The last game came out over 15 years ago so the majority of gamers today probably have no history with the series, let alone anything around the time of the Dreamcast so all they see was a trailer for a game with terrible animation. The bad publicity for the last Mass Effect made that game a failure in the eyes of EA for the exact same thing as was shown in this trailer.

Overall the decision to release this trailer with it's flaws is baffeling. The trailer may have had 700k views but the game only sold 70k copies on Kickstarter and there wasn't much there to convince the other 630k who viewed it to buy this series. The general gaming community are who they need to market towards, not us who have already bought the game. I enjoyed seeing the trailer like the rest of you but taking off my rose tinted glasses it's not just because people are haters or idiots that they're shitting on the trailer. To anyone without an attachment to the series it's not something they'll be spending $60 on based on that trailer. If I wasn't a Shenmue fan and watched that I wouldn't even bother watching the next trailer. YsNet really need to think carefully about how they market this going forward.

[Spaghetti]

You would... be surprised about the amount of people who do genuinely just wait to shit on Shenmue regardless. It's mostly parroted behaviour from individuals who dislike the game and pass that on to their audiences, though. I saw a livestream of Shenmue II after III was announced, where someone in the chat kept doing the Jeff Gerstmann "IT'S A FORKLIFT SIMULATOR FOR ASSHOLES" line over, and over, until they either left or shut up when it became obvious they were just getting ignored.

You can see the differences between the Giant Bomb and GameTrailers playthroughs of Shenmue for an example of how this influence on perception can play two ways, although the more cynical opinions tend to rise to the top because of the culture of schadenfreude that's developed in gamers.

But let's not panic. Gamescom wasn't a promotional effort at its heart, we know improvements are coming, and there are going to be more important opportunities than this to capture an audience. You don't know what those 700,000 viewers are thinking either way, and the only barometer of reaction on YouTube we have are the likes, which show 3:1 more likes than dislikes, and even that's kind of a bullshit metric really.

Frankly, the people who were fragile enough to drop interest on first WIP footage were going to be a very hard sell in the first place, because any perceived slight would have pushed them away. That's even if these people genuinely exist in any appreciable number.

Now the dust has cleared, the hyperbole is done with, and clearer more considered opinions are popping up; there's probably just a "wait and see" approach from people on the fence. If YSnet are going to deliver what they say they are going to deliver, then they'll get these people on-side eventually.

[MiTT3NZ]

Are you sure it's "Shenmue haters" and not just people giggling as they poke a fan base that's easier to wind up than a racist American evangelist on her period?

[mjq jazz bar]

Yeah, it's almost like people wait for a chance to spit all the hate they have inside.

There aren't armies of Shenmue haters waiting in the shadows to come out and shit on the game. The last game came out over 15 years ago so the majority of gamers today probably have no history with the series, let alone anything around the time of the Dreamcast so all they see was a trailer for a game with terrible animation. The bad publicity for the last Mass Effect made that game a failure in the eyes of EA for the exact same thing as was shown in this trailer.

Overall the decision to release this trailer with it's flaws is baffeling. The trailer may have had 700k views but the game only sold 70k copies on Kickstarter and there wasn't much there to convince the other 630k who viewed it to buy this series. The general gaming community are who they need to market towards, not us who have already bought the game. I enjoyed seeing the trailer like the rest of you but taking off my rose tinted glasses it's not just because people are haters or idiots that they're shitting on the trailer. To anyone without an attachment to the series it's not something they'll be spending $60 on based on that trailer. If I wasn't a Shenmue fan and watched that I wouldn't even bother watching the next trailer. YsNet really need to think carefully about how they market this going forward.

i mostly agree with you, and I find it particularly odd people are convincing themselves the team released "bad footage" intentionally. No sane publisher or developer would do that with a game like this. That said, the game is still a ways off, so I think we need to worry more about this stuff closer to the game's release date.

[Caralho das 5]

Are you sure it's "Shenmue haters" and not just people giggling as they poke a fan base that's easier to wind up than a racist American evangelist on her period?

Pretty sure that shenmue haters and braindead american evangelists are the same group of people.

[MiTT3NZ]

Yeah but that's just coz it's a foreign word.

[Caralho das 5]

Let's ask YS to change the title of the game to Epic Wholesome Quest of Revenge 3, but only around the Bible Belt.