AwesomeJapan - postmortem performance

[code l name]

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.

I partially agree Sony certainly added to the confusion. However a well managed campaign would have ensured communication was co-ordinated and they should have immediately released a statement and get the direct word out. However as we've seen throughout the campaign they were slow, their message was unclear and the fans were fighting to set the record straight.

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.

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?

Well I did say part of the blame absolutely falls on Suzuki and co for hiring these people in the first place. Even after multiple errors, it seemed only Cedric begun to appreciate the scope of the mistakes made and how it was adversely affecting the campaign and ultimate money raised.

[mjq jazz bar]

I still don't believe Sony hurt the campaign at all. E3 shot the campaign full of life and it died because of poor management from Awesome Japan. Things picked up and we exceeded almost everyone here's expectations. You do see a lot of whining about Sony on Twitter, but it's just a vocal minority that never wanted the game in the first place.

Better Kickstarter campaign might've gotten us an extra $500K to a million. I don't think they could've done significantly better than Awesome Japan. I'm basing this on other Kickstarters' performance.

[ConanTheKing]

What's done is done, I'm just glad that at one point they turned things around and it's better late than never.

[elmatto]

I'd give em a 7/10. And I'm being generous.

[JaySw34]

If they would of let the campaign be handled by the Shenmue Dojo it would of been more successful

[AnimeGamer183]

Awesome Japan was fine, not great or mind blowing though. We just paid too much attention to the situation, and thus some opinions were not realistic. At the end of the day everything turned out great, props to everyone involved!

[Snakiest]

I'm pretty sure AJ got themselves a good standing in Japan. Here, it is the badge you put on the chest that matters and not how you got it. Nobody is going to scrutinize their performance, and potential clients in Japan will think this is as good as it gets. This is life, I guess.

In Yu we trust.

[Himuro]

Not sure what the use of continuing to light a fire under Awesome Japan's ass is? They worked pretty hard to turn it around. No, they weren't perfect, but they still tried and worked pretty hard past the initial Twitch stream. No they weren't perfect, but they did enough at one to try to steer the ship. Give them some credit.

[code l name]

If they would of let the campaign be handled by the Shenmue Dojo it would of been more successful

If you hire a professional company you would hope they would organize a more coherent campaign than a cluster of fans. In AJ's case they seem to crib some ideas from the community but with little thought or appreciation of where the campaign needed to go as a whole.

Only for the act the community was so energized to make it a success did it succeed. However AJ's track record includes many a campaign that wasn't successful and I can guarantee it's because they couldn't simply rely on the actual fans to organize, campaign and petition it to a success.

[Mr357]

I still don't believe Sony hurt the campaign at all. E3 shot the campaign full of life and it died because of poor management from Awesome Japan. Things picked up and we exceeded almost everyone here's expectations. You do see a lot of whining about Sony on Twitter, but it's just a vocal minority that never wanted the game in the first place.

Better Kickstarter campaign might've gotten us an extra $500K to a million. I don't think they could've done significantly better than Awesome Japan. I'm basing this on other Kickstarters' performance.

Right. Even if Peter Moore himself was running the Kickstarter you'd be hard pressed to honestly say you wouldn't back it. Shenmue 3 and Yu Suzuki are a sexy combination.

[ShinChuck]

I don't think it was awful, but it could have been better, as many have said. I'm not sure how much the Q&As and the streams made a difference to the average donor/fan. I think what really hurt was the lack of rewards between $500 and $10,000, then the sudden, haphazard addition of several new tiers in the last couple of weeks. The $80 Telecom and $600 Guestbook ones, for example, mentioned in their respective updates that they were included in all higher tiers, but this was not actually mentioned on the main Kickstarter page where you picked rewards.

It also seemed weird to me that, for example, palm reading came in at $900 but did not include the $800 temple and technique scroll and was not included in ANY of the higher tiers, the $1400 DREAMS COME TRUE included the $800, $1200, and $1400 ones but not the palm reading or the voice message, the $3000 replica jackets only included $600 and lower (and as mentioned above, it still said $500 and below on the rewards page), the $4000 Lucky Hit board *did* include I AM SHENMUE and the voice message, but none of the exclusive scrolls, the $4500 included the voice message but *not* I AM SHENMUE... then we had the capsule toy ones, which seemed to be their own thing entirely and included nothing else and were a part of nothing else. It just struck me as really odd to have so many tiers, and such an inconsistent selection of rewards for a given tier.

I've pledged on several Kickstarters, and the upper tiers haven't been as split up and arbitrary as Shenmue's were.

(To be fair, I don't know how much that had to do with AwesomeJapan exactly!)

Still, Shenmue 3 and Yu Suzuki were going to carry the day even with a campaign that perhaps, at times, missed the mark. I'm not trying to be negative, because I'm utterly thrilled, and backed as much as I possibly could! Was just particularly baffled by the complex reward structure.

[wataro]

If I have learnt anything about shenmue over the last 15 years
Its that, amazing as shenmue is.... Its cursed.
Nothing more to it.

[Anonymous81]

I have always said the campaign was far less than ideal. However I wouldn't go so far as to say it was atrocious, either.

I think there is more than meets the eye to the whole situation, personally. I suspect Ys Net had a lot less money to invest in the campaign than we might imagine, and that they had to make the most of what they had. I also suspect there were a lot of language and cultural barrier issues in terms of PR. Better translation of the stretch goals and rewards would have definitely helped.

But I think honestly, since Yu said in last night's stream that he monitors and is intimately involved in everything - from the game to the Kickstarter - that a lot of it had to do with underestimating the appetite for a slick, professional looking and feeling campaign. We've been a bit spoiled by recent Kickstarters, and expect that same level of polish. Whereas I feel Ys Net were going for a more relaxed, casual, "with the fans" experience that didn't have every single point nailed down from a PR and planning standpoint.

I also kind of feel that the timing of the reveal - at E3 - was an opportunity he was presented with that he couldn't pass up, but that this left little time to actually plan the campaign effectively. Things felt rushed and haphazard... probably, in my opinion, because they were, and had to be.

Things are usually a lot more complicated and involved than we ever seen from the outside looking in. For all we know they did the best they could with an impossible situation and with very little in the way of funds to pull it off, hoping for a miracle as they flew by the seat of their pants.

Yes, yes, Awesome Japan are professionals and one would expect a certain level of pizazz to come with that moniker. But professionals are human too. And when in a hurry and trying to promote a project that's still very much amorphous and unformed, it can be difficult to even know with certainty what you're promoting, let alone do so in a way that seems completely coherent at every step of the journey.

So with all that said, I feel they worked really hard, with less than stellar results. That's the worst I can say of them without knowing more about the whole situation. There could have been a lot of reasons we're not privy to behind why they did or didn't do certain things we with they had.

[Esppiral]

AJ shouldn't be hired by anyone ever again. Their miss management, is insulting.

[Drakul]

At this point I don't care. It's past (thank God!).
We've had the best kickstarter campaign and now we can focus on the actual game content and not some marketing campaign.