I'm going to agree with whoever said you are more interested in finding something to bitch about. Negativity isn't necessarily unwarranted, but be constructive about it.
Alright then, if you want me to assume the mantle of Captain Obvious...
- YSNet should've spent more time on creating a short demo, not just Shenhua's poor attempt at a Blue Steel and jumping over a stream. Also, setting it in the cave would've been a bit more poignant. Give non-Shenmue fans a reason to pledge their hard-earned money, don't just expect them to.
- To build on the previous point, the Kickstarter has done as well as it has solely based on the fact that it's Shenmue III. Finally. If Half-Life 3 or Timesplitters 3 also had to take to the site, then they also would've had non-fans donate money. It's an event, a milestone in gaming.
- Shenmue III was a big announcement, and it reached almost everyone who's into video games enough to know what E3 is. Awesome Japan should've realised this, and made plans to maintain momentum. The third will obviously lead to a temporary spike, and historical data points to the probability that it'll also see a big increase in the last few days, but they seem to be overly reliant on this.
- One of the ways they could've done this was through a meta game. Don't expect fans to do the work for you. They should've approached it in a way that sees the fans constantly struggling to decide how much more they should pledge by adding a new tier or two every three to five days. Now, that may be the case of course, but their focus really needs to be on none-fans.
- It's great that they're trying to engage with the fans through polls, the Reddit AMA, etc., but why the hell are they not hammering out interviews with large media sites left, right and centre? They're already guaranteed our money, stop using us as a damn crutch, get out there and do some bleedin work!
- I understand Suzuki setting the initial total at $2m. It's great that he said "no, I want them to have Shenmue III even if it's just a short game", but this should've been made clear from the very beginning. You had the stage at E3 ffs. Sony's stage. You had the biggest audience of next gen console gamers right in front of you. You should've bleedin said something!
- The transparency issue. Almost everyone who knows of Shenmue knows about the whole fiasco behind the budget. This should've been addressed in the Kickstarter video. "We were given a huge budget to develop this game, as we had to create technology that didn't exist, we made it extremely detailed, individual footstep sounds, 3D scanners, meteorological data, it was split into two games, shit was more expensive back then, etc." Drive that point home, compare to how things have changed. Explain that Sony has advertising handled, so 100% of the Kickstarter funds make up the entirety of the game's actual production budget.
- Simplified stretch goals. Why give the subtitles individual tiers? Just say "$3.5m gets all this", "$5m gets all that". The big leaps looks better value for money because of the sheer amount of content packed into each one.
- Replica jackets and mirrors should've definitely been in there from the start. Oh, you want both a Dragon and a Phoenix Mirror? Here's a new reward tier for that!
- For all the years Suzuki has had to design this game in his spare time (which apparently he has), he seems awfully unsure about a lot of things. This says to me that it's still in pre-production. He should've come into this with a very clear view on what he wants to include, and more importantly, how to implement it. Any other bells and whistles can be voted on by the backers, sure, but the core elements of the game? C'mon san.
- Shenmue is an Eastern franchise. It's very Japanese. Whatever. That doesn't mean that you market it to a Western audience via an Eastern-based promotional company. The decision to do this is a massive oversight and terribly naïve.
- Little to no presence. They appear on Kickstarter's most popular. Yu Suzuki and Shenmue III are on Twitter. The game has a website. These are all the places they're expected to be, and that's good, but why the hell haven't they branched out? Okay, sure, this one's a little tricky, but there should have been agreements made with both Sony and SEGA to throw in a little bit more of an extra presence. Facebook ads, banner ads, cross-promotion, etc. Right now it seems like only the fans, Corsi and Boyes are the only ones who give a shit.
- The blatant potential of bad publicity... that was fulfilled. How the hell did they not see any of this coming? Kickstarter as a platform's been under a lot of scrutiny since before the campaign was launched. Why was nothing done to subvert this? Where were the contingency plans? The PR team's fucking useless.
- Not sure if this one's true, but did Suzuki just do one after the first day? This is E3 pal. Drop the mic, sure, but don't just fuck off straight away.
- Less of the corporate responses. Every reply to fan questions so far say nothing. Either answer properly or don't fucking answer at all.
There's plenty more, but I need to eat. The concerns that everyone has are justified. Just because they don't go into great detail (none of which is needed btw, as I say, it's all pretty blatant and self-explanatory) doesn't make them irrelevant or "negative for the sake of being negative."
To counter-balance that though, here are the positives:
- We're getting Shenmue III.
- Sony's handling advertising expenses.
- The leather jackets.
- Yu Suzuki's handling it.
- SEGA are allowing it to happen.
Do I need to explain any of that? Or is it automatically accepted on account of it being the "positives"?