The Shenmue 3 Effect: What could go wrong or right

[Abraham_1]

I know from german and dutch major magazines rating the game a 7.5 and you guys seem to completely miss my point about consumers rating the game much lower back in the day. the game got a ton of hatred from gamers, who simply were not ready. just like people were not ready for blade runner in 1982 and blade runner 2049 in 2017. shenmue is now almost universally loved but that was not the case at all when shenmue 1 got released.

Interesting. Well, the difficulty lies in the fact that it's near-impossible to find out, today, whether or not the game was met with backlash from consumers at the time. Sure, we may be able to roam old forums and websites, but there were nowhere near as many people using the internet to talk about games at the time, as there are today. Thus, the majority of those people at the time would only really talk about a game on the internet if they really didn't like it, or if they really loved it. Therefore, one can only trust their subjective experiences on this, which isn't the best indicator.

I am a bit young to have played Shenmue upon release, so I understand your point about people not being ready for Shenmue (I ended up loving it without nostalgia). However, with that being said, most of what I have heard from people, predominantly in the UK and US, is that they really enjoyed it at release. I got the feeling that it was completely normal for people to like the game because those who say they hated it at release, say it in such a way as though they were the minority and didn't get what other people were fussed about.

To maybe back up your argument though, some of the reasons why people enjoyed Shenmue upon release are different to the reasons why they enjoy it today. The graphics, open world, combat, QTEs and voiced NPS were all very advanced for the time. Today, us fans care more about the immersion and soundtrack because the other factors are more common nowadays. So, I think that whilst they may not have been fully ready for Shenmue as you said, they still enjoyed it for different reasons.

Everyone has very different personal experiences of how Shenmue did at release for consumers, based on friend groups, geographical location and simply luck that the people around them are into slower games; for all you know that hatred for the game was more exclusive to Germany and the Netherlands, rather than the US and UK.

[drunkensailor]

wow. what a bunch of crying. people have worse tastes now? go look up scores of games like Limbo, Brothers, flower, journey, heavy rain, life is strange, the last of us, witcher 3 and what have you.

for the record shenmue 1 got bombarded with terrible review scores by pro's and consumers alike, upon release.

it's clear as hell you are as clueless as anything about current generation gaming or you would not have mentioned call of duty. that game got completely trashed last year for releasing one version to similar to their past efforts. people are more critical than ever and have more diverse taste.

Think of it like this, in many ways gamers have become complacent because of how easy many modern games have become. It's a problem that really began with the fall of the Dreamcast and the decline of arcade gaming in general. Where many developers are now afraid to let a player fail a challenge.

Games like Gone Home are the worst examples of this, pretentious self-congratulatory narratives with almost no gameplay. Although, on the other hand you have games like Dark Souls and Cuphead that once again challenge players with their harsh difficulty, which gamers have responded quite positively too. So it's not all bad. If nothing else it will be interesting to see if Shenmue 3 resonates with the more hardcore crowd.

Thanks for backing me up Kintor. I absolutely agree with all of your posts in this thread!

he isn't backing you up at all if you took the effort of reading what he was actually saying.

[drunkensailor]

nobody takes ign seriously.

I know from german and dutch major magazines rating the game a 7.5 and you guys seem to completely miss my point about consumers rating the game much lower back in the day. the game got a ton of hatred from gamers, who simply were not ready. just like people were not ready for blade runner in 1982 and blade runner 2049 in 2017. shenmue is now almost universally loved but that was not the case at all when shenmue 1 got released.

I remember buying shenmue 1 and the shopkeeper said he had sold 7 games, of which 6 were returned by consumers within the same day and I checked many major retail website fora back then and people hated the game beyond belief. especially the cat segment and "boring" gameplay.

What's with this revisionist history all of a sudden? To claim that people have always secretly hated Shenmue. The only reason that we've gotten this far because of Shenmue's legendary reputation. The original game actually sold quite well on the Dreamcast. It was only Sega's finances at the time that brought an end to the Dreamcast and with it any chances of Shenmue finding a wider audience. Yet even that disastrous turn of events couldn't keep Shenmue down, people kept talking about it, with copies of the game quickly commanding more than retail price on the second-hand market.

duke nukem forever sold a lot. that doesn't say so much and more importantly shenmue was not a system seller. which it should've been had it been successful. I remember being saddened how much hatred it got and how misunderstood it was. it was truly terrible and shenmue 1 did so much damage nobody even cared about shenmue 2 anymore, which showed in it's sales. only the people who liked shenmue 1 at that time bought shenmue 2, which was a number tremendously lower than shenmue 1 with shenmue 2 on xbox being the absolute lowpoint selling about a 100.000 copies compared to 1.5 million shenmue 1 on dreamcast.

[drunkensailor]

I know from german and dutch major magazines rating the game a 7.5 and you guys seem to completely miss my point about consumers rating the game much lower back in the day. the game got a ton of hatred from gamers, who simply were not ready. just like people were not ready for blade runner in 1982 and blade runner 2049 in 2017. shenmue is now almost universally loved but that was not the case at all when shenmue 1 got released.

Interesting. Well, the difficulty lies in the fact that it's near-impossible to find out, today, whether or not the game was met with backlash from consumers at the time. Sure, we may be able to roam old forums and websites, but there were nowhere near as many people using the internet to talk about games at the time, as there are today. Thus, the majority of those people at the time would only really talk about a game on the internet if they really didn't like it, or if they really loved it. Therefore, one can only trust their subjective experiences on this, which isn't the best indicator.

I am a bit young to have played Shenmue upon release, so I understand your point about people not being ready for Shenmue (I ended up loving it without nostalgia). However, with that being said, most of what I have heard from people, predominantly in the UK and US, is that they really enjoyed it at release. I got the feeling that it was completely normal for people to like the game because those who say they hated it at release, say it in such a way as though they were the minority and didn't get what other people were fussed about.

To maybe back up your argument though, some of the reasons why people enjoyed Shenmue upon release are different to the reasons why they enjoy it today. The graphics, open world, combat, QTEs and voiced NPS were all very advanced for the time. Today, us fans care more about the immersion and soundtrack because the other factors are more common nowadays. So, I think that whilst they may not have been fully ready for Shenmue as you said, they still enjoyed it for different reasons.

Everyone has very different personal experiences of how Shenmue did at release for consumers, based on friend groups, geographical location and simply luck that the people around them are into slower games; for all you know that hatred for the game was more exclusive to Germany and the Netherlands, rather than the US and UK.

by the year 2000/2001 pretty much anyone in the western world had internet though and fora were much more popular than they are today in fact since there was no real social media.

[BlueCreeperBoy12]

No one has noticed that Shenmue_Legend is the same person that was messaging billionaires on twitter and asking them to donate 50 grand to Shenmue 3.

Make of that what you will.

[Hyo Razuki]

@Drunkensailor:

I edited a link to my previous post, concerning S1. Maybe you overread it, because I edited it in later. According to Gamerankings, S1 averaged at 89% in professional review scores. That's definitely not being "bombarded with negative reviews".

As for the user reactions, I remember them to having been mostly positve in German gaming communities at the time. To be fair, there were some trolls hating on the game. It also received some flak for not having German subtitles, especially from younger users who couldn't understand English well enough. But other than that, I remember the reactions to be largely favorable.

That said, trolling is as old as the internet itself, so there have always been trolls.

@BlueCreeperBoy12:

I'm not sure how Shenmue_Legend's twitter activity is related to this thread but if he wants to ask billionaires for money to fund the next Shenmue game, I don't see what's bad about it. To be frank, I see a snowball chance in hell of one of those gentlemen ever even coughing up a single cent for Shenmue but on the other hand, Bill Gates has done countless of charity and arts projects he didn't receive any return on investment on. And since S2 was on the original Xbox, which Peter Moore made a pretty big deal of back in the day, there's a chance Bill Gates has even heard of Shenmue.

What's more, S1 and 2, in fact Dreamcast as a whole were funded by a billionaire patron with too much money in his account, who didn't expect anything back. We can only guess why he did it. Maybe he had a soft spot for quality video games? Perhaps he just did it because he could and figured: : "It's my own money, so why the fuck not?".

His name was Isao Okawa and he has passed away around the time of S2's release. You can read up on him on the internet if you like and I think our fellow Dojo member Adam Koralik has made a few YT videos on Okawa-san's involvement with Sega.

To make my point clear again, I think those Twitter posts are a waste of time and I do find them ridiculous (no offense, Shenmue_Legend) but S1 and 2 were funded by a billionaire patron who sadly passed away, so why not try finding a new billionaire patron?

[Abraham_1]

by the year 2000/2001 pretty much anyone in the western world had internet though and fora were much more popular than they are today in fact since there was no real social media..

I don't think so; magazines were the go to place for gaming news and information, not the internet. Yes, everyone had internet, but it was incredibly slow and inconvenient unless you needed it. I don't think it was until at least 2002/3 when posting on forums became popular.

My point was, if there is the possibility that we could uncover plenty of old posts from the years 1999-2000, then we will know how the public reacted. Your comment suggests that it is possible to find this out since many people used forums at the time. If you can find posts from that time period, more power to you.

However, if you can't, it backs up my previous argument that we will never truly know without personal experience. Even if some people posted on forums, it would be a very small minority out of the number of people who purchased Shenmue, far smaller than the number of people who post opinions of games online today. So how would that reflect overall consumer emotion?

[Shenmue_Legend]

No one has noticed that Shenmue_Legend is the same person that was messaging billionaires on twitter and asking them to donate 50 grand to Shenmue 3.

Make of that what you will.

Whatever you say dude.

[Shenmue_Legend]

@Drunkensailor:

I edited a link to my previous post, concerning S1. Maybe you overread it, because I edited it in later. According to Gamerankings, S1 averaged at 89% in professional review scores. That's definitely not being "bombarded with negative reviews".

As for the user reactions, I remember them to having been mostly positve in German gaming communities at the time. To be fair, there were some trolls hating on the game. It also received some flak for not having German subtitles, especially from younger users who couldn't understand English well enough. But other than that, I remember the reactions to be largely favorable.

That said, trolling is as old as the internet itself, so there have always been trolls.

@BlueCreeperBoy12:

I'm not sure how Shenmue_Legend's twitter activity is related to this thread but if he wants to ask billionaires for money to fund the next Shenmue game, I don't see what's bad about it. To be frank, I see a snowball chance in hell of one of those gentlemen ever even coughing up a single cent for Shenmue but on the other hand, Bill Gates has done countless of charity and arts projects he didn't receive any return on investment on. And since S2 was on the original Xbox, which Peter Moore made a pretty big deal of back in the day, there's a chance Bill Gates has even heard of Shenmue.

What's more, S1 and 2, in fact Dreamcast as a whole were funded by a billionaire patron with too much money in his account, who didn't expect anything back. We can only guess why he did it. Maybe he had a soft spot for quality video games? Perhaps he just did it because he could and figured: : "It's my own money, so why the fuck not?".

His name was Isao Okawa and he has passed away around the time of S2's release. You can read up on him on the internet if you like and I think our fellow Dojo member Adam Koralik has made a few YT videos on Okawa-san's involvement with Sega.

To make my point clear again, I think those Twitter posts are a waste of time and I do find them ridiculous (no offense, Shenmue_Legend) but S1 and 2 were funded by a billionaire patron who sadly passed away, so why not try finding a new billionaire patron?

What? No! Damn, if only Isao Okawa was still alive. I bet he would have funded Shenmue III which would obviously be amazing! Too bad there aren't more people like him in the world

[Centrale]

What? No! Damn, if only Isao Okawa was still alive. I bet he would have funded Shenmue III which would obviously be amazing! Too bad there aren't more people like him in the world

What's more, S1 and 2, in fact Dreamcast as a whole were funded by a billionaire patron with too much money in his account, who didn't expect anything back. We can only guess why he did it. Maybe he had a soft spot for quality video games?

Isao Okawa wasn't just some random billionaire art patron who liked video games. He was involved with Sega (first via CSK Holdings) starting in 1984, ultimately becoming Sega's president in 1999. He invested his own money to keep Sega from going bankrupt.

[Shenmue_Legend]

What? No! Damn, if only Isao Okawa was still alive. I bet he would have funded Shenmue III which would obviously be amazing! Too bad there aren't more people like him in the world

What's more, S1 and 2, in fact Dreamcast as a whole were funded by a billionaire patron with too much money in his account, who didn't expect anything back. We can only guess why he did it. Maybe he had a soft spot for quality video games?

Isao Okawa wasn't just some random billionaire art patron who liked video games. He was involved with Sega (first via CSK Holdings) starting in 1984, ultimately becoming Sega's president in 1999. He invested his own money to keep Sega from going bankrupt.

He's a hero! Japanese people are the most kindest and best (excluding the idiots at Sega of course!). Do you know any other rich person that is involved with Sega?

[sutoji]

He's a hero! Japanese people are the most kindest and best (excluding the idiots at Sega of course!). Do you know any other rich person that is involved with Sega?

Yu Suzuki thinking: "I lost Sega with Shenmue 1 and 2, but I'm writing autographs for my fans, I am a success bigger than Sega with Shenmue 3!

On Topic: Shenmue 3 could very well end up getting similar review scores (on metacritic) to Shenmue 2. This is because if you look at the critic consensus it is usually generally positive and there could be slight similarity from the press, reviewers (media in general) when it releases. I for one believe that the game isn't gonna tank so hard ending with lower than at least 50% of review scores. As I mentioned before the beginning of the release is crucial because everybody will be looking into the game pretty much at the same time so that's what justifies these scores. I obviously do not care what is rated for Shenmue 3 as it holds a great score in my heart but it will be fun to see and I will be paying attention to it from media sources such as IGN, Gamespot etc.

[Shenmue_Legend]

He's a hero! Japanese people are the most kindest and best (excluding the idiots at Sega of course!). Do you know any other rich person that is involved with Sega?

Yu Suzuki thinking: "I lost Sega with Shenmue 1 and 2, but I'm writing autographs for my fans, I am a success bigger than Sega with Shenmue 3!

On Topic: Shenmue 3 could very well end up getting similar review scores (on metacritic) to Shenmue 2. This is because if you look at the critic consensus it is usually generally positive and there could be slight similarity from the press, reviewers (media in general) when it releases. I for one believe that the game isn't gonna tank so hard ending with lower than at least 50% of review scores. As I mentioned before the beginning of the release is crucial because everybody will be looking into the game pretty much at the same time so that's what justifies these scores. I obviously do not care what is rated for Shenmue 3 as it holds a great score in my heart but it will be fun to see and I will be paying attention to it from media sources such as IGN, Gamespot etc.

10/10. You heard it here first!

[BlueCreeperBoy12]

Bill Gates has done countless of charity and arts projects he didn't receive any return on investment on. And since S2 was on the original Xbox, which Peter Moore made a pretty big deal of back in the day, there's a chance Bill Gates has even heard of Shenmue.

Now you mention it, Bill Gates would probably be the most likely person to donate a large amount to the development of Shenmue 3. However, that doesn't at all make me think that that will ever happen. But yes, it is his money and he can do what he wants with it. If he did donate something above 1 million I'd eat one of my hats and film it.

[drunkensailor]

What? No! Damn, if only Isao Okawa was still alive. I bet he would have funded Shenmue III which would obviously be amazing! Too bad there aren't more people like him in the world

What's more, S1 and 2, in fact Dreamcast as a whole were funded by a billionaire patron with too much money in his account, who didn't expect anything back. We can only guess why he did it. Maybe he had a soft spot for quality video games?

Isao Okawa wasn't just some random billionaire art patron who liked video games. He was involved with Sega (first via CSK Holdings) starting in 1984, ultimately becoming Sega's president in 1999. He invested his own money to keep Sega from going bankrupt.

He's a hero! Japanese people are the most kindest and best (excluding the idiots at Sega of course!). Do you know any other rich person that is involved with Sega?

reading your post you are either 12 years old or have the brain of one. It makes sense now.