This is well deserved and very moving to read/see.

Johnny come lateleys like me who always passionately loved the games but never thought there was any point in participating in such communities as this one once the industry appeared to orphan the series, owe everything to those of you who have been truly active in the last 14 years. Without you, none of this would be happening right now, and I'm so grateful.

Toward the beginning of the campaign I sent an email to the channels Maximillian Dood/Yo Videogames asking for their support.

Matt just uploaded:

to me, the free battles were the real meat of the game - but what made them so enjoyable was the buildup and detective stuff (which of course were wonderful and immersive in their own right) which surrounded the fights

the fights themselves, especially since they were somewhat uncommon, became extremely exciting by punctuating the story elements

See, i know i am probably in the minority here, but the free battles were my least exciting bits of the game. I prefer detective work, exploring, mini games, QTE sequences and cut scenes. The free battles aere just OK to me. Like the 70 man battle, or the Beverly Hills Wharf fiasco, or the black suits in the Yellow Head Building. I could leave most of that.

One more good reason to enhance the combat system, right ? Apart for VS fighting fans, Shenmue battle system is hard to handle smoothly while for example Virtua Fighter 5 is much more accessible and pleasing without sacrifice the gameplay depth.

ElephantStone wrote: Shame the comments are already a shit show.

Tried to correct a lot of people, but it's basically falling on deaf ears with these 12 year old trolls.

Yea good one. Make a topic even suggesting something like this again and you will be warned.

Sadly, while in supporting the campaign itself I tend to be boundlessly optimistic, when it comes to the video game industry itself, I take a more pessimistic view. I can't assert that there's not any truth to this of course, and I find myself HOPING you're absolutely right. But allow me to lay out my fears.

Yu Suzuki is unquestionably a genius of video game design and an innovator and visionary. However... with all deference to his genius and all the love in the world for his creations... I must concede that it has been a long, long time since he made anything. Let alone anything the magnitude of a Shenmue. And what he's best known for, at least from an industry standpoint, are two commercial failures that ended up going grossly over budget.

That makes it hard to secure funding as it is. But then on top of that, you have to consider what Shenmue itself is. A 14 year old, highly slow paced adventure game with strong martial arts themes, and a hyper-detailed world featuring quasi-life-sim elements. That may sound amazing to those of us who love it, but it doesn't scream "mass market potential" to publishers and business partners. Not in 2015. The landscape, frankly, has changed dramatically.

So you've got several factors that make securing funding quite challenging. And then you've got the fact that the potential audience for your product, even if you CAN get it off the ground, may be quite small indeed. That's a massive risk. You find an angel donor of sorts in Sony, and you secure some limited funding from them. But it's clear they aren't willing to commit to such an unproven, massive financial risk. So you end up with a huge budget shortfall.

So what do you do? You play it safe. You come up with a Plan A, and a Plan B. Plan A: Set a minimum realistic goal so that you can, almost no matter what, at least continue to tell the story in some way, shape, or form. I believe that's what he meant by "Story oriented Shenmue," and by saying that at the most rudimentary funding level, "This will be the STORY you have been waiting for." I do believe that was a literal statement. As in, at $2 million, that's ALL we'd get.

Plan B: Come up with some rudimentary design goals that would at least flesh the game out as much as the first Shenmue if you get even halfway to them, so that it could stand up at least to that legacy, if not to the second game. But then at the same time, also go for broke and create a "pipe dream" set of goals that if somehow, some way get funded, will result in the ultimate fulfillment of your vision.

That way if you reach Plan A, you at least have something to show for it, some way to continue the story. If you make it half way to Plan B, you've at least got a GOOD game, a decent Shenmue game that you can still pack full of content and detail and make people feel they've played a game at least on part with the first Shenmue. And if you make if ALL THE WAY to plan B, then you've got the whole shebang, and the true Shenmue game people have been waiting for. Hence, "the full on Shenmue experience you have dreamed of," if we reach 10 million.

It would be wonderful if all of this was some brilliant marketing subterfuge on his part. I wouldn't feel at all deceived. On the contrary, I'd be overjoyed! But I seriously doubt this is the case. Given the issues they've had with Awesome Japan and how poor that company's track record is, given the insane level of the stretch goals, and given the generally poorly implemented nature of some of the campaign (not all of it by any means!) I really do feel they're desperately strapped for cash even with Sony and others' aid. And that the Kickstarter really is transparently exactly what they estimate they need to make the things they say they can at each stretch goal.

Which is why it's soooo frustrating and lamentable to me to see the campaign taken out of context, misconstrued, and battered in the press and the rumor mill. Because I feel like they really are just struggling to fulfill an artistic vision we've waited almost two decades for, and all anyone can do is talk about why it's not necessary or not needed. I feel the complete opposite is true.

As is almost always the case though... I hope I'm wrong. And I hope we get a robust PayPal campaign after the KS ends.

I'm not personally panicking. We're certainly close to the $5 million and the campaign is in top 10 most successful of all time (and second game only to Bloodstained). It's all good

Just hope we top the $5M mark. It could be close.

Does anyone remember that fight in Shenmue 2 on top of Yellow Head Building when Dou Niu is running toward Ryo with 400 lbs. of force behind him? This is the climax of the Shenmue story thus far. Ryo has one last chance and takes it. He delivers the final counter elbow assault to Dou Niu.

http://www.30onthe3rd.com/images/dounui.jpg

With that one blow the next phase of his journey can continue without interference.

We are on top of that roof right now with the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter. This campaign is our Dou Niu. In order to give Yu Suzuki the chance to make the best Shenmue 3 possible we have to deliver that blow.

As I’ve said many times before, if you’ve donated to this Kickstarter you are a Shenmue saint. If you can squeeze out a little more from your budget great! If not, no worries, you've done your part and I know Yu is grateful. But if you’re holding out for PayPal, don’t! We have one last chance to make this happen. Don’t be deceived into assuming PayPal will happen. It very well could become a reality after the Kickstarter. But we just don’t know. All we know for sure is this Kickstarter ends July 17th. It all comes down to that day: The Final Blow.

Here is our new campaign logo:
http://www.30onthe3rd.com/images/tfb_logo.jpg
So spread the word far and wide. This is a critical period at end of the campaign when decisive action is needed. Pledge or upgrade your pledge NOW! - or possibly lose your chance forever! The quality and scale of Shenmue 3 is dependent on the Kickstarter’s overall success. The fate of Shenmue is in OUR hands now. Make your dreams come true!
#SaveShenmue #TheFinalBlow

EDIT
The website http://www.30onthe3rd.com/finalblow is now live! Let me know if you have any translations or corrections. I'll try to get the various timezone times up ASAP.

Yeah, I considered that too, although the KS ends Friday at 18.51hrs Pacific Time, which for 90% of the world is plenty late as the US West Coast is behind the rest of the Americas / Europe / world (except Hawaii). In Europe it'd actually be the 18th by that time and even for the West Coast it's reasonably late to allow people to remember. But, to be safe it could be made the 16th --- and let the 17th take the spill.


Yeah, I don't think we should concentrate on a specific time to donate. We need to just push the last day or two.


I do think "$30 on the 3rd" owed a lot of its success to its specific date; it focused people. I like your idea of a guide to upping pledges, I just wonder if a "reminder" of a deadline is strong enough motivation for something called "The Final Blow" (as Himuro said, Kickstarter will be reminding people anyway).

I'm in complete agreement with you. $30 on the 3rd is only considered a huge success because of the already established day thunderclap day and with the announcement of the physical PS4 reward. So I don't take credit at all for the enormous haul the 3rd brought in. But I'm still very happy with my $30 on the 3rd campaign.

Fuck you Kuchera. At least there's positive Shenmue news in the air now.

I'm just grateful the game is being made. Couldn't care less if the kickstarter is run badly. As long as the game has a decent budget that's all I care about. I can only pledge 1800 dollars and might increase on the last day but I would like to say is think of this as more like a Shenmue 3 charity where what you get back doesn't really matter. The rewards for me are just a bonus.

I have a similar point of view and sentiment for Kickstarter projects. I look at my pledge number as the max I can donate or contribute to make this happen. I do appreciate that they are offering me something in return like credits in the game and my name 1 or 2 places, but I also understand where backers can get confused and frustrated because it seems like the higher they donate, the fewer things they get credited or given back.

For example some of those new technique scroll tiers allow for the contributor to get exclusive (or seemingly exclusive) in-game content that someone pledging twice as much cannot get. Not only that but they also get to put their name in the hotel guest registry which was exclusive to the $1500 tier, $4000 tier, and some $10,000 tiers. Now, in terms of the $1500 tier, all that it has going for it is that those backers can have a signed photo of themselves in the game (nobody knows how that will look exactly). And the reasons why have not really been given or explained. And that's where it gets a bit murky and disheartening for backers that are pledging 4 figures for something that they deeply care about.

Most Kickstarter campaigns seem to keep things simple by using the logic that the more you pledge, the more cool stuff you get because "we, the people asking for your backing, appreciate that you're willing to throw that much of your hard earned money at us." And what I've observed is that if new tiers are added, they are usually focused on the lower end of the tier list, and that is probably to encourage the larger number of backers to bump up their pledges a bit. In the case of this Kickstarter, it seems that they are almost doing the opposite, they keep adding tiers on the high-middle and high-end of the list. And in the way they have shaped these newest tiers, it seems to have led to confusion across all backers at the various tier levels.

What would help is if we had better explanations and visuals for some of these items so the fans can see why they would want these / why they should have them as long-time fans of Suzuki-san's and co.'s work.