It's painfully obvious - like someone else already said, if we even just had the same PR people who did the Kickstarter for Igarashi's Bloodstained, we would, for most intents and purposes, probably already be closing in on the 11 million + mark. As it stands right now, we probably won't even hit the final dollar amount that the Bloodstained Kickstarter reached..

while i generally agree they are fudging the kickstarter, it was never going to hit 10/11 million. No video game has ever gotten close to this on kickstarter, especially not a sequel for a series of games that came out 14 years ago. With a proper company running the kickstarter we would have easily beaten Bloodstained and exceeded 5.5 million (probably 6 - 6.5 million). But 10 million was never a possibility.

With the way Awesome Japan are running this kickstarter we should be ecstatic with anything between 4-4.5 million.

Oh really? I must have been looking somewhere else then cause last I checked the kick starter is doing quite well actually. If it ever got hurt to begin with its thanks to shitty journalism, x-box fanboys shit talking, and a general lack of understanding of how businesses work on the part of many in the gaming community. We are at 3.75 mil with 3 weeks left to go. A big push is coming on Friday with 30 on the 3rd, probably a lot more big investments with the next round of reward tiers, and of course the last minute bump. All in all it looks like Shenmue is on track to beat Bloodstained. Could the KS have been better, maybe. But it's doing relatively great and thus far there's nothing I can really pin on Awesome Japan as having done wrong. The twitch interview included which everyone is taking waaay to seriously. If there's a problem anywhere, its with the people on this forum and this thread in particular, who are being unsatisfiable and entitled cynical assholes who go around harassing and mocking undeserving people.

Yea this sort of harassment and lampooning is super shitty and incredibly immature. If the mods don't care to take this sort of garbage down then I suppose they won't mind my comment. Go fuck yourselves. Are you adults? That's embarrassing. I can understand why the gaming community has a lot of people who pull shit like this. It's filled with 30 year old virgins and cynical teenage twerps who rely on escapism to make up for their pathetic lives and think its ok to try to humiliate others instead of looking in the mirror at their own mediocrity. A little clue, its not ok. Dude gave me quite the laugh but he just seemed like a harmless hyped Shenmue fan. Like a kid in a toy store and I don't blame him for that. He made what would have otherwise been a pretty dry and boring 50 minutes kind of entertaining. This is why the gaming community is so pathetic. They are just games and you take this shit waaay to seriously. The kickstarter is doing fine btw. If you want to take something serious don't watch gaming news, watch world news and instead of bashing harmless and powerless individuals go full ham on corrupt politicians and corporations. Spend the time making the world a better place instead of harassing insignificant people you worthless twerps. Fuk.

edit: Sorry 30 year old virgins, I didn't mean to bring you into this.

There might be a lot of valid criticism towards the AJ team, but I do really hope no one is attacking Joel on a personal level in his social media. Harassment certainly won't bring us more backers to support the campaign.

that is 100% not ok and also hope people are not doing this, we should be directing factual criticism to the company, not an individual.

Do you know what this thread is? It's nothing but a huge harassment piece of Joel Tess. To your earlier reply, I'll grant you that the KS may not be on the optimistic trajectory I put it on, although the fans aren't really helping that by the way they are acting. If I never played Shenmue I wouldn't donate either giving the sorry state of its fan base. All that being said I don't think that has anything to do with AJ or Joel Tess but rather the shitty press coverage. Now it may be the case that a Japanese based company isn't as well suited to handling the PR shit storm going down in an entirely different country, I wouldn't doubt it. I don't think they were ready for it, nor could they have been I mean they have to wait on the sidelines for Sony to get its story straight for their own damage control before preceding with YSnet damage control. There's a new line of bullshit coming off the presses left and right. That's a really hard position to be in, the whole situation sucks and it doesn't help when their own cannibalistic fan base starts to turn on them too. We should be supportive the whole way to show other people that this is something they should be getting into as well.

i think we will scrape past 6 million but it'll bounce above and below for ages ... but just make it in time
I don't want to be that guy but...

I hope you prove me wrong, I really do... I would love to "insert foot into mouth" on this occasion, but I'd be willing to bet actual cash we won't finish ahead of bloodstained.

\:D/