I'll join everybody in this. I promised myself never to have hope again, but I'll make this one last exception.

I don't see it as that big of an issue, tbh. I didn't max out my credit card, but I gave what I was willing to give and what I could afford. Now that might be $100 for one person and $10,000 for another. As long as you are able to repay the spendings on your credit card, I guess it's fine.

I had made plans to buy a new phone in September which is not gonna happen now because of Shenmue 3 and I'll have to put off my new phone plans for the time being. But that's fine with me. It was worth it to me. So if others want to max out their credit cards or bank accounts I don't think it's "stupid" to do so. It's their own money and it's not an emotional decision imho. Those people had an entire month to think their Kickstarter contribution over and could have bailed out at any time.

Also, I do agree with you on the fact that it's "sad", Yu has to ask the fans for money to fund S3, but "wrong"? No, I don't think so. Shenmue 3 has been put on halt for 14 years, Sega don't want to finance it which is understandable. Now Yu has been trying fo find an outside investor for many years, which was not successful, so I guess Kickstarter and Paypal was the only way it could have been done.

So this is exactly what i'm talking about...i don't know how much you donated personally but i'm not sure how you can say maxing out credit cards or donating $1000's isn't an emotional decision when it isn't exactly an investment that you can expect any return on...you are literally giving away money because you/we are desperate to see the continuation of our favorite game series...and for that YU doesn't deserve our =D>

I'm not against the entire idea of kickstarter or having pseudo pre-order's to guarantee demand for a title before they spend millions and years developing something,but Yu knows that the shenmue fan base is relativity small and having stretch goals that reach $11+ million is a total P*** take,higher than any other kick starter and stating the game will not stretch his complete vision unless we pony up such funds... :shock:

I'm kind of with you there. I donated $600, which might not seem a lot to some of the more extreme backers (or the complete nutjobs :D), but it's already an amount that my friends and family are having a hard time comprehending/relating to. I'm a student, living off a 12-hours-a-week job, paying study fees, (shared) flat, health insurance, phone, food, you name it. If that decision wasn't emotional, than I don't know what is. :lol: At the beginning I only planned to donate $100, which already raised some eyebrows. In hindsight I've got to say the following about this:

It's 100% an emotional decision. Some of the motivating factors behind this were mentioned in Gamespot's "How Did Shenmue 3 Raise $6.3 Million?" video, like "the fear of missing out", stuff like that. The effect of a one month Kickstarter campaign is not that people are having more time to think stuff over. It's a lot of time to donate even more, to let the hype grow. The closer the closing date gets, the more people will feel urged to raise the contribution they already made. It's only this one chance after all, so it's got to be all or nothing. That's how it feels, and it's also partly true.
While watching the Kickstarter for "Red Ash", having a look at the comments section every now and then, I noticed one thing: They all acted and sounded 1:1 like us, it was exactly the same kind of thing happening all over again. A relatively small group of people going totally nuts about something that no-one else really cares about or can relate to. "Why would they be this hyped for a dubious campaign for some crap-looking game like that?" I asked myself, realizing the next moment that I was looking at us , from an outside view, concluding that we're all idiots. :lol: I'm half joking here of course.

But I especially agree with one thing you wrote:

but Yu knows that the shenmue fan base is relativity small and having stretch goals that reach $11+ million is a total P*** take,higher than any other kick starter and stating the game will not stretch his complete vision unless we pony up such funds... :shock:

This is once again Yu floating somewhere out of this world and reality, this is part of what killed the old SEGA. It's too much. It might be his dream, but it's not really fair towards us fans or anyone. What if we would have reached those $11.000.000? You can always improve a product by investing even more, so why should it have stopped there? Initially it was $10.000.000 for a "true open world game".

That said, I'm really, really, really glad Shenmue III is happening, there's no game or other entertainment product I'm looking forward to with more joy (allthough Warner's DC Cinematic Universe comes quite close) - but I'm absolutely done funding it. I'm still feeling the financial consequences of my $600 donation and will still be feeling them for more than another month. If I could travel back, would I donate the $600 again? I'm not quite sure. Probably yes, maybe no. The $100 definitely, absolutely. But there's really no reason to do more and to obsess so much about stuff like this. It's time to enjoy the wait for the game I've (and you guys have) always wished for the most.