Kickstarter Update 51: Poll Results & Shenmue.link revamp

[Spaghetti]

What blows my mind is a lack of response. It's nearly been 24 hours since this just exploded. Nothing from AJ, Ali, or Cedric.

They're probably figuring out a damage control plan, but honestly, once it started going as bad as it did they should have just put a "u-turn forthcoming due to strong fan reaction" update out and poured sand on the fire.

[Kiske]

Speaking of (needed) damage control...

http://gazettereview.com/2016/01/shenmu ... l-backers/

https://twitter.com/TeamYu/status/684027797845708800

https://twitter.com/ShenmueForever/stat ... 8901865473

https://twitter.com/ShenmueForever/stat ... 9532996609

https://twitter.com/ShenmueForever/stat ... 7254455296

They need (Shenmue 3 team) to release a statement and clarify this rewards situation for paypal backers ASAP!
Twitter is full of erroneous assumptions about the decision made after the polls. This is such a mess...

[Yokosuka]

Fortunately they are only newbie sites. The poll significance is still pretty obvious, you just need to open the kickstarter official page to read the exclusive rewards. I sent a suggestion with your links to AJ that they should list the items to make things clear.

[Reprise]

It's unfortunate that some people are too stupid to understand what this decision means. Knee jerk, emotive outcry everywhere... smh.

I'm talking about the people thinking they're not getting their rewards or that they're taking all the rewards down. Ugh. Don't people have basic reading comprehension skills anymore?

[Yokosuka]

When you have invested hundreds of dollars in Paypal and you're trying to understand the overreaction plus given the AJ background, I think you can naturally expect the worse despite what you have seemed to read although it's still some stupidity. Whereas the journalists (paid or volunteers) have no excuses for me.

[ShenSun]

I find their interpretation of the poll results dumb, but what frustrates me the most is 90%+ of the time, they are the cause of the negativity surrounding Shenmue 3.

Im gonna go ahead and say it, something needs to be done about this company sooner rather than later. There's been too many mistakes and errors that have had a negative impact on Shenmue.

Im 100% certain the KS could have reached 7 - 8 million if AJ didn't continuously screw things up. I mean we've turned a blind eye several times to their nonsense and given them chance after chance, but lets be real, this will happen again and again, im certain of that.

Research past media reports and analysis videos and you'll see they are the cause of most of the problems.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1121020

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These guys are getting paid good money to do a relatively easy and amazing job in its own right, but they still fuck up. They are responsible for media relations, communication and the campaign itself, yet they make no attempt to promote the campaign, no attempt to gather further support, no attempt to communicate or make exclusive deals with media outlets to gain further interest, etc, etc.

We, the fans have done everything since Shenmue 3 has been announced. We've promoted, we've used our youtube friends to spread the word, we've created new campaigns, made exclusive deals with companies such as first four figures, Corey Marshall, etc etc etc. Some of us have been keeping the dream alive over on other message boards and damage controlling like crazy to clear up doubts and confusion. Doubts and confusion that shouldn't have been there in the first place.

You have to ask yourself, why are we doing everything??? We all have jobs, study etc, yet we still find time to continuously push Shenmue 3 for the greater good, for free i might add. It comes from passion and Love. These guys dont do anything, and its their full time job????

Awesome Japan clearly have no real interest in the project. The sad fact is, they'll be able to take full credit for the most successful KS ever and they didnt do fuck all to help.

Maybe this situation is a lot more complex, but as a backer who has placed around $1000 into the project, im unhappy with the way things are going. Personally, if i was apart of the project in a more executive manner, like cedric or Sony, Id fire these guys as soon as possible, or pay their contract off, so that they could be replaced by a more competent team.

#SaveShenmuefromAwesomeJapan

[Kiske]

Apparently people have very basic reading comprehension skills... and often the same people just stop reading right after the (misleading) title of a news.

Then tere is the translations made by non english speaking medias... found at least two italian gaming website (multiplayer.it is not exactly a newbie in italy) and one french website reporting wrong news.

...And finally there are the clickbaits sites like this one:
http://segmentnext.com/2016/01/04/shenm ... l-backers/

[alexironaek]

If i am not wrong AJ i also responsible for shipping the rewards.....Imagine when the time finally comes and you are waiting for the precious rewards to come to your home...you are thinking "finally after all those years , any day now the package should arrive" and then you see your neighbor wearing Ryo's jacket and a shenmue 3 shirt DAMN YOU AJ!!!

[Reprise]

When you have invested hundreds of dollars in Paypal and you're trying to understand the overreaction plus given the AJ background, I think you can naturally expect the worse despite what you have seemed to read although it's still some stupidity. Whereas the journalists (paid or volunteers) have no excuses for me.

Oh I get that, but still, the answer is as simple as spending 1 minute realising that without an apology email and immediate refund, The Shenmue 3 team would be liable for fraud (and the fact that they would never promise rewards they may withdraw) and 2 minutes spent calmy researching or reading the KS page.

[Reprise]

If i am not wrong AJ i also responsible for shipping the rewards.....Imagine when the time finally comes and you are waiting for the precious rewards to come to your home...you are thinking "finally after all those years , any day now the package should arrive" and then you see your neighbor wearing Ryo's jacket and a shenmue 3 shirt DAMN YOU AJ!!!

Well, having backed the OUYA and Pier Solar for the Dreamcast I can forewarn you that shipping will probably be very slow....

Just to give you an idea, my OUYA arrived AFTER it was already being sold in shops (it took months to come) And they shipped the second controller separately, 2 months after the OUYA had arrived.

I think those who are new to Kickstarters should be warned. As small companies who funded projects through crowd funding, logistics and shipping thousands and thousands of products is not their strong point.

[Kiske]

If i am not wrong AJ i also responsible for shipping the rewards.....Imagine when the time finally comes and you are waiting for the precious rewards to come to your home...you are thinking "finally after all those years , any day now the package should arrive" and then you see your neighbor wearing Ryo's jacket and a shenmue 3 shirt DAMN YOU AJ!!!

Well, having backed the OUYA and Pier Solar for the Dreamcast I can forewarn you that shipping will probably be very slow....

Just to give you an idea, my OUYA arrived AFTER it was already being sold in shops (it took months to come) And they shipped the second controller separately, 2 months after the OUYA had arrived.

I think those who are new to Kickstarters should be warned. As small companies who funded projects through crowd funding, logistics and shipping thousands and thousands of products is not their strong point.

I have no doubt I will buy my Shenmue 3 copy (probably digital but hopefully physical) day one... waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay before my physical reward copy arrives at home from AJ

The positive thing is that probably, 70'000 backers will have to buy a copy anyway if they want to play Shenmue 3 before Shenmue 4 comes out. This will help the game sales for sure! ( )

[James Brown]

The positive thing is that probably, 70'000 backers will have to buy a copy anyway if they want to play Shenmue 3 before Shenmue 4 comes out. This will help the game sales for sure! ( )

Yeah i'm already down for PC copy and 2 PS4 copies, but i'm definately gonna buy it digitally midnight of the release!

If i am not wrong AJ i also responsible for shipping the rewards.....Imagine when the time finally comes and you are waiting for the precious rewards to come to your home...you are thinking "finally after all those years , any day now the package should arrive" and then you see your neighbor wearing Ryo's jacket and a shenmue 3 shirt DAMN YOU AJ!!!

Oh god...I hope they don't stick all their "works of art" from the campaign all over the merch and that horrible new Shenmue 3 font they're using. I want the art book and capsule toys etc to be professionally made as though you'd have bought this merch direct from Sega or something. I can just imagine receiving the box for the capsule toys and it's covered in those horrible hand drawn clip art looking chai shenhua and ryo on a forklift truck images :(

[James Brown]

Haha don't worry, guys. 1) Everything will be produced professionally. Fanta Joel isn't about to whip out his crayons and hand draw everything himself. Awesome Japan are just responsible for the Kickstarter side of things. 2) You can also be rest assured that Fanta Joel won't be sitting in the middle of a warehouse flabbergasted and inundated by huge printouts of addresses scattered across the floor. They'll be outsourcing logistics and shipping externally. Although, you just need to worry about the fact Awesome Japan will be passing on the information to whichever company(ies) they use...

[ShenSun]

Flippant comment: Maybe we should start a petition to make Ys Net fire Awesome Japan from being their PR team...

100% this: viewtopic.php?f=5&p=1126974#p1126974

[Kintor]

So, no official response from Awesome Japan yet. Fortunately a lot of the major clickbait websites don't seem to have noticed this story yet. If the usual suspects decide to attack Shenmue again, before Awesome Japan has a damage control statement in place, then it will be that much harder to prevent this mess from snowballing further.

With that said...

The timing of this announcement, however mishandled, might still work in our favour. Certain websites are determined to hate Shenmue 3 but those same websites have a notoriously fickle attention span. All we need is the clickbait websites to fixate on another target.

To that end, the pre-orders for the consumer version of the Oculus Rift will become available later this week. As much I love VR technology I do have to concede that clickbait websites seem obsessed with attacking any VR company, especially ever since Palmer Lucky featured on that infamous TIME magazine cover. Suffice to say, there is every possibility that the worst of the websites will forget all about Awesome Japan's blunder and instead focus on the attention surrounding the Oculus Rift.

It's not a pretty solution but given Awesome Japan's slow reaction times coincidental timing at the Oculus Rift's expense might be our best way to minimise any further damage.