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Sony is officially helping with funding and development with Shenmue 3

Salsa

Member
I mean, there was a meeting where someone explicitely went "lets mention that we have nothing to do with this in case it sucks / doesnt reach its goal even tho we signed this thing days ago and are set to give X money"

that's clear to me

otherwise Boyes would have been even more cryptic about the nature of the deal and say nothing on stage
 
All those really mad about this, I got somewhere you can vent your concerns.

Salt-FlatsWendover-009.jpg
 

WolvenOne

Member
Paying into the fund doesn't hurt, even now. Sony may be helping, but we don't know how much exactly. Not only that, but the more funding available the better off the ShenMue developers are going to be.

Besides, if Sony is using Kickstarter to measure interest, then they're probably using it to determine the amount of funding they'll provide as well.
 

KazenY2J

Member
The people in this thread make me so depressed about the gaming community in 2015.

What is happening here is basically a gaming miracle.

The attempt among certain "concerned" individuals to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory... just astounding.
Right?
Something like this that seemed impossible years ago is finally happening and people complain.
 

Ithil

Member
Sony / Sega: "Thanks for the free focus test / development cost discount."

*proceed to tape their dicks up in $100 bills*

Enjoy your fruit of the loom quality merch, capsule toy or your name credited in a thirty minute long credits sequence nobody will watch

I'll also enjoy my copy of Shenmue 3....
 

JP

Member
Really don't understand the complaints about a major publisher contributing to the funding of the game, it;'s not as if when Shenmue 3 releases that it's going to belong to Yu Suzuki. Shenmue is still going to be wholly owned by Sega when it's released and they're going to be making money from it in some way, whether they get that money from sales or whether they get it from Sony.

It's almost as if some thought that Sega had given the game to Yu Suzuki as a gift.
 

diggler41

Member
I'm reading half of these complaints in Shawn Elliots "Ralphie" voice from GFW radio.

The game I have been waiting for more than half my life is being made. They could be using black magic for all I care as long as it's being made.
 
Dont understand people not liking using kickstarter even if there is a publishers to help fund games.

Gamers get the chanse to get the game often both cheaper and faster (alpha, beta...). If they want extras they can pay for that like soundtrack, toys and even dinner with the director which is (from what I know) never a possibility otherwise.

And it is not like the money above the goal is supposed to just go into the pockets of the developer but add more content. Hard to prove exactly how the money is handled but if you dont trust the dev no need to fund it just buy it when it is done.
 
Do you know how mad people would be if you cancelled the Kickstarter? The whole point is to invest in the game now to get a return on investment later. I backed it off the notion that this game will retail for above $30 when it is released. If they were to cancel this, it would be a betrayal of that investment. Nobody is forced to contribute, and if they don't believe they're getting a fair return on investment they can cancel their contribution.

A Kickstarter is never an investment. You are not investing money and gaining a stake in the outcome. You are donating.
 

Ocaso

Member
Gio Corsi quote:

"Absolutely. First off, Shenmue III was the number one ask on the whole #BuildingTheList campaign, so when that first started, right off the bat, 'Shenmue III, Shenmue III, Shenmue III.' So this has been an ask for as long as I've been at PlayStation. And we met with Suzuki-san at GDC last year and we started the long road to try and figure out how we were going to get this whole thing made.

"We said, 'the only way this is going to happen is if fans speak up,' and we thought Kickstarter was the perfect place to do this. So we set a goal for $2 million and if the fans come in and back it, then absolutely, we're going to make this a reality. So, Sony and PlayStation are definitely a partner in this game, and it's going to be run through Third Party Productions with Ys Net. We're going to get the game done. We're going to be partners the whole way, and we're really excited to see this thing come out in a couple of years."

The fact that Sony is backing this makes it feel all the more tangible. Awesome.
 
Kickstarter is for games to be crowd funded that wouldn't have happened otherwise.

Shenmue III is a game that hasn't "happened" for like 15 years. Sony got on board only because KS made it possible for fans to subsidize the game. Otherwise they, like every other publisher on the industry for the past 15 years, would've passed on the project.

This is a problem how? The game wasn't going to happen otherwise, as Sony wasn't going to be footing the whole bill. I think people are just being childishly salty about this just because it happened under the Sony banner at E3.
 
It sounds like this kickstarters upsets everyone but the actual backers of the prject, which isn't usually how these kickstarter stories go...

I'm a backer, and I am upset that there was no transparency involved.

Like I said earlier and someone else mentioned, when Nintendo saved Bayonetta, did they come up with a faux kickstarter to gauge interest? No, they just made it for the fans. No shady business. We have a clear precedent here with a company handling this kind of situation the right way, and we have today with a company handling it the wrong way.

People should have known from the beginning that they were just gauging interest.
 
For a AAA game? You think a game of this size has any chance on Kickstarter!? This isn't a fricken Castlevania successor.

You guys are just being ridiculous

I think it has been proven that niche games are able to be fully community funded. Even those with "AAA"-like production values.

Though, I have no idea what it would cost to make a modern shemue. Probably more than I am thinking.
 

Velcro Fly

Member
On the one hand it's glorified preorders paying for the game

On the other hand it's pretty gross using fans this way when Sony was going to fund it anyway
 
Wouldn't TLG be considered a risk?

Absolutely. It probably won't ever make back its development costs if prior Team ICO games are anything to go by. It has also been lingering and getting it out puts development at an end and also buys them good will.

It'll not sell close to what anyone would like it to. Sony know that.
 

Lucc

Member
if anything, as a costumer I'm feeling better pledging money on this project since a major publisher is behind them.

I do see that it might be unfair towards other developers whose income comes solely from kickstarter though.

Other than that I don't see anything wrong with how this is handled.

I guess time till tell how this is affecting kickstarter as a whole and how much creative freedom they have with the project.

I'm also happy about how open they are with this. I'm pretty sure there have been quite a few who had support from a major publisher but never said a word.
 

Withnail

Member
What's shitty about it isn't so much the seeming duplicitous nature of it, but rather how Sony benefits from it.

If there was no Kickstarter and Sony funded it 100%, each consumer is only going to spend whatever the retail cost of the game, say $60.

But how the pricing is tiered, there's already been 9,385 backers that paid more than retail for the game.

People were under the assumption that backing the game would go directly into the pockets of the developers who needed the funding, but were not also getting funding elsewhere. "Yu Suzuki needs money to make a masterpiece, here's $10k or $300!"

Let Sony foot the fucking bill, they are flush with cash. They could give Suzuki $50 million dollars and if it flops, no big deal.

People still have 32 days to change their pledge.
 
Yeah because they're only donating $60, huh? Do you think that guy paying $10,000 for a jacket is in the same level too? They're abusing the fans' goodwill to partially fund the game, remove all the risks without losing any of the advantages, like the exclusivity deal. I don't give a shit if people actually are willing to do it regardless of that, I'm not judging them, I'm only judging Sony.

If any fans feel "abused" they have weeks to remove their pledges at the click of a button, including the 10K jacket guy, who probably just really wants that jacket.
 
June 15th: Shenmue III revealed at the Sony E3 Event
June 16th: "I wish they would have said there was some kind of partnership with Sony"

...
 

Ridley327

Member
However, can somebody explain the complaints over the use of Kickstarter?

In this instance, it's just the dishonest presentation of the whole announcement, with Sony saying they didn't have a hand in this beyond being the stage for Suzuki to announce it, along with the KS itself not making it known that this was more along the lines of an exploratory campaign. Even if it held up to logical deduction that this was always going to be the case, it feels like a misuse of KS, and in the recent instances of campaigns that were on a exploratory basis, like Bloodstained, they were up front about that fact right away.

I'm happy for the people who have been waiting for the game, but it does rub me the wrong way with how it's been handled, obvious backroom dealing or not. Someone compared this to how the Veronica Mars movie was handled, and it's hard not to agree with them there.
 

harSon

Banned
I'm not going to lie, that's extremely scummy. If you're going to do something like that, you should make it clear at the forefront - and cap it once you've reached your goal. Didn't they go on stage and say something along the lines of "We have nothing to do with this Kickstarter, but we wanted to give it some exposure?"

I'm still excited to be receiving Shenmue, but this is definitely a publisher/kickstarter dynamic that I'm not 100% in favor of. Dat Shenmue tho!
 

J-Rzez

Member
holy shit,

shenmue III is actually happening and you people (#gamerhate) are still complaining.

#cancelshenmue

Yeah, it's only going to get more vocal now that we know it's PS4/PC only.

Now all we need at 2016 E3 for Gabe Newell to walk out and hand Boyes a crowbar and he flips it around to show the number 3 on it. People will lose their minds. (even though it'll still be on PC)
 

z1ggy

Member
I think in this case the KS is being used as a marketing tool, it's a bit weird but well, helped to get a lot of attention.
 
Oh poor Yu Suzuki will go bankrupt for selling that $10,000 jacket at a loss. Thank god Sony is helping them finance that expensive shit
Oh poor adults using their money as they see fit to get a collector's item from their favorite game

Spare me. They don't get charged until the pitch is over so they're free to go and cancel their pledges if they feel like it.
 

AmuroChan

Member
Why couldn't say something about the existence of the deal? "If game is funded, we will help", but that wouldn't show that they have much confidence in the game

A question that I don't think anyone here is informed enough to answer. Also, it's possible that there're still some details that need to be worked out in the contract. Who knows? Maybe Gio Corsi will announce at PSX this year that SCE is publishing the game.
 

GeoramA

Member
Outrage culture and concern trolling is really ridiculous on GAF sometimes.

There's nothing "sketchy" about this at all. Go read the kickstarter page and watch the video too, christ.
 
I'm a backer, and I am upset that there was no transparency involved.

Like I said earlier and someone else mentioned, when Nintendo saved Bayonetta, did they come up with a faux kickstarter to gauge interest? No, they just made it for the fans. No shady business. We have a clear precedent here with a company handling this kind of situation the right way, and we have today with a company handling it the wrong way.

People should have known from the beginning that they were just gauging interest.

LOL what? That was blatantly obvious. What do you think a kickstarter is? Don't put money into things you don't understand man.
 

Elandyll

Banned
This practice just rubs me the wrong way entirely - I think it's the first time a Kickstarter has been created with the developers KNOWING they have direct financial support from a multinational corporation?

Adam Boyes: "We have nothing to do with this!!!"

Shady.

Such a shame too, I love Shenmue and Yu Suzuki.

He didn't say "we have nothing to do with it".

He said "It's very much their project", as in "This is not a WWS project, or a Sony project".
Obviously it didn't mean they could not publish it if they didn't see an interest.

The Kickstarter was obviously to gauge fan interest when the time would come to open wallets.

You know why?
Because it's nice and all to say "I want THAT game really bad, I'd pay ANYTHING FOR IT", to then see the game toping all the "Fan Wants" lists. But when finally it arrives and the day it's out just not 100% how it was in your mind, you go: "Oh well. I'll get it as a rental. Or maybe when it hits $10 in 2 years".

This kind of venture is extremely risky (as shown by Shenmue 1 and 2), and Sony should be actually lauded for getting the game released on both PS4 -and- PC (same for SF V and FF7 remake really), in the specific case of games that otherwise would not exist (unlike the Tomb Raider BS, or the Destiny / COD BS).

Congratd to Shenmue fans.

You made it happen.
 

Squishy3

Member
On the other hand it's pretty gross using fans this way when Sony was going to fund it anyway
anyone with half a brain could have told you 2 million dollars would not make shenmue 3 a reality and that funding dependant on the kickstarter succeeding was waiting in the wings, in addition to the kickstarter campaign being led into by a sony executive during a sony press conference

all the signs were right there
 
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