Mr. Yu Suzuki held a Twitch broadcast on Friday 6/26 to answer some of fans questions of the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter. However, the Twitch stream was badly managed and had a number of issues ranging from audio problems to simply looking rushed. Personally, the number of questions discussed that had already been answered in the Reddit AMA and Kickstarter FAQ was infuriating.
This led fans to start talking more about Awesome Japan – the group managing the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter. They looked unprofessional on-screen and there was particular guy on the right there who seemed off. You can read the responses to the Twitch thread on NeoGAF and Shenmue Dojo.
Watch and cringe for yourself:
Taking a look closer at Awesome Japan
A recent podcast called Best Video Game Podcast analyzed the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter before the Twitch stream went live and actually discussed the overall lack of experience that Awesome Japan has with Kickstarters and why that is a problem for a game like Shenmue 3.
The company has only been managing Kickstarter campaigns since 2014 and here are some other facts pulled from the podcast:
- Awesome Japan has helped 13 Kickstarters prior to this (in a span of 11 months), only 7 were successful
- Only 1 video game Kickstarter is in Awesome Japan’s portfolio called Soul Knights (ex Nippon Ichi staff), barely met the goal of $60k with only 246 backers
- Only 1550 backers and $170k for all of Awesome Japan’s campaigns combined so far
- Awesome Japan had no native English speaker before this Kickstarter apparently. All of their previous campaigns had significant spelling and translation mistakes (If you watched the stream last night it was obvious the translator was having difficulties).
On the bright side, the Kickstarter seemed to temporarily benefit from the announcement of new stretch goals during the Twitch stream and doubled its daily funding. The actual number of backers is moving slowly so who knows how long this will be able to continue.
Personally, I would rather see Yu Suzuki play Shenmue on Twitch to drum up support. Or really anything besides what I saw last night.
Carlos Plays 