publicpwnerer
Member
I see people constantly throwing around that $47 million figure, but wasn't that including the funding for essentially 2 full Shenmue games for the Saturn, that were later scrapped for the Dreamcast?
Yu Suzuki: I expect individual backers to provide the majority of funds for Shenmue
- Thread starter ShogunDarius
- Start date
CO-PRODUCER OF SHENMUE 3 SPOKE:
SONY WON'T GET MONEY FROM KS.
STOP THE PRESSES!
https://twitter.com/CedricBiscay/status/612352032851259392
Thank you, I will retweet it right away
And, more importantly, the engines behind them and their toolsets.
Elfforkusu
Member
Yes.
I think of it as a 3 game budget, counting the Saturn games as one given that they should've been able to salvage some of the work for the released 1 and 2.
But $16m per game doesn't sound nearly as crazy as $47m (or $70m), so it doesn't get quoted.
It seriously blows the fucking mind. It sounds impossible to me, honestly. How the hell did they actually do it??
They mention that, at one point, they had 10,000 items during debugging. Can you imagine fixing that much shit, all at once, among 300 people, across several studios, with no subversion control?
Think of how many times things had to get reworked or refixed because they were working on already out-dated versions...
Hockeymac18
Member
My head...hurts. I can't imagine that.
ok how come? I mean I haven't seen anything from them on the Shenmue KS, probably because I barely ever visit. But their non gaming related matters are actually good from time till time. Also I heard they hired a person to make pie charts
/s
Shared data repositories, one source referenced by all clients.
Same pattern used by RE4.
chromatic9
Member
No man's sky is a galaxy far as I know.
Space Engine, made by one guy is an actual universe
Both games are procedurally generated and very poor examples of size and work involved.
Just to note I think a Shenmue game can be made at 10-20 million but NMS example just doesn't work. 25-30 mill would be nice for Shenmue.
Seriously, everybody needs to watch the Shenmue II Post Mortem. It explains so much why the series was revolutionary and why it's not nearly as expensive today. An example he gives in the post mortem was how difficult it was to create a Day-Night and weather cycle. Today, those are merely options you select in UE4. You can even download pre-coded solutions for you that you literally drag and drop into your project. When Shenmue was being created, absolutely nothing existed. They had to create everything. What can be done today in like 10 mouse clicks took his team a significant amount of development time to accomplish in 1998.
"how the hell did they do it" was more of a rhetorical question than a logistical question. It must have been absolutely maddening.
funkystudent
Member
I wonder if Sony will make a post on the PS blog to clear up the "confusion". Or will that just bring more attention to this mess?
Seems like the game is basically just getting the standard Pub Fund / 3rd party production support most indie games get and Sony is doing a bit of extra promotion by doing the big E3 reveal because its mother efin' Shenmue 3!
I feel bad for them because all this news and faux controversy has probably kneecapped the Kickstarter a bit. it will still do great. Will make over 6 million easy probably but who knows how much it has lost out on because of the bullshit.
Seems like the game is basically just getting the standard Pub Fund / 3rd party production support most indie games get and Sony is doing a bit of extra promotion by doing the big E3 reveal because its mother efin' Shenmue 3!
I feel bad for them because all this news and faux controversy has probably kneecapped the Kickstarter a bit. it will still do great. Will make over 6 million easy probably but who knows how much it has lost out on because of the bullshit.
Shenmue II relied heavily on procedural generation, especially the end with the "magic forest" which was what Shenmue III was going to be built upon.
I should really play Shenmue 2 again. I still have my Dreamcast and a copy somewhere...
I have a harder time getting back into Shenmue 1, what with that awful English dub. 2's Japanese dub may be bad as well but at least I can't hear the difference as easily.
Wait, people thought otherwise? When publishers are involved with Kickstarted projects, they typically get a cut of post-Kickstarter sales. Everything earned during the campaign goes straight into development.
I have a harder time getting back into Shenmue 1, what with that awful English dub. 2's Japanese dub may be bad as well but at least I can't hear the difference as easily.
CO-PRODUCER OF SHENMUE 3 SPOKE:
SONY WON'T GET MONEY FROM KS.
STOP THE PRESSES!
https://twitter.com/CedricBiscay/status/612352032851259392
Wait, people thought otherwise? When publishers are involved with Kickstarted projects, they typically get a cut of post-Kickstarter sales. Everything earned during the campaign goes straight into development.
chromatic9
Member
I'd hope there's at least 500,000 people who could back Shenmue by $30. That would generate 15 million.
Surely there's 250,000 people willing to put up $30 for $7.5 million
Surely there's 250,000 people willing to put up $30 for $7.5 million
Mendax
Member
maybe. all we can do is spread the word and keep nagging em for ps4 physical (any word of this today btw?)
I was under the impression that some felt that way whereas others just wanted transparency. And some are just fanboys. I don't know who said it but the poster in one of the earlier threads pointed out that if you really loved it you would buy a PC/PS4/<wherever it may end up on> to play it instead of doing this bullshit with platform wars.
Anyway, anyone against this kickstarter mind sharing in a well constructed manner why they are against it?
EDIT:
Talk about jumping the horse hahaha....still I pre ordered it.
Theonik
Member
To make matters worse, many of these outside people were not even parts of the games industry. What Suzuki was trying to do was to involve people from the outside to bring in a fresh perspective in game development, TV screenwriters, cameramen, directors, architects, and people from various other industries were enlisted to help realise the project's vision. What Suzuki feared was that people working in games at the time were lacking in the expertise and perspective to develop Shenmue. But I imagine managing all those people would be nightmarish.
Thankfully, much of the work that came out from that really was a one time cost, vast amounts of research materials, location scouting, and basically prototyping systems, ideas and fighting challenges that are now taken for granted, or addressed by the last 2 generations of hardware, in large part due to Yu Suzuki's work on Shenmue.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
Coders can get things to an insane level even with a good SCM... without it and using Excel to manage all the project... Wow... I cannot believe they got those two massive projects out...
chromatic9
Member
Yes but a universe can be created by one guy in his spare time. Shenmue has more to do than just generate building or planets. Surely you can grasp that.
Just be clear again I can see Shenmue being created on 10-20 million just that NMS is a poor example and not even a universe. Not that it matters, the could generate a 100 universes.
ZombiePlatypus
Member
Honestly I think it's just people being bitter shit-stirrers. Bottom line is you can pay $30 or $60 bucks and end up with a copy of the game. (Just like a regular game purchase.) Why worry about how the funds are specifically broken down? What, just cause it's taking a more grass-roots approach using KS? It's not like it's some new, unproven venture. The man has a track record with 2 solid, tangible, great previous entries.
At this point the backlash just feels like scrutiny fueled by malicious intent.
Panajev2001a
GAF's Pleasant Genius
.Actually I do believe many are on that level but at the same time I had wondering thoughts myself about publishers "using" kickstarter as a gauge or whatever but I always ended up with not caring because I did get the games I wished for(many still in dev -.-). So it wouldn't suprise me if at least some are really upset about this. Like for some reason they thought KS was for "indies" and shouldn't be...tarnished? Yeah lets say tarnished by big publishers.
I didn't say that the effort required to make NMS is comparable to the effort required to make Shenmue 3, you are arguing a point I never made.
My comparison was well reasoned.
BlackBuzzard
Banned
Any idiot that thought Sony would get kickstarter money, there are not enough palms for my face right now.
But also importantly, $47 million to create assets that requires a marginal effort compared to creating assets at the visual fidelity and interactiveness of PS4 games.
Theonik
Member
To be honest Many major projects to this day don't use proper SCM. It's easy to take all of those tools for granted, but 90s development was a different place in general. Think shipping an even larger project like Windows 98 for instance. You get used to it relatively quickly. But when when better tools started being adopted it's hard for people to go back. Then there is a lot of unfortunate developers that have tasted the better tools but their projects don't use them for whatever reason. Arguably that's the worst.
publicpwnerer
Member
You'll have to fight every backer in hand-to-hand combat, Shenmue style. It's only fitting.
Theonik
Member
I will also settle for a game of lucky hit.
meanspartan
Member
Ya this is still why I think Sony must be investing SOMETHING.
https://twitter.com/CedricBiscay/status/612352032851259392
sony's involvement is very limited, but it's better than nothing, which was the only alternative
The co-producer already clarified. Sony is handling the PS4 port and the marketing.
R_thanatos
Member
A race to see who can move the more crates in less than 2 mins ?
ZombiePlatypus
Member
I know some people have this concern. Why though? Way I figure, if I support something on kickstarter, I'm doing so cause I wanna buy and have that product, and I wanna tell the maker directly and tangibly "yes I'd pay you money for this."
A breakdown of how the donations are used is nice but personally, I don't care if my money was used on hookers and booze. So long as the product promised to me was delivered, at the price that I agreed to pay.
From my view, I don't see why KS can't be used for truly indie stuff along with big publishers using it to make riskier projects a reality.
Even when Sony gets no single penny out of direct Shenmue 3 sales, it's a huge win/+ for them. Two similar consoles, one has it and one hasn't. Even with the PC version in the mix.
The fact that they ran such a shit click-bait article before concrete information had been confirmed in an attempt to smear this campaign for a beloved, dead 14-year-old series is inexcusable.
They're dead to me.
Yeah I fully agree.
Again I can only speak for myself now but in the beginning I think I had this idea on how tired I was of AAA gaming. How boring and stilted I felt that it had become so. And in some extremely stupid way I saw Kickstarter as a thing for those trying to truly do something new, something that could't be greenlit in a boardroom with all them "suits". It took a few weeks then it hit me that in the end I didn't care of those "suits" would, as you said it, blow the money on booze and hookers together with the kickstarter holder, as long as I got what I backed for.
I reckon people are stuck somewhere there in the middle and not really wanting to grasp the present reality.
I didn't read all the threads (I think there're like 5 ?) but the general problems started like this :
Sony announced Shenmue 3
People were happy until others reminded how much Shenmue 1 or 2 costed
Then questions started to arised like how 2 millions dollars will never be enough for a such project or why only on PC and PS4 ?
That's when Sony co-funding theory started to arise.
Polygon made an article about this > http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/17/8798203/shenmue-kickstarter-budget-sony
The rumors grew stronger and people started to say : "why should we help Shenmue ? Can't Sony fund it themself ?" or worse "They're trying to milk us since they got already money from Sony".
Finally Polygon/Gematsu/Gameinformer/others "confirmed" the rumors (google is your friend), here an example : http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/16/8792627/shenmue-3-sony-funding-development
After so many websites "confirming" (or relying that info) about that parternershish, Internet did the rest, it jumped to conclusion.
That's why (IMO) Shenmue 3 kickstarter campaign is actually going through a shit storm and people try their best to get clear answers.
To reasure people the author did an AMA, Sony's clarrifing their parts and finaly the co-funder of the campaign spoke about it.
The Mad Draklor
Member
I knew the KS served as a litmus test even before Adam Boyes explained its purpose. And yeah, why and how in the world would Sony get the KS money?
Storm Chamber
Banned
Speaking of that AMA...Shenmue 4 coming out of Suzuki's mouth at all? At this stage?
Hoo boy
Hoo boy
Theonik
Member
If you hadn't already DNS blacklisted Polygon by now you were doing it wrong.
I am become SalsaShark, the destroyer of dreams.
I don't understand this #10millionforshenmue3 or whatever... If $10 million is the number, why does the KS ask for $2 million? I mean, I understand people undershoot the real goal on KS and this common practice may be another discussion all together, but $2 million vs. $10 million is a hell of a difference.
2 Slice Toaster
Member
What happened to, you know, just ignoring media that you don't want to consume?
What is behind this call for banning websites, are you worried that people aren't capable of thinking for themselves or something?
$2 million = Strictly focusing on the story and not much gameplay elements.
$5 million = Suzuki is able to try out a new idea he wants to implement in Shenmue 3.
$10 million = Now he has enough funds to give us the true Shenmue 3 experience.
King Beyond the wall
Member
Wait, so people actually believed all that bull shit about sony holding these ips hostage, abusing fan support to skimp on development costs and pocketing kickstarter money. Lol I thought it was just fake concern trolling.