First of all, I backed Shenmue 3 too. It matters because I want to know what I am funding. The game got ~$6M on Kickstarter. That's a lot of money, but maybe not for a Shenmue game. Now Yu wants more, from fans. What type of game are we funding now? if Shibuya or Sony or whomever is giving them, let's say, $35M (I don't think this is the case, just an example), are people going to be so eager to hand over money when it's already a $40M+ game? If he is getting $2M from outside sources, it's an $8M game, ok maybe I want to hand over more to get "the full vision." Etc, etc. It's just about transparency and being forthright.
The idea that we should automatically defer to Yu Suzuki because he has a job for the first time in years and not question his incredibly murky Kickstarter is one I cannot agree with. Nobody's telling you how to live your life. This is one of those situations where two people can see the same thing and come away with different perspectives.
I'm not sure I see your point. All I really see is a repetition of the unfounded idea that they are keeping something from us for the sake of squeezing money out of backers.
The established funding sources for development are Kickstarter and Shibuya Productions. This has been said to death at this point. The Kickstarter was vital to getting this project off the ground, and that's the truth.
No way would Shenmue 3's Kickstarter have been launched on such a huge stage if that funding was not vital to the project happening. It has been repeated by Yu Suzuki, Cedric Biscay, and various Sony 3rd party production members that the Kickstarter was do or die for Shenmue 3.
It is not about wringing a few dollars out of fans, it is about making the game actually happen for the first time in 14 years.
There's not some imaginary huge investor waiting in the wings who just happened to be $2 million short. Shenmue 3 is for the fans, and by the fans.
It doesn't matter how much Shibuya Productions is contributing, without the Kickstarter there would be no Shenmue 3. It doesn't matter that there's a Paypal drive up until the end of the year, the reason that is there is because of fan demand during the Kickstarter.
Why should it matter that we are told how much Shibuya are contributing when we are backers, not investors, and have no rights to such information? It wouldn't make a single iota of difference about the project even if we did know. Shibuya Productions' head Cedric Biscay is a Shenmue superfan, and if they'd had the money to fund it solely, they would have.
When you buy into the questions about funding outside of Kickstarter, you're buying into the weird delusion that Shenmue 3 would have been a done deal without Kickstarter. As someone who backed Shenmue 3, you should know that isn't the case.
As for deferring to Yu Suzuki on matters about the game he's project lead on, well, I'd rather take his word for it than those of games media that seem to only get their information about the project from the headlines of other journalists.