Kickstarter Update #101 - E3 Participation

Van Joel Sandwich said:
Praying for a leak .... HAHA
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I can’t imagine that the press will not be given some kind of media to accompany their articles. I’m currently taking a break from journalism, but if somebody had asked me to put out a story with no visuals while I was still working as a journalist, I would have told them where to shove it (although I did work in television which kind of relies on visuals more than most mediums). All the same, magazines and websites aren’t going to be too keen to dedicate page space to a wall of text and casual readers aren’t going to be inclined to read it. I can pretty much guarantee that at the very least, the press will be provided with some new screenshots, if not some pre-approved gameplay footage. Aside from magazines and websites wanting imagery, there’s no logical reason that i can see for the devs and publishers not to provide them with it (I get them not wanting people to record the gameplay in case it’s glitchy / buggy, but assuming they can maintain a level of quality control, there’s no reason for them not to allow it unless the game is absolute garbage. If that were the case, letting the press play and report on it would be illogical).
 
If they knew they were going to E3, why wouldn't they include this in yesterday's update? From a PR perspective it makes no sense and shows a lack of organization and thorough thought process. I'm not trying to be negative, but their team should have been anticipating what the response to yesterday's announcement was going to be, and then figured out ways to combat the backlash. Mentioning E3 in the original update would have been a devastatingly obvious move.

In any case, hope we can get some decent info from E3 but I'm not hopeful based on their light wording.
 
C’mon Spaghetti, you are the voice of reason around here most of the time. Are you saying you believe the update yesterday on Shenmue Day was a good decision? We don’t need coddling. All I’m saying is that they missed an opportunity to provide something positive along with the delay. This is promotion/marketing 101.
 
Spaghetti said:
Why are we obsessed by being coddled after a delay announcement?
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That's a pretty juvenile way of looking at it. The whole point of public relations is to manage the outgoing information from your organization and spin things in a positive way. Yesterday's delay was covered by numerous news outlets, even non-gaming sites such as Variety, and if you include the "positive" development of an E3 appearance that information would be included in the coverage. Today's news was presented as an afterthought and I doubt that it will even get a mention from most major sites. There seems to have been little to no strategy behind the presentation of the information that has been released over the past two days.

If you see any questioning of their PR strategy, or lack thereof, as a need to be coddled, I'm not sure what more to tell you.
 
No PR expert so I might be wrong but wouldn't it better if they give the People a small piece of the product they want? To Keep the product in the mind mind of the People. Just going there with empty Hands and saying sorry we you have to wait longer seems a bit off.
 
japalp said:
C’mon Spaghetti, you are the voice of reason around here most of the time. Are you saying you believe the update yesterday on Shenmue Day was a good decision? We don’t need coddling. All I’m saying is that they missed an opportunity to provide something positive along with the delay. This is promotion/marketing 101.
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I think Spaghetti is the voice of pasta. not reason.
 
japalp said:
C’mon Spaghetti, you are the voice of reason around here most of the time. Are you saying you believe the update yesterday on Shenmue Day was a good decision? We don’t need coddling. All I’m saying is that they missed an opportunity to provide something positive along with the delay. This is promotion/marketing 101.
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Ceej said:
That's a pretty juvenile way of looking at it. The whole point of public relations is to manage the outgoing information from your organization and spin things in a positive way. Yesterday's delay was covered by numerous news outlets, even non-gaming sites such as Variety, and if you include the "positive" development of an E3 appearance that information would be included in the coverage. Today's news was presented as an afterthought and I doubt that it will even get a mention from most major sites. There seems to have been little to no strategy behind the presentation of the information that has been released over the past two days.

If you see any questioning of their PR strategy, or lack thereof, as a need to be coddled, I'm not sure what more to tell you.
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I don't even think the fact it was Shenmue Day came into consideration. Nor that it was Update #100 either. At the end of the day the importance put on both those are fan-created, and are in no way sacred when actual decisions have to be taken.

I don't think they're absolutely ignorant to them either, but given the delay had already leaked before the weekend there was cause to expedite the process of announcing it. Esra Krabbe over at IGN Japan noted in his article today that Update #100 didn't come with a Japanese equivalent, and posed a theory that the update was done hastily to confirm what had become an open secret by that point. I noticed it didn't show up on the Shenmue.link site until a little while later too.

As for why they didn't include the E3 news in the update, I could not tell you for sure. For all the talk about "marketing 101" though, do you guys know what a news cycle is?

Say you got the update you wanted that includes the E3 stuff, what's the headline people write about it? Still "Shenmue III delayed", with the E3 news buried somewhere in the text. People will mostly not read the text, which is unfortunate but true. What we got was a separate update for the E3 news not even 24 hours after the last, but in a new news cycle. If it gets written about (admittedly the story isn't as sexy as a delay so I expect less coverage by default), you've then got your separate "Shenmue III at E3 2019" headline that actually gets noticed.
 
tomboz said:
I can’t imagine that the press will not be given some kind of media to accompany their articles. I’m currently taking a break from journalism, but if somebody had asked me to put out a story with no visuals while I was still working as a journalist, I would have told them where to shove it (although I did work in television which kind of relies on visuals more than most mediums). All the same, magazines and websites aren’t going to be too keen to dedicate page space to a wall of text and casual readers aren’t going to be inclined to read it. I can pretty much guarantee that at the very least, the press will be provided with some new screenshots, if not some pre-approved gameplay footage. Aside from magazines and websites wanting imagery, there’s no logical reason that i can see for the devs and publishers not to provide them with it (I get them not wanting people to record the gameplay in case it’s glitchy / buggy, but assuming they can maintain a level of quality control, there’s no reason for them not to allow it unless the game is absolute garbage. If that were the case, letting the press play and report on it would be illogical).
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You'd think... but not much new stuff came out of the Edge and Magic previews. Hopefully this time will be different though.
 
Ceej said:
That's a pretty juvenile way of looking at it. The whole point of public relations is to manage the outgoing information from your organization and spin things in a positive way. Yesterday's delay was covered by numerous news outlets, even non-gaming sites such as Variety, and if you include the "positive" development of an E3 appearance that information would be included in the coverage. Today's news was presented as an afterthought and I doubt that it will even get a mention from most major sites. There seems to have been little to no strategy behind the presentation of the information that has been released over the past two days.

If you see any questioning of their PR strategy, or lack thereof, as a need to be coddled, I'm not sure what more to tell you.
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That Variety article says "the game has been in development for more than a decade", FFS ?. Stick to TV guys.

All the other delay articles I've read have been pretty fair and OK.
 
I don't want to enter in a debate here, but in my opinion and since we are talking about news cycle, the best way to communicate what we learned in the past 24 hours would have been to announce E3 presence with update #100 and let a couple of days go by before announcing the delay.

I think the leak on Steam just f*cked up any PR plan and activated the panic mode. From a communication point of view, that's the most logical reason I can see.

That said, the delay is a good news when considering that it will be used to make the game better. The only concern is the November date, as said by many here, but who knows what can happen by then. (fingers crossed Death Stranding gets delayed)
 
Reprise said:
You'd think... but not much new stuff came out of the Edge and Magic previews. Hopefully this time will be different though.
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Seriously?

Not much visual maybe, but content wise? There were a TON of new information from Edge article and MAGIC previews or Weekly Famitsu interview. The fact that not everything becomes mainstream doesn't mean there aren't new information.
And let's not forget the Reboot conference with new screenshots and information.
 
Spaghetti said:
What we got was a separate update for the E3 news not even 24 hours after the last, but in a new news cycle. If it gets written about (admittedly the story isn't as sexy as a delay so I expect less coverage by default), you've then got your separate "Shenmue III at E3 2019" headline that actually gets noticed.
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Focusing on the news cycle is one way to look at it, but that's working under the assumption that Update #101 gets enough coverage to drown out the noise from yesterday. If that's what the team was aiming for, their gamble has not paid off as of this morning. As you said yourself, it's not sexy and there's no real information given.

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If you present the E3 info in update #100 you're hoping for headlines as "Shenmue III Delayed; Will be Playable at E3" or something similar.
 
orient said:
That Variety article says "the game has been in development for more than a decade", FFS ?. Stick to TV guys.

All the other delay articles I've read have been pretty fair and OK.
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Lol yeah it's bad. Not using it as an example of good video game journalism, but rather as an example of how far-reaching yesterday's news was.
 
Kiske said:
I don't want to enter in a debate here, but in my opinion and since we are talking about news cycle, the best way to communicate what we learned in the past 24 hours would have been to announce E3 presence with update #100 and let a couple of days go by before announcing the delay.

I think the leak on Steam just f*cked up any PR plan and activated the panic mode. From a communication point of view, that's the most logical reason I can see.
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I would hazard a guess the intention was to do it this way around, until the leak fucked it all up.

Ceej said:
Focusing on the news cycle is one way to look at it, but that's working under the assumption that Update #101 gets enough coverage to drown out the noise from yesterday. If that's what the team was aiming for, their gamble has not paid off as of this morning. As you said yourself, it's not sexy and there's no real information given.

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If you present the E3 info in update #100 you're hoping for headlines as "Shenmue III Delayed; Will be Playable at E3" or something similar.
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And if I could peer into the alternate universe where you got your wish, I would probably have a very similar image to show you. The headline would still be the delay.
 
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