The sentiment surrounding Shenmue 3 beyond us

Ghost_Messiah said:
So I thought at this juncture, whilst we wait on MAGIC, this could be an interesting discussion to have.

In short: why all the Shenmue 3 hate outside of the Dojo? Surely many here must have seen it. News comes in about Shenmue 3 and however good it is when it's posted elsewhere there's a tide of negative sentiment from a large swath of people needlessly being negative about the game - for honestly a reason I can't define. Why? Shenmue 3 is the highest crowd funded game of all-time. It's a sequel that people rallied and adamantly asked for for 20 years. It crashed Kickstarter when it was announced - to initially - cries of love and adoration. And yet even in those early days back in 2015 - it felt there was this tide of negative opinion in the press and elsewhere surrounding the game that has been prevalent ever since.

Everything we've seen of the game - at least if we go with recent media - looks extremely promising. Yu Suzuki is an industry legend, has produced some of the best games of all-time, including Shenmue 1 and 2 and he's a master of the craft and has never, in his entire history as a game developer shipped a game anything less than excellent. He will have had 4 years of development time, millions in funding and all the money that he needed to produce his dream Shenmue 3 game, and all forecasts indicate even at this stage, that Shenmue 3 will be a great game and the sequel we've waited for. And yet whenever I see Shenmue 3 news posted elsewhere, external to the positivity, love and optimism seen here at the Dojo, there's just so much unwarranted negative sentiment?

And honestly I can't fathom why, for the life of me. So that's the purpose of this thread. To discuss the potential reasons addressing this.

One theory I had recently is this does seem like it's something symptomatic of Sega's IPs. Sonic has suffered this same tornado of negative opinion, and still does whenever a game or something new is announced. Even with decent Sonic games like Colors, Generations and Mania every new Sonic game is met with a similar negative sentiment that echoes that of Shenmue 3. Just look at what everyone is saying about the upcoming film for example. Dismissing it immediately. Same goes for Streets of Rage 4. There's love here for the game, but elsewhere in the wider gaming sphere there is a lot of "this game doesn't look good enough" to say the least of some of the negative opinions. Could it be that Sega's sequels have this attributed to them automatically due to Sega exiting the hardware business? Just a thought, but Sega IPs are the only avenue where I've seen this replicated across multiple series, and of course Shenmue is a Sega legacy IP.

But there must be more to this. Why do we have so much ardent love here, and yet popular opinion elsewhere, before the game has even been released, is negative?
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To be sincere, I'd be more surprised if Shenmue wasn't hated in today's world. Shenmue is the antithesis of gaming culture in many respects. Want instant gratification? Sorry, not in Shenmue. Want to shoot folks? Sorry, not in Shenmue. Want multiplayer online? Sorry. And that's besides all the Yakuza fanboys, Anti-Crowdfund crowd, Anti-Asian authority, Maim Stream Media, and god knows who else...

At the end of the day, Shenmue survived. And if it means being ostracized, demeaned, and hated for believing in this work of art...it is what it is.
 
I was bored a lot so I did something stupid and read all the negative YouTube reactions again and angain and as I already thought most of the critics on at least YouTube are just against Shenmue because it is cool to be against something.

They use silly phrases like looks like a Ps2 game. As a Person that actually played and stills Plays with the Ps2 regularly can just laugh about such phrases. Either These guys never played a ps2 game, because they were just Born arround the time the PS2 was a relevant console or these guys are just super trolls. Not a single Version of Shenmue 3 looked as bad as a Standard Ps2 game.

Another Phrase is it looks bad by todays Standards. This is a more valid Point then the PS2 comparision but I still do not get it.


What are these today's Standards. The gaming landscape today is quite vast. You have pretty AAA titles like God of War, RR2 and others. But you also have some indy titles that that do not have the graphical power of the AAA Titles, like Fortnite, or Minecraft, or many other titles.

These titles were never acused off looking bad by "today's" Standards.

So i really have to asume that most critic voices have no substance. It is just cool for some People to be against Shenmue and that's why they do it.

Shenmue is not for everybody. It is fine that not everybody like it. But it still should be treated fair and I think most of the negative voices do not do that.
 
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This is almost the same like "Star Trek is better than Star Wars".o_O Both are very different projects but it will all the time compared together.
 
reminisce said:
To be sincere, I'd be more surprised if Shenmue wasn't hated in today's world. Shenmue is the antithesis of gaming culture in many respects. Want instant gratification? Sorry, not in Shenmue. Want to shoot folks? Sorry, not in Shenmue. Want multiplayer online? Sorry. And that's besides all the Yakuza fanboys, Anti-Crowdfund crowd, Anti-Asian authority, Maim Stream Media, and god knows who else...

At the end of the day, Shenmue survived. And if it means being ostracized, demeaned, and hated for believing in this work of art...it is what it is.
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Very much agree!
Shenmue demans patience.
But if you have it, will suck you in :)
It's a good thing that shenmue continues to be authentic and different. If it wans't, it would not be the shenmue we love.
The things that make the game different are precisely the ones that make me like it so much.
 
Van Joel Sandwich said:
Very much agree!
Shenmue demans patience.
But if you have it, will suck you in :)
It's a good thing that shenmue continues to be authentic and different. If it wans't, it would not be the shenmue we love.
The things that make the game different are precisely the ones that make me like it so much.
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It's not that Shenmue demands patience but that other games are too fast! Shenmue has just the right pace. (y)

Play Riven and you will understand what "patience" does really mean. :ROFLMAO:
 
It's a multifaceted issue, but I'd say one part of it boils down to a decades-long animosity between Nintendo fans and Sega fans. In the 8-bit era in the U.S., Nintendo had about a 90% market share with the NES, followed by the Sega Master System in a very distant second place. When Sega of America subsequently took over marketing of the 16-bit Genesis, they designed a humorously aggressive advertising campaign that not only highlighted the technical superiority of the Genesis, but also poked fun at everything about Nintendo from their name (Genesis does what Nintendon't) to their focus on a younger target demographic (Genesis is for cool adults and teens, Nintendo is for little kids). Subsequently, within two years Sega had the top selling console and more than 50% market share in the U.S.

A University of Illinois study has established that people view criticisms of their favorite brands as threats to their self-image. (The same phenomenon might be said to apply to us as Shenmue fans.) With this in mind, and considering the ferocity of the schoolyard console war arguments that used to unfold, consider the stunning turnaround that Sega engineered with their aggressive and funny marketing. Naturally going by the numbers, many NES owners bought the Sega Genesis. For those whose fandom of Nintendo was more extremely loyal and more deeply tied to their own self-esteem, however, they endured anything from mild annoyance to deep humiliation. Over the course of the years, a certain number of those angry Nintendo fans grew up and became involved in the gaming media in various capacities, some of whom still have an axe to grind.

One other aspect to this sordid and rather pathetic tale... Nintendo's domination of the 8-bit market was built on a foundation business practices that were later deemed to be illegal, once the 8-bit era was over and it was too late to do anything about them. Still, we have to deal with the cultural fallout of this company that never really earned their position in the market.
 
Zoyous said:
Still, we have to deal with the cultural fallout of this company that never really earned their position in the market.
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To say they didn't earn it is a bit of a stretch. They were brave by entering the US market at a time when retailers thought video games were dead and didn't want anything more to do with them. Nintendo were extremely smart in the way they positioned the NES as more of a toy, the way they spun a free newsletter into a genius marketing tool, and none of it would've worked if not for the revolutionary games. You can't argue with Super Mario Bros., Zelda and Metroid.

They earned it, they just didn't maintain their position in the market fairly, which sucks. They certainly weren't the squeaky clean operators people made them out to be, and their dodgy practises definitely had a huge negative impact on the Master System and its perception in the US (that persists to this day), but despite all that, SEGA didn't roll over. It's Nintendo's bullying that led directly to SEGA's emergence as the scrappy underdog in the 16-bit era. Nintendo got what was coming to them. Unfortunately for us SEGA just couldn't keep up the momentum.
 
Zoyous said:
A University of Illinois study has established that people view criticisms of their favorite brands as threats to their self-image. (The same phenomenon might be said to apply to us as Shenmue fans.)
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Therein lies the difference between a fan and a fanboy. A fan loves a brand and perhaps even defines themselves slightly based on the brand, but they can separate a criticism of the brand from an attack on their own character. A fanboy literally can't handle criticism because they take it as an attack on their own character... and they'll lash out and directly attack the critic's character in response. It's really sad and I see it happen all too often...
 
Zoyous said:
A University of Illinois study has established that people view criticisms of their favorite brands as threats to their self-image. (The same phenomenon might be said to apply to us as Shenmue fans.) With this in mind, and considering the ferocity of the schoolyard console war arguments that used to unfold, consider the stunning turnaround that Sega engineered with their aggressive and funny marketing. Naturally going by the numbers, many NES owners bought the Sega Genesis. For those whose fandom of Nintendo was more extremely loyal and more deeply tied to their own self-esteem, however, they endured anything from mild annoyance to deep humiliation. Over the course of the years, a certain number of those angry Nintendo fans grew up and became involved in the gaming media in various capacities, some of whom still have an axe to grind.

One other aspect to this sordid and rather pathetic tale... Nintendo's domination of the 8-bit market was built on a foundation business practices that were later deemed to be illegal, once the 8-bit era was over and it was too late to do anything about them. Still, we have to deal with the cultural fallout of this company that never really earned their position in the market.
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And the bold is why I despise Ninty to this day; I really don't stand for bad business practices, especially when it is an inferior product. That and their fanboys are by far, the worst of the worst.

Ninty had the better product at first, but once Sega had a year under them and NEC was able to catch up, their consoles were just as good if not better, but due to the awful business practices (which as you mentioned, are now illegal), it led to an unfair advantage.

Then Sega beats all odds and comes out with an EVEN better product (Genesis), only for it to not last as long as hoped. Sega gets crushed under their own weight and the Ninty group starts kicking the Sega group while they're down.

It basically boils down to a bully sitch, but in the business world; only the bully, won in the end.

Then you have the aforementioned fanboys, that have a grudge and constantly take shots; again, I despise Nintendo, but you don't see me going out of my way to create content, that puts it down and talks shit.

Guess it does ring true in the end; Sega is and always has been, for us mature human beings, while the Ninty group are still all children, after all.
 
In marketing and business It's good that people Hate Shenmue. It means that is doing something good.
FFVII and Kingdom hearts and many other great games have a lot of hate toward them.
Just go and visit the top most views youtube videos and see the huge Dislike to Like ratio.
 
Shenmue3 was announced in that huge magical E3 with the other fab 2: The Last Guardian and FFVII. Haters desire all of them fail, you know: "Sony is a big lie", etc. They hyped everyone. Look what happened: I love The Last Guardian, but it didn´t sell well. On the other hand, FFVII will not come in that generation for sure. And Shenmue3 had that first trailer with these models... People don´t forgive.
I don´t believe there is something against SEGA. In fact, I think SEGA is well loved. I am a huge fan from SEGA, but I hate modern Sonic, for example. Only Mania is really good for me. And Street of Rage IV is trash for me: that mobile style graphics are awful: where are neon lights, that sparkle city? Only if mr Koshiro make the OST I would buy it.
 
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The problem is that Shenmue 3 created a massive hype when it was announced at the Sony stage.. So people really thought that Sony will support the game to the fullest This myth is s till among some less informed people I think. The title also triggers the Sony haters a lot. If this game fails, they can use that against Sony. Shenmue 3 is an a difficult situation. It would be better if all people would see it as what it is. A interesting indy game and not the next blockbuster from Sony in the same vain as Uncharted 4 or Zero Horizon Dawn.
 
While my family grew up around Ninty, I'll admit I was envous of my cousins who had Sega consoles. Every time I did a sleep over & they pull out the Sega hardware it felt like throwing a party. Tho I'd deny that Sega was better out of pride even tho I knew Sega was wayy ahead of the competition and I was a low-key convert already. Maybe some of the hate are those who were like me but still hasn't resolve that part of their life?:unsure::sneaky::oops:
 
A lot of good points have been made in this topic. S3 polarizes because it used to be one of the most expensive games ever made during its time and has now been revived by crowdfunding. Also some people just hate crowdfunding in general. Some people enjoyed trolling the internet with yearly fake "S3 announcements". Shenmue does not provide players with instant gratification but requires players to get invested with it's game flow, combat system, characters, athmosphere and story. Some people are just bitter and cannot stand seeing Shenmue fans happy.

But in the end, I also tend to think that all this is just the internet. It just gives basically every last idiot in the world the opportunity to make their thoughts known to others which is not a good thing most of the time. We shouldn't pay it too much attention. It's not that important. You'll always find your negative Nancys everywhere on the internet.

I'd say the general public's perception of Shenmue has actually turned pretty positive during the last year. For Shenmue 1 & 2, two no-frills ports of almost 20 year old games which were also buggy as fuck upon release, achieving a mid-70's metacritic rating is actually amazing.
 
In the latest episode of Podquisition (Jim Sterling's podcast), co-host Laura said she expects SIII to be a "train wreck" and "can't wait to see it"...just another example of the animosity people show towards this game. And we haven't even seen any gameplay yet. It's just bizarre. Some people love the idea of high-profile failures, I guess.

You could say the same thing about many upcoming games: the Final Fantasy VII remake, Bloodstained, Beyond Good & Evil 2, Kingdom Hearts III etc. etc. but I'd rather reserve judgement till they come out.
 
I recently played Final Fantasy 7 for the first time after feeling like a bit of a Neanderthal because everyone and their great grandmother has played that game. It wasn't my cup of tea at all, but I recognise the game was likely amazing upon release and is beloved by many people.

My point is: I can't imagine setting aside time in my day fueling an online hate brigade dedicated to ensuring that the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, a game I don't particularly care for, fails upon release. Are people's lives that empty and meaningless that the only meaningful thing they can do is: be angry about something you're not invested in on the Internet?
 
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