It seems inevitable at this point that Shenmue 3, which up until yesterday was a retro pipe dream, will get funded. That’s not quite the same thing as being “made”.
As I’m writing this, it’s about seven hours since the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter launched, aided by an appearance at Sony’s E3 conference, and it’s sitting on a cool $1.8 million in pledges. That means that it’s all but inevitable that it’ll get funded. Realistically, given that many Kickstarters are piled onto the moment they become successful, it’ll break through its $2 million barrier and then some, most likely breaking each of its stretch goals in turn.
Great, you might think. I’ll finally get to play Shenmue 3! At long last!
Hold up there, cowboy. Not so fast. It’s undeniably great that Shenmue 3’s going to be funded, no doubt about it. But there’s a line between “funded” and “you get to play it”, and that line is called “it actually gets made”.
All sorts of things can happen in-between then and now. SEGA infamously went near-bust funding Shenmue and Shenmue II, so it’s going to have something of a royalty stake to pay, as will any artists, programmers or associated studio people hired in the attempt to make Shenmue 3 a reality. All of that stuff costs money, which is what the Kickstarter is meant to fund. Those are factors that won’t be cheap, and they’re even factors that could escalate in ways that aren’t easy to predict.
The important word there, and one that is all too often roundly ignored there, is “attempt”. Pledging money to a Kickstarter may bring with it promised rewards, but a promise isn’t a reality. Shenmue III’s rewards start with a $5 pledge to be able to “participate in surveys and vote in polls for the ideas you want to see in the game”, whatever that might mean, while $29 is the level for a digital copy, all the way up to $10,000 for Ryo’s jacket or dinner with Yu Suziki, both of which pledge levels are already “sold”.
But that’s still not the same thing as an actual sale of an actual product. The risk factors listed for Shenmue 3 are somewhat flippant, including (and I’m quoting here directly)
“We will do our absolute best to deliver Shenmue 3 and the rewards by their respective deadlines. However, there is always the possibility that problems may arise which could affect reward delivery. There may end up being changes in game or reward designs. We may press right when we are supposed to press left and get hilariously head butted and kneed in the groin.”
But as with any Kickstarter, when you back a project, what you’re backing is the maker’s best effort to get a project completed. Best effort does not equate to absolutely delivering absolutely everything. If all the money is burnt through on prototypes, or Yu Suziki’s vision for what Shenmue 3 should be exceeds the budget, or it gets mired down in all those $5 pledge level surveys and votes, it could end up with a few renders, a lot of buggy code, and nothing that could be released without a whole lot of bug fixes… which will take yet more money. Or you might end up with nothing.
The same is true for any crowdfunded project — there are risks, and you may end up with a shiny new smartwatch, game or gadget, or you may end up with nothing. As long as the developer can show the money was spent in pursuit of the actual project, you’ve got no comeback at all.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m excited by the prospect of Shenmue 3. I really am. But that’s all it is right now — a prospect. A project that just might be, and funding it is only the first step. There’s a long way to go before I’ll be sat, controller in hand, finding out how the story really ends.