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Game Developers And False Advertising
Pezman writes "Sam 'Freejack' Brown, formerly of Legend Entertainment, has released the 3rd installment of his article series discussing 'Game Developer Myths'." This opinion piece deals with "...this consistent belief that developers intentionally lie about a title's features in order to generate sales and interest", and points out that "developers don't generally like... early marketing, and the reasons should be fairly obvious - gamers tend to hold developers to every feature they promise."
If you replace 'developers' with 'marketing and publishers' in all these articles they become fairly true.
Otherwise: what
Gamers seem to go out of their way to get a new game the absolute second it's available for sale. Then they bitch and moan about how it wasn't what they expected and didn't have all the features that they read about in an article almost a year ago. Guess who's fault it is that marketing generates sales? Yep, it's the fault of the gamer that doesn't bother to investigate what he's buying. If people would quit rushing to be the first to cram their money into the publisher's pocket, maybe they wouldn't get ripped off so often and maybe publishers would learn that it's more important to create a good game than to generate hype.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
What is this about developers having anything to do with the outside public? You have to be a very small shop for a marketing department to not wrap their talons around all 'promises' made to cus^H^H^H gamers, be it tradeshow, advert, etc. The only thing worse than the devils called marketing are the demons in sales.
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I can think of many times where my team responded in total disbelief - you promised what? Ah, the classic start of a death march project.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
...why would a developer talk about features that aren't in the final game and is this actually false advertising?
I will respond to the latter question first by saying no, this is not false advertising, it's marketing.
Right. You know... untrue marketing. And that's completely different from false advertising. It's different most of all in that one is illegal fraud, and the other is industry standard practice.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
[Quote]:gamers tend to hold developers to every feature they promise[/Quote]
I disagree, I think that gamers only hold the developers to the truely unique and interesting features. Alot of times, the things that make a game seem different are the first to go when a lack of funds forces developers to cut down on features. This is because the unique features usually add alot of time and cost to the equation. Developers such as Blizzard usually don't forget this rule, which is why they are so successful. Its not rocket science, gamers want games that give them something new.
In linux libertas
There is no end to the stupidity of the average person in the Marketing Department of your average game company.
First off, most of them have not played the game for long than 30 minutes. Most of them don't even like games, and on top of that, they come out of college with degrees in Social Sciences, and pretty much nothing at all that is applicable.
The HR department will hire someone new based on whether they think the person's nice, and will get along with them, because they figure that's all they're going to be doing...eating lunch with corporate buyers and talking them up.
Then they get back to their cube slap a bunch of buzzwords on some art, and voila. You've got stores will buy tons of product, and tons of customers who will hate it. 70% of everything wrong in the industry is the fault of marketing. The other 30% is a combination of hype, obstinance, and refusal to actually get some new ideas into the game world. (Also partially Marketing's fault...but I hold the designers more to task for this.)
If people would start taking the right people task for this garbage, there would be a lot more heads rolling. But most of the time, you find a game that crashes, and everyone's yelling at the QA department.
Most of the time, the QA dept. knows full well about this bug. But someone forced the game through. And it isn't the dev. team.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
SEGA's Blast Processing?
How about advertising a game as online (perhaps even putting the word 'online' in the title) then killing online support AFTER you buy the game?
They said this game would, and I quote, "kick ass!"
This game did not kick any ass. Not my ass, nor any other asses. There was no ass-kicking included, which the box CLEARLY stated it would.
This is clearly a case of false advertising, if not breach of contract. I demand my rights! This is an outrage, and an affront to man and God. An abomination of the highest order! No ass kicking, whatsoever. Amazing to think they could get away with this. What arrogance! This is fargin' war - I'm gonna rip them a new icehole! Fargin' bastidges.
To quote Homer Simpson, rakish devil and man-about-town, "Those sucks were the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked."
From the article:
...the released title may be different, even dramatically different than what was previewed a couple years ago or even a month prior to release.
All these cool features, all these neat effects, all these promises... it's great stuff, but you need to keep in mind that it is designed to be "great stuff". The information given is intentionally positive and always glowing.
The writer may be correct in that the above practice does not strictly fit the definition of false advertising. I would argue that the practice of deliberately misleading your customers is, in spirit, very similar. Knowingly releasing inaccurate, overly optimistic marketing material seems to be more and more common.
I'm starting to view game developers with the same mistrust as I do all salesmen.
John
I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it. jya.com/ap.htm
"He's not kicking his ass, but he's definitely doing something to his ass!"
Also, that ad for Dikawhatever comes to mind. Romero said he was gonna kick my ass, and I'm still waiting.
Mind if I ask who actually pays attention to advertising? Marketeers want to sell stuff, regardless. If a certain buzzword increases sales, its in there whether it holds true or not.
I used to do some marketing work, being the honest people-loving guy that I am I soon quit after leaving rather offensive words regarding their almost criminal practices.
You might want to check this article for some more info
..gamers tend to hold developers to every feature they promise.
Like say.. Bioware's promise to have a Linux version of Neverwinter Nights available at the same time as the Windows version?
End of line..
Again developers blame publishers for cowtowing to public demand, for trying to put a title into the increasingly jaded video game consumer's head, for spending more on a liscence than on development of the game itself. But how many developers refuse money made from the practices that put them in the black? How many even think about an advertising schedule during initial negotiations?
On a related note, how many times does the management of a development company have to sign on to unrealistic milestone charts before they admit they don't know how to plan these things, and start addressing the problem of delay?
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Open Source Sysadmin
I don't know who is more at fault - the software developers for over-hyping their own product, the writer or editor for tying to write something sensational to overcome a jaded readership, or the reader for reading too much into what is essentially fluff. Maybe all the above? How often has a developer said, "Well, we hope to have advanced new AI in our upcoming release that will adjust itself to your skill level", that gets edited to, "Advanced new AI that adjusts to your skill level!"
It also depends on which gaming magazine or web site you regularly read. Some are truly dreck and some are fairly well written.
After a few days we'd get them back again with a list of what needed to be changed. Not changed in the game, just photoshopped on the screen shots.
Marketing would tell the head of the company, the head of the company would tell the producer, the producer would tell the lead artist to make the changes. I'm not sure what arguments marketing used against the head of the company (make the changes or your don't get any marketing?) but from there on down no one was willing to say no and force the issue with the higher authority.
Usually they were fairly minor changes, but sometimes not.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
What are the legal definitions of false advertising and fraud?
Not that I'm knocking Blizzard for their quality in their games but the packaging can be a little more accurate.
Here are captures of the packaging for Starcraft. If you look closely, you'll notice some things that aren't possible in the game. Things like:
Siege Tanks shooting Protoss Carriers.
Goliaths using guns (instead of missiles) on an airborne target.
Scouts using missiles (instead of guns) on ground targets.
Arbiters don't cloak anything.
Now obviously, these are not at all like the game. They are probably Photoshop chop jobs made by marketing gurus who had no idea about the gameplay. Yeah Starcraft is a fantastic game, but could you at least make the packaging accurate?
I don't think its a coincidence we see articles like this one just days apart of articles about the raise of the independent game developers. More and more people get tired of the retail approach, and retail has noticed - playable demos are now the norm. The whole point is letting the player try the game before they buy it.
As indies, we don't have multi-million dollar marketing budgets. The best marketing tool we have is peer to peer advertising - ie personal recomendation of a satisfied player to his friends. And the prerequisite for that is, of course, making a game players want to recommend.
In a sense, we are much closer to the "release when it's done" approach than multi-million dollar backed developers. True, we deal with higher risks, but the payoffs can be bigger, too.
In turn, this means we often have no choice but to innovate and try new ideas to attract people; the risk is higher than, say, releasing the 4th installment of a popular franchise.
It's still about the gameplay and how fun the game is. Now that 3D accelerators are ubiquitous and the wow factor isn't as important as when Wolfenstein 3D or Doom came out despite some current wow games (Doom3, Half Life 2), people are looking back at having fun with the games they play instead of frying their video card chips. It happens whenever a new technology comes out, like the CD-ROM and the countless fmv-with-two-or-three-slightly-different-paths games released.
Masterpieces, great games, fun games, don't need to use bleeding-edge technology. I'm sure I can grab an old copy of Indy and the Fate of Atlantis or Twinsen's Oddysey and have lots of fun. They look dated, but who cares?
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My response to this article has been published two weeks before this article appeared. Time travel on my part, or did those guys reply to my accusations?