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Game Developers: Stop Overpromising
Andru Edwards writes "Recently, there has been a flurry of game developers releasing games which did not live up to expectations the developers set earlier on. Due to this pratice of overhyping upcoming games, gamers have become wary of those games which have major hyoe behind them. Here is a look at which developers are falling victim to the hype, as well as why Nintendo's frustrating strategy might actually be the best approach after all."
...hype sells, even if a game doesn't live up to the hype at all. Fable sold something like 600,000 copies last month (when it was released). Pikmin 2, Nintendo's woefully underhyped game, sold about 180,000. Pikmin 2 is arguably the superior game. So, unfortunately, Nintendo's strategy may make them endearing in the eyes of hardcore gamers (I myself am a Sony fan but lately have a lot of respect for Nintendo), but it's also the reason why Gamecube is in 3rd place in America :(
In that case noone can rival the eliteness of Frontier, the company that has been expected for perhaps a decade (or more?) to release the next installment in the legendary space game Elite (tentatively called Elite4).
They have, howver, been successful in shutting down the existing Elite derivatives like E:TNK and terminating Darkness Falls.
The site is already running slow. Here is the text incase it dies:
"October 21, 2004
Game Publishers: Stop Overpromising!
Overhyped Videogames FableWhen Fable came out, everyone got to see if all the hype (and cool features expressed by Lionhead Studio head Peter Molyneux) is worth anything. Depending on where you go, you'll find glowing reviews to so-so reviews, mostly depending on if that person expected more (with good reason), or could just live with what the game actually provides. I personally feel that game reviews should be based on what the game has done right and wrong, rather than what I wanted to see, resulting in nitpicking every little detail.
But in this case, is it wrong to expect more? The Gear Live editors present their case after the jump.
Dorian: Look at companies like Nintendo, Valve and Bungie for instance.
Nintendo almost never reveals much about their games before release. The bulk of the game is left for us to explore on our own, and I think most gamers are the better for it.
Valve did the unthinkable, and for almost five years managed to develop Half-Life 2 without revealing anything until E3 right before last September's ill-fated launch (forget arguments about how ready they actually were).
Bungie has been very tight-lipped about Halo 2, at least as far as single player is concerned. Outside of the 10 minute footage of New Mombasa from last year's E3, almost nothing has been revealed, leaving all the details about what was not in the first Halo: Online Multiplayer.
We can probably think of other examples of game devs who kept their mouths shut and left most of their cards up their sleeves. But Lionhead Studios didn't manage to do that; they told us every single idea that popped up in their heads, as if they were brainstorming their ideas out in public. While not outright promising these features, most gamers were expecting more than what they got. Is that so wrong in this case?
Also in the news is Polyphony Digital's long waited Gran Turismo 4, and the stripping of the online multiplayer mode. While they gave no exact reason, one can extrapolate that they couldn't get online working in time for the holidays, and Sony didn't want to let their potentially biggest seller release past the lucrative holiday season. So instead of delaying the game, just take out the mode and sell the "upgraded version" at a later date. While on the surface this sounds good, they haven't said whether the upgrade will be at budget pricing, full price, have a trade in for the old version, or allow for save file compatibility between versions. There are a lot of unknowns, and it's well within reasons for those who were looking forward to racing online come December to be disappointed.
So, who's to blame when devs talk of features that don't ultimately make it? Does it all even matter?
Well obviously, the game devs themselves should show a little more restraint whenever being interviewed, especially when the game is in a pre-beta state. At that point nothing is set in stone, and this very same thing can happen as with Fable. It might be hard to resist nowadays, in this instant information age we live in. (It seems like you can't click a few web pages without running into a movie or TV show spoiler or people, for lack of a better word, "pirating" the latest software or games, even before they hit the stores (also another topic for another day). But for the greater good, talking about only that which won't spoil the entire experience seems like the best way to go.
As for you, the game players, the best way to take reading all these features and interviews on games is to take it all in stride. The only time you can honestly trust any report on a game is the actual review, so sit tight, don't read up too much on a certain game if you want to be surprised, and hope for the best. Worse case scenario, if the game isn't what you were expecting, either rent it or just don't buy it. Or do what every savvy game player does nowadays: v
has to be Doom 3. I was so excited about playing it - the graphics looked deadly!! After months of waiting I went out and bought it and played the damn thing for about a week. Doom 3 was all graphics and no play. Once I played it online it felt like I was playing quake 3 again. Boring.
I think Id hyped this game up too much and added very little - if anything - to the actual game-play. I'm looking forward to the mods.
Not to be a dick, but it's spelled "misspelling".
-matt
Derek Smart, the man whose reputation has become so bad that when he started talking about buying up rights to make a Freespace sequel, the Freespace user community started a fundraising drive to buy it before he could.
why do people always use Duke Nukem Forever as the example and always forget abotu Team Fortress II? I had a PC Gamer from at least 5 years ago with in game screen shots of TF II saying an entirely new engine was complete and that it would be game of the year easily. Which year, they didnt say. It even won a few awards in E3 a while ago. Then, all of a sudden, it dissappeared.
http://teamfortress2.sierra.com/
Anyone know where it went?
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
I am saying that many of us can trace our online lineage back to Quake 2
:)
Quake 2? What?
Man, some of us can trace our online gaming lineage back to the original DOOM over a null modem cable.
n00b.
Come on this has been true fro[sic] over 20 years in PC games.
I'd say closer to 30 years. Some background:
In the early 70s the chip maker General Instruments made a "pong on a chip" device as a skunkworks project (ie. it was a "for fun" project not designed for any of their customers). They observed that Atari Pong and Magnavox Odyssey (the REAL first video tennis game) were selling quite well. As such, G.I. contacted the inventor of the original game, Ralph Baer, for a license agreement to market the chip (Magnavox did not use a single-chip solution--it used Baer's original design).
This is where the "over-hype" comes in. Baer was good friends with Arnold Greenberg--president of Coleco. He told Greenberg about the new chip that was to be released in 1975 and secured G.I.s first big customer in Coleco.
Using engineering samples, Coleco developed the first "Telstar" Pong/Odyssey clone and became a pioneer in the field of overhype and vapourware even before people knew about Bill and Paul's new BASIC. By the time G.I. finally made the first production run of the chips, Coleco had people falling over each other to get a Telstar, which was always in short supply due to manufacturing difficulties. Competitors made clones using the same chip once GI sorted the problems out (and Coleco was still having problems with supply) and sparked a "pong mania".
Eventually the flood of mostly low quality machines caused a shakeout--by that time Coleco was a big enough player in the market to survive. Atari made a CPU-based system with ROM cartriges and started a new craze. Coleco and Mattel joined in and Atari and Mattel learned all about hype from Coleco. They were the "Big 3 of vapourware". By the early 80s all of them had hit systems with lots of games and were promising even more games and better machines. All three also hyped computer expansions and/or next-gen systems. All three were either late to market or reneged on promises.
The public had high expectations based on the Big 3's marketing hype. What they got were things like Atari 2600 Pac Man and E.T., A late initial shipment of Coleco ADAM computers that were DOA and nothing from Mattel but a limited release of a crappy computer expansion and more expensive, slightly incompatible Intellivisions that were no better than the original except perhaps for better looks and speech built in.
The "big crash" 20 years ago was caused precisely because of this overhype. Nintendo succeeded because it blindsided the public with the NES--no one expected the big release of a new system becuase the console market was dead in 1985. No expectations + good product = big hit. It maintained supremacy by being selective about licensed developers and for awhile with monopolistic practises.
I don't forsee a big crash like in the 80s again where all the big players in console hardware die off, but I do see a shakeout on the developer side if they do not learn from this history. It might come to a point where Sony, Nintendo and MS take (even more?) charge of all the major games development for their respective systems. However, I'd prefer if they remained open but did like UBISoft and release demos as development is done and not fuel speculation about what isn't done.
What I disagree with you on is what you think the role of marketing is.
As a marketer, my job is to let the public know about our product. Now, ethical people like myself would not lie about a product or promise things that obviously don't have a snowballs chance of hell of making it into this version. We do not just go hog wild with everything you give us......well, not if we're good at what we do. You see, its one thing if you just want to sell a product to someone once and never see them again, and never get any customers again. But if you have any desire of getting return customers, or having them spread the good word so you get more first time customers, viral marketing (industry term for word of mouth) is ESSENTIAL. And you don't have a chance in hell of getting that unless you have a solid product that lives up to your claims.
So while not all marketers are evil, and not all of us hype the hell out of everything we touch, game companies are definitely guilty as charged. And you are dead on about people eating up the hype. Well, ignorant people who don't suspect hype at least, which unfortunately is the vast majority.
In our industry, there's two terms we use, hype and buzz. Hype is more of a negative thing for the exact reasons you describe. Buzz however is the viral marketing aspect of it, and means people are spreading the good word about your product because the product lives up to claims, and in essence, sells itself.
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