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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."
Yeah, tell this to the presidential candidates!
Jump To Lightspeed? Another Sony title that is going to be released before its finished, and create more bugs in the original software title. This is the End of Star Wars Galaxies. I have forseen it.
Heh, just wait a few months (or years) for them to get cheaper... At least for Xbox, you can go out and buy the system for less than 50% of the original cost. Most of the good games are "Platinum Classics" or some such, which means $20 brand new.
I just got a Nintendo 64, and let me tell you, that Goldeneye game is fun! You pay a high cost to keep up with the game industry, and arguably don't get any additional entertainment from your hours devoted to gaming. Don't be a herd consumer.
My 0.02...
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
This is nothing new. Every game (or really any piece of software för that matter) gets a lot of hype beforehand. It's been the norm for at least the last decade.
Especially now it's more true than ever. Games get hyped and then rushed into production. Finally they release an inferior product that is not only far from what the promise was but also full of bugs.
It's the problem with the internet-age: make a crappy product and ship it as soon as the beta-testers give the thumbs up (but with minimal amount of testing) and release patches on your webpage later.
So far this year I haven't seen a single game that has lived up to the hype. Not even Doom3, even though it was a half-decent play it did not come close to the hype surrounding it.
As I said, this is not only limited to games. Look at every product that Microsoft/etc has released in the last 5-6 years. They promise to revolutionize the world, but it's the same wordprocessor in a slightly new package.
[end of rant]
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
Under promise over deliver.
Yeah, we should all game people's expectations all the time. God forbid we make the effort to be honest, accurately describing our aims, and that others be reasonable in understanding that frequently things don't go the way their planned and that some ideas look better than they work.
If I'm reading an interview with a developer, I'd like the interview to be interesting since that is what I'm spending my entertainment dollar and time on. If other people want them to beging speaking like politicians, they're idiots. Things won't change, some games will be great, others will be what might have been, others will suck, and some will just be outright lies, except it'll be boring to read about the industry, which won't be pushing itself as hard.
and preorders == shelf space.
doesn't take a genius to figure out why to do it, and more than that - GAMERS FORGET FAST. and they lack spine. even when they have spine and decide that they'll NEVER buy a game from some particular studio or a publisher with kiss-of-deadly-bugs.. they just switch names.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Better to aim for the stars and hit the moon, instead of aiming for the moon and hitting the ground... or whatever the saying is.
From my short experience, cool features tend to get eliminated from a project as the delivery deadline grows near - not added.
Half of the awesome blue-sky ideas that we have for a game end up never working out. That's just the nature of the business. That doesn't mean that we're going to stop trying, though.
for great justice, this sig has been moved
Amen. This game was pretty weak considering the hype surrounding it. Don't get me wrong, I was scared in quite a few scenes during gameplay, but I felt like the level design wasn't as well thought out as it could have been. And for the love of God, if you are going to include multiplayer, do it right. I'm sorry to rant, but I would rather have seen more time spent on the single player experience and have them omit the multiplayer than to release something mediocre in both modes.
The only sig I need is actually spelled "cig".
Byzandula
I was amused that Peter Molyneux apologized AFTER the game had come out for a couple of weeks. He needed to come clean before people had plopped down their money on it. Having been burned by B&W, I wasn't going anywhere near Fable.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
This is a hard issue. The article does a pretty good job of explaining why over-promising can be a bad thing (although I'd be wary of using Nintendo as examples of good-practice, given that most of their games are just un-inspired remakes of previous ones). However, there is another problem that developers face, which isn't necessarily their own fault.
This is the problem of their fans getting unrealistic expectations all on their own. There's been a stunningly good example of this recently, namely Doom 3. This game comes in for a lot of flak on slashdot games; it gets called a let-down, a flop, a sell-out and a glorified tech demo. It isn't any of these.
I'd been following Doom 3's development, albeit sometimes from a distance, ever since it was first announced. So far as I can see, the end product was no different to what had been promised all along. The only significant feature to vanish was co-op play and I don't think that had ever been promised all that firmly to begin with. We'd been told to expect an atmospheric (and downright scary) single-player focussed FPS, updating the Doom games for modern hardware, with extremely limited multiplayer. I'd call this a pretty exact description of the game I played.
However, because of ID's reputation and because the Quake series (much like the aforementioned Nintendo) has acquired a fan-base which often defies reason and logic in its zealotry, there had been an unjustified expectation that the game would me much more. Despite all the warnings about the multiplayer, I still remember the cries of anguish when the game turned out to be unsuitable as a platform for Quake-style deathmatch play. I remember the people who were infuriated that the game wasn't Farcry or Half-Life 2, with huge areas and ground-breaking AI. Is it fair to blame ID for this? No. They put out a decent game, not perfect, but very decent. I look forward to seeing a similar reaction when/if Raven's Quake 4 sees the light of day.
Simple message: don't succumb to fanboydom. If you're waiting for a game, base your expectations on what the developers tell you (plus a healthy dose of scepticism), rather than your own aspirations.
Or...imagine this! They would require such complicated geometry, that even the best machines that were available two years ago could only run them at low-rez, low quality 640x480.
... Pentium 3 1Ghz teamed up with the hot new Geforce Ti4600!
How would they have been treated in all the reviews? A bit like Tresspasser or Ultima IX, albeit without all the box puzzles and boring landscape?
You think people complain about how boring D3 is now --- all the horsepower a P4E can crank out just to render two or three zombies! Imagine if you were forced to play it on your brand new, $3000
Money is what drives the game business, just like every business, and the more they hype it the more people who will buy it.
My sig would have been a lot cooler if
What separates the good companies that deliver on their promises from the shitbad slackers that deliver a half-done product with missing features that you have to download 50 megs of patches to even play?
It's not size. Companies as big as Sony Online Entertainment (most recently Star Wars Galaxies) and as small as Reakktor Media GMBH (Neocron 2) have all failed miserably to deliver on their promises and hype. You could assume that a huge company like Sony could hire competent managers, but that's obviously not true. But conversely, some smaller companies don't do any better either.
This is something that merits more study. As the gaming industry grows, more and more non-gamers are involved with production of games -- especially in areas like marketing.
These people probably don't understand fully how the "gamer" demographic thinks. They often don't understand that with the ubiquity of internet communications, people are gonna discover that a game is a lump of crap often the day it's released, or even before that if there's an open beta. Just google the title and read a few reviews . And if a game is asstastic, well, gamers have no brand loyalty. They'll happily tell a company to roll up their game, stick it in their ass, and set it on fire. And they'll do it publicly and vociferously.
I support the FairTax www.fairtax.org
This appears to be a common problem in all softare. Development strives wirtes what is best in the time allowed while Marketing wants to promise what sounds like it will catch the eye and possibly lead to a sale. I see this all too often: Marketing makes deals and promises that Development can't sanely reach. This means either Development embraces insane amounts of work to reach the goal or they ignore Marketing and let the finger pointing begin if something goes wrong.
Marketing is constantly making deals without realizing the feasiblity of making these deals. Development wants to make the most bulletproof features available which means less features. It has gotten to the point where selling "hype" is all Marketing can do because they view Development as something they can't control. Especially if there are commisions involved Marketing doesn't really care if they are writing checks Development can't cash.
I am never surprised when this happens to games. I see this all of the time in the dull ISV sector where the markets are much smaller. Considering how much marketing there is in games now I can't imagine the insane pressures being thrown around.
One thing you have to hand to Nintendo, they flourished the home console industry and has still survived when the market is being flooded by Sony and Microsoft money. I am not saying that Nintendo is in the poorhouse, but who can compete with Microcash when they spend billions (yes, billions with a B) to break the back of the video game market? Nintendo survives because they are clearly superior. They are the ones that have come up with darn near every innovation in the home console systems, and if they had put a disk drive on their machines like they intended to before they gave it up, we wouldn't even know who Sony or Microsoft is.
Quickly, think of all of the developers that were stolen out from under Nintendo by Microsoft's checkbook. Five? Ten? A lot for sure. All of those developers. That would have killed everyone but Sony and Microsoft, who took losses on their machines for a long, long time. How many killer titles can you hand over to another company and still be alive in a competetive, hype-driven marketplace? Face it people, Nintendo is as healthy as they come when you have people throwing billions at you to topple you. Most of you wouldn't judge the quality of the car by the size of the manufacturer, so why do it with games?
Oh, and by the way, Halo is just not THAT great. Sorry. I know for many of you this is the first time you have ever played against someone online, and you're a newlywed with the game, but others have been doing it for decades. I'm not saying that Halo sucks, it doesn't. I am saying that many of us can trace our online lineage back to Quake 2 and until you've swung away from your enemies with grappling hooks, or Tribes bombers, or whateever, you realize you've done this Halo stuff before. It is not original. It should not be hyped as original.
It's only original to the ones that have never seen it before.
Rock on, Nintendo. You give me games my wife would like to play.
someone needs to tell this to management as well.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
For me Fable was a _great_ game. And I'm not even a fan of real-time RPGs.
It wouldn't have hurt if it were a bit longer, though.
But then, you know, that's a sign that you actually enjoyed whatever content was in it: it leaves you wanting for more. I can think of other games I said "good riddance" to at the end, or even games which I never bothered (or even wanted to) finish.
Whereas Fable had me pretty much glued to the chair until the end. It had me thinking about it at work. And then there I was thinking "whaaa...? Over already. But I want more!"
I never tried drugs, but I'd imagine that's what drug addiction is like.
And heck, as hype goes it definitely wasn't a selling point for me. After the utter shit that was Black and White, another hyped PM game was _not_ quite something I'd fall for that easily. Doubly so another game where he passes piss-poor judgment on what "good" and "evil" means.
I mean, that guy may well be obsessed with "good vs evil", but he's totally unable to depict more than a carricature of what either means. None of his games, ever since Populous 1, raised above the over-simplified AD&D notion of "good" and "evil".
So the short version is: all that the hype had as an effect is that I was actually planning _not_ to buy it. It took a lot of talking to friends and co-workers who've actually played it before I tried it.
So basically, please. Fable may not have been _everyone's_ cup of tea. No game ever is. But there are also one helluva lot of us who think it was worth every cent and then some. In fact, in my case it was also worth every cent I paid for the XBox just to play it. (I didn't already own an XBox.)
Basically for a lot of us it _did_ live up to the hype, and then some.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If Doom 3 and HL 2 (& CS:Source) were released on their initially reported release dates? (instead of over a full year later before when Doom 3 and CS:Source actually came out?)
Everyone's obsessed with release dates, and I believe this is one of the biggest problems with game development these days.
Many people seem to assume that a game produces itself, and if it fails to meet the expected release date then the developers are somehow deliberately holding back a finished game. I've seen claims that Halo was complete a long time before the launch of the Xbox (in reality, it shows definite signs of being rushed to completion), and that Half-Life 2 has just been sat on for most of the past year. That sort of situation is very rarely the case.
Half-Life and its sequel are probably good examples of the developer not rushing the game to market, both being delayed by about a year. The original went from being a probable also-ran to a memorable experience in that extra year, and I hope the same can be said about HL2. There was something they really weren't happy about with the game, and they had the bravery to delay it. Beyond the insistence that it was still ready for release on September 30th 2003, I have a lot of respect for them for the delay.
There are the endless lists of technical features and numerical 'assessments' of a game's worth, and that's how some seem to rate their games. Personally, I don't care if a game has per-pixel stencil shadow lighting or precalculated radiosity lightmaps, whether it has a certain licensed physics engine or not. What matters to me is the art, the design, the gameplay, the audio and the story. The underlying engine is important, but only in how it makes the previous aspects possible. A great game can be built on a poor engine, albeit with more difficulty, and a poor game can easily be built on a great engine.
I was playing through System Shock 2 recently. It's old, the engine is primitive, and the graphics are mediocre (in terms of a buzzword contest, anyway). It's still a great game.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
``gamers have become wary of those games which have major hyoe behind them.''
There's a lesson in there. If something is surrounded by a lot of hype, this means that someone is trying to make you wait for their product, rather than going with a competitor's. If the hype is generated by the same group that produces the product, this is often indicative of the product being not that great. After all, if the product is really greater than the competition, people will come to use it anyway.
Case in point: OS/2 versus Windows 95. OS/2 was 32-bit, robust, included a GUI, and provided compatibility with Windows 3, long before Windows 95 was released. During all that time, Microsoft made so much hype for Windows 95 that OS/2 was almost completely ignored. When Windows 95 was released, it touted 32 bits, improved stability, and compatibility with Windows 3. Windows 95 was such a fantastic improvement over DOS and Windows 3 that everybody switched.
OS/2 got built-in networking and Internet support and various other improvements. But the Windows 95 users didn't notice, because they were too busy dealing with crashes. I've never seen OS/2 crash. It's one of those great systems (also BeOS) that were completely eclipsed by the hype generated for another product. I hate hype.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
From the article 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.
Holy shit!! Read the review and take it into consideration when deciding whether or not to purchase a game? This guy must be a fucking rocket scientist with a dual PHD in brain surgery!!
Seriously, if you're silly enough to buy a game based on game INTERVIEWS, you're a moron. If you buy a game after REVIEWS have been posted which highlight the pro's and cons, you're smart. Hell, download a demo of the game so you see what you're getting yourself into before you actually buy it.
Would you go to a college without asking a few students about the school or just say fuckit, I'm going here because the campus (much like a box cover/screenshots) looks cool. Here's my 10-40k/year!
Gamers should really should stop being so impulsive and take a hint from the movie-going community, that being that critics are usually pretty good at rating things. And if you don't believe 1 source, check others..then form a concensus..THEN decide whether or not you want to buy the game. In most cases, doing a little research can save you money and frustration.
...you'd get them.
Prior to meeting my fiancee, I was contemplating getting either a PS2 or XBox. My fiancee came with a Gamecube, and I won't look back. The games on this system are just plain F-U-N. We can play Double Dash for hours with the kids, and I went out and bought Luigi's Mansion before her and I were really serious just so I could play it.
PS2, XBox... I dunno, they may or may not have better graphics, and they have the more 'mature' titles, but in the end, I just enjoy playing Nintendo's games. They're fun, and the kids love them. Toss that in with the GBA that I have which we can take on the road, and Nintendo is the winner in our house.
As for what you're saying about HALO, I agree completely. My soon-to-be brother in law is waiting with baited breath for the release of HALO2, and all I can ask is 'why?'. Personally, I can't stand playing FPS games on a console, because I require the keyboard/mouse combo (this may be a personal failing on my part tho). But, really there isn't much in HALO2 that I know of that I haven't seen before in Quake/Quake2/Quake3Arena/any number of other FPS games or their mods. *shrug* to some XBoxers, it may be like the second coming of Christ, but to me it's been there, done that.
~jaraxle
Comment removed based on user account deletion
or actually, shoot the correct messenger.
... well, forever.
This isn't "developers" making the promises, it's "business executives". It's not news, it's been that way throughout the software industry for
Developers, and by extension QA people and Production Support people live under the mantra that "just one more tweak and it'll be perfect". And that's "A Good Thing".
Marketing & Business types live under the mantra "opportunity cost & time to market". That, surprisingly enough, is also "A Good Thing" since money coming in allows developers the opportunity to write.
Those conflicting forces, when balanced with common sense and proper risk management, lead to the proper compromise of quality vs. timeliness.
The issue becomes bad, when "but we made a promise to our customers/shareholders and we can't lose face" becomes the over-riding concern and "but the software doesn't actually work yet" gets lost in the shuffle.
Too many companies in these days of "what have you done for me lately" quarterly profit/loss statement-driven management have lost the ability to think long term.
Reason why there is hope for the future generation #364:
"I wish my grass was emo so it could cut itself."
...returning a played videogame because it doesn't meet your expectations is just not something that happens very often
:(
You make it sound like you can but don't. I wish you could return videogames that don't meet up with your standards. Like you would return a toaster or a vacuum cleaner that broke the first or second day. Problem is you can copy the game too easily. In a perfect world people would be honest and you could return a bad game, but the fact is the stores aren't afraid of you duplicating their whiz-bang toaster v.2 but its a real fear that you will copy whiz-bang-hyped-game II and return it
While I don't play console games, I know that the console mags are often unable or unprepared to give realistic reviews on the hyped new title. PC games mags go the same way. In one sense, you might expect it, because the game company is an advertiser in the magazine that is reviewing the game. The magazine's customer is the advertiser first and then the reader, and so the mag is often afraid to point out any shortcomings in games that are being advertised in the pages -- that stinks, imho.
I can't count the number of titles that I picked up after reading a review only to find that the review was FAR too generous with praise and FAR too short on critique.
I'd rather see more folks whining to the publications that sugar-coat their appraisals of games.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Just because it is funny doesn't mean it is not true.
Overpromises, thy name is Atari 1450XLD.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score