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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."
Just a link: http://www.3drealms.com/duke4/
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
...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 :(
Yeah, I remember how pong was going to simulate real tennis in every minute detail.
Marketing promises more than engineering can deliver. News at 11.
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
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.
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.
Product Manager: When will Project A be delivered?
Lead Developer: There is a 50% chance we can deliver by March next year.
Product Manager: Good, I'll tell the customers we can deliver by February. We can deliver Feature B right?
Lead Developer: We don't have enough people to finish developing it by March.
Product Manager: You developers work overtime all the time anyway right. February it is.
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
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
To be fair to the developers and publishers, there exists a culture (especially online) that craves details and information about these upcoming games. I think it can be argued that they are simply filling a demand that is placed upon them. Nintendo does effectively shy away from this pressure and should be commended for it. It must be a hard thing to come to terms with when developing a game. Should they release details to generate some buzz or play it cool and let the game stand on its own merits? As a sort of related aside I think that the guys making KOTOR2 have really found the balance. They release a few details but nothing that will give the story away or stop any of the 'drama' from being played out once the game is available. The most I've heard is the names of a few planets and characters. And the basic premise. These are the sorts of things the game will reveal in the first 5 minutes of play but it has whet my appetite.
...Hyoe pwns joo!
Okay, I'll get some sleep.
Yeah, real tennis was a pretty big let down for you, too, huh?
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Sadly, marketing is hardly ever the problem in the game business. Marketing doesn't start bombing the players until between one week to five months before ship, and they generally don't make promises. There are a few obvious counter examples, Jon Romero about to make you his B*%$h being the most famous one, but for the most part marketing does a reasonable job of handing the spec sheet to the magazines and shouting about how great it will play. I don't think I've seen an example of the marketing department actually making stuff up, though I've seen them make promises based upon specs or feature sheets that got cut.
And that's really the problem. You need to cut things. Either the hyperreal evolutionary landscape was dragging down the processor, or it added layers of unnecessary interaction that killed gameplay (Masters of Orion 3), or you just didn't have time to finish a given feature properly (the extra spirit forges from Soul Reaver), but features will be cut. If you're unprofessional and blog your development cycle to fans who build up notions from your scattered information, you're going to disappoint many of them with decisions that ultimately were correct.
All developers love their fans, and want to have a personal relationship with them. But there are areas where this has to be off limits. All entertainment media know that you have to keep people quiet if you want the experience to be new and unexpected. That we're still struggling with this issue is just another sign of our relative youth as an industry. Enough info will leak out anyway to keep your fans interested. Look at Star Wars, or the LotR productions.
Don't worry. We're getting there.
Due to a technical error, News will be at 12.
The ______ Agenda
``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.
Even a bigger problem sometimes is the hype of the hardware! Look at the PSP. Sounds like it should be better than the current generation home consoles. If that's not hype, I don't know what is!
:)
That's why I've NEVER believed ANY of the hype that surrounds these new systems/games that come out unless they're from Nintendo. For example. When they announced the wavebird, every GameCube owner peed their pants in anticipation. What does Nintendo do? Give out CONSERVATIVE numbers. They said it should last 100hrs and have a range of about 20 feet. What happens in reviews?, well, turns out that 90 feet wasn't a problem and (the testers couldn't test battery life) but let me tell you from experience, I've only had to replace the batteries twice since I purchased mine.
So, when Nintendo says the DS has a battery life of 8-10 hours like the SP, I have 100% faith that it will. When Nintendo says the range of the wireless on the DS is 30 feet, I can expect at least that, and a 95% chance it'll be over 50 feet. When Sony says the PSP should be able to play current PS2 games, I say, can you even fit a game of FIFA in before you need to plug it in?!?
Have fun waiting for the overhyped PSP, I'll be with my buddies (and apparently total strangers!) playing wicked ass DS games.
Sorry, that turned out to be more of a rant. Well I guess it is. I guess I'm ranting on all those game devs. that like to tell me one thing, and then deliver me crap.
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Just as an example, look at Anno 1503 published by Sunflowers and distributed by EA. To this day they failed to provide multiplayer, mistreated customers who inquired about the status of the "patch" that never came, yet even now the demo available online still has a nice outtro screen screaming about the best "multiplayer" experience ever. Only after I had a bout with them and created a Website http://home.fuse.net/slipstreamscapes/ in order to institute a class-action lawsuit, as well as after exposure here on Slashdot http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/13/213524 5, did they finally announce that no patch would ever be released. Ironically, they had plenty of time to create a single-player add-on in the meantime. Now they are supposedly working on a new sequel, again promising mountains and valleys...
This trend is more of a rule than exception nowadays (I can think of at least dozen games in no time where I got burned in a similar fashion but never did anything about it) and we as investors in their products should finally stand-up and fight for our rights as consumers. In this case, there is enough of evidence to institute at least a lawsuit in a small claims court demanding money back for a product that did not deliver (especially in my case where I bought the game solely for the multiplayer experience).
I used to buy at least 2 games per month, nowadays (partially because I am not so much interested in gaming any more) I do not buy games any more, mainly because I am sick and tired of the lies and misleading politics by the game publishers.
It's about time to show these corporate bullies that we will not take this any more.
That saddened me, because Peter Molyneux really has nothing to apologise for. In the design process of ANY game, cool features are conceived, and tossed about, and then pulled because they used too much CPU time or weren't worth the amount of time they would have taken to implement.
Peter Molyneux has a passion for computer game design. He will talk to anybody about the cool ideas. At no point does he ever 'Overpromise'; he rarely promises anything. He just tells the public what his design team are coming up with and playing with. He's not deliberately hyping his games, he's simply talking passionately about his job. It's the fault of the media and the general public if they interpret this wrongly, and then act disappointed when certain features don't make it, as though they 'deserve' to see these features; as though they have some sort of right to be part of the design process.
I am very glad to see Lionhead and their satellites staying close to their community and fanbase. It disappoints me to see the fanbase taking the developers' words as gospel and later being outraged and making demands about features and release dates. The consequence of this behaviour is that the developers will learn their lesson and stop sharing an insight into the design process with us. That would suck.
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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."
I think you mean lawn tennis, old chap. Real tennis is a far superior game.
Oh lord, spare me. I'll bet you think "football" is played by kicking a spherical ball into little nets, too.
Best. Comment. Ever. Enjoy!
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
The claim that stores don't take returns because they are afraid of piracy is simply a lie. I'm not saying that YOU are lying, but that the stores have lied to you.
There are plenty of ways to get your hands on the original media long enough to copy it, and when CD burners were $800, and media was $30 a pop, most stores still wouldn't take returns. Back then, the reason was that you might put a virus on the write only CD.
From personal experience, I used to work at a Software Etc. We did take returns. In fact when someone came back and told us the game worked fine, but sucked, we would tell them that they should brink it back for a refund or exchange! Funny thing is that crappy/buggy games got returned fairly often, and good games almost never got returned. I don't think a single copy of Falcon 4.0 (The best flight sim at the time) ever got returned.
In two years, only one time did I ever run across an individual that was abusing the return policy. After about the 5th return, I simply explained to the "customer" that we obviously don't sell software that is compatible with his system, so this would be the last return he would be allowed to make. Since returns required a form to be filled out (like in almost all types of stores) that contained a name, it is incredibly easy to see if someone is abusing a store return policy, even in a big Best Buy type store.
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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