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The Great Digital Hype
The Escapist is running a piece looking at how over-hype can kill a game just as fast as a buggy build or bad gameplay. With certain titles, especially Massive games, the expectations of a community can become so out of step with reality that whatever is released will not live up to the image. Article author Dana Massey looks at this issue, with personal experience, through the failure of the MMOG Wish. From the article: "On January 1, 2005, we opened the doors to the 80,000-plus players who had signed up to participate in our open beta. It was during this time that the Half-Life 2 demo had released, and I remember being quite pleased when our beta dropped it down to second on the most active list over at FilePlanet. It looked like things were going well. Famous last words ..."
Just watching the demos I thought of a dozen things I'd expect that game to do which I'm sure it won't. Like a mix between asynchronous and synchronous multiplayer. Be great, seems like a no brainer, will Spore have it? I doubt it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Umm... duh.
When a hype gets people worked up for something, they're expecting it to see that expectations met. When you promise something, people expect this to happen. When you don't deliver, people will be disappointed and, worse, they will start picking the product apart. It may be even good, hey, it may be great by "ordinary" standards, but it isn't what you promised, so it is invariably going to be received less favorable than a less hyped game would be.
People start to nitpick at the tiniest problems. For a very simple reason: They are disappointed and they want others, who maybe didn't hear about the hype and think the game is great, to understand why. If for no other reason, then for the reason of being right. You can hardly argue that a game is crap when it isn't, by objective standards, so you have to find the dirt. That dirt is dragged to the surface then, so everyone can see it. You get compared to other games that may even fall behind in other parts but in THIS part your game sucks, so it sucks in general.
If enough people repeat it, the game breaks down and is remembered as a hyped game that didn't make it. See Black and White for reference. Or Star Wars I-III.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I was on the Wish beta, one of those 80,000 I guess. It was a pretty good game, kind of the thing I expected UO2 to be before that was canned. The Wish development team was really cool as well, the kind of developers I would really want making an MMO I'm addicted to. During the beta they had, of course, many different events and stuff to serve as a server stress test. Our guild was actually integrated into the story line due to the size of the guild and number of active players. Such a fun game, even if the graphics were a little less impressive than most, and there were still bugs to be worked out. Waht game DOESN'T have those nowadays, especially MMOs!
case and point
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
I am almost disappointed in the Wii price. For so many months now its been 220, 199, 229, that when they announced 250 I was like "That Sucks". Even though its a good deal, and I will get one its kind of a downer. And it has Wii sports even, I know. The damn hype just made me want to spooge at the 199 price that had been speculated.
Many people have this attitude that a game that a sleeper hit is somehow better than a hit from a larger company.
When people over-hype a game they ruin it for themselves.
The best example of this is halo2.
It was a good game with some bugs, not the best game ever. I enjoyed but i stopped playing after about 12 months, i go back for single player sometimes.
IMHO it bungie can only be blamed for being fairly tight lipped.
The fan base however took tiny bits and tried to extrapolate the entire game from them. They to the TV and said OMG game will be on EARTH!
They took the e3 thing and said OMG EARTH!
Somehow I have always been suprised when people got mad because halo had another halo involved. I know people who were dumbstruck, it never occured to them that there might be another halo.
There was mas speculation about features which bungie said MIGHT be in the game. Ex sprinting and the ATV.
They got these god like ideas of what the game would be like. Then when it came out it didn't meet these.
You mad
and one as a gift, but now...
Sony PS3.
thats the price of ONE game. get over it. I think all things considered its a great price point to start at, especially since I'm sure a year later you'll see it for 200 or so. While I do wish they gave the option to buy it without coming with a sports game, since thats most definitely not on my list of games to get, I do understand that its such a negligable thing to worry about. Let the games decide how this new gig deals.
The biggest let-down is that people are still pre-animating the gameplay for commercials, or otherwise using a TON of CGI that the game just could not duplicate during play. If you look back historically, games that have done well were advertised kinda like: "here's the graphics, why hide it, if you think it sucks, then screw you, the game's still good". I just want to see what it is I'm gonna be doing in the game, not a split-second clip of that and then some other random CGI B-reel from Star Wars Episode 3 or something.
stuff |
They're working on GT5. Every release they say something like "We'd like to include feature X" and the community goes freaking nuts with it so they work even harder to make it work which delays the project until they decide it won't happen. Then they have a late product without the feature that everyone talked about for a year (or LONGER).
Is it not possible to just wait until the product is in production before you start telling everyone about it? I understand they want to know if it's going to sell before they go to the trouble of making it, but vaporware and over-hype is killing my innergamer. I'm to the point now that I don't even think about new games. Everything I play is a year old simply to avoid hype, delays, and general disapointment.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
Wish *was* over-hyped, but not all of the hype was good.
They tried to have only 1 "world" group of servers that would house at least 10K players online at one time, with no "zones". Many of us were openly skeptical of whether or not it could be pulled off by them, especially since they were a small company. Blizzard or SOE is one thing, but some small developer that nobody had really heard of before? Sorry, but many of us were waiting for it to fall.
The bottom line is Hollywood and the music industry over-hypes things all the damn time. The more they show commercials for a particular movie, the more likely it is to flop, unless it is a movie that has a pre-generated following. (Such as any Star Wars, or Spider-Man)
Look at how hyped that short-lived Anna Nicole Smith reality show was. It was so bad it wasn't watchable, but they were sure it was a hit. I saw a commercial every 10 minutes. Look at that Van Halen album with Gary Cherone singing on it. Eddie and the gang kept talking about how great it was that they were working with Cherone, and it was the worst album (by far) that Van Halen ever released.
The key is always: Who is doing the hyping?
If it is fans, and there is a track record with the artist, there is reason for optimism. If it is the company/act/actor/studio, then there is reason to be skeptical.
These days, most of the studios act like used car salesmen. Talk fast and loud, and people will pay attention to what you are saying, instead of looking carefully at the product.
This is exactly why I'm trying not to get too excited about Spore. It's still a year away.
Remember Half-Life 2? This is a game that was massively delayed and clearly over-hyped, but it turned out to be as critically acclaimed and joyfully accepted as the original Half-Life. Sometimes a game can be over-hyped, but the amount of hype is not inversely proportional to the quality of the game.
According to Wikipedia, Square has sold 9.72 million copies worldwide. If I remember correctly, the commercials SOLELY featured the 'good' CGI cut scenes (i.e. not the ones with the blocky-character models from normal, non-battle gameplay). Granted, FF VII was billed as a 'cinematic experience' (with the commercials stating 'the cinematic experience of the year will not be in theaters; it will only be on Playstation).
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This is a huge cop-out. There must have been alot of things going on besides over-hype. How can you throw away years of work in 8 days? Blizzard tested Warcraft 3 and people hated it, so they pulled it back in and re-did it, and it became a classic. No way it was "Hype" that killed them, they run out of money? They discover their code sucked? What is the real reason?
I don't buy the hype.
A good counter-example is, ironically, Halo. It's a mediocre game in almost every respect, the least of which is its actual gameplay (it reminded me of Serious Sam). Yet, it's a huge hit. Why?
Good advertising from Microsoft, and everyone saying it'd suck balls. It somehow managed to be the first really playable FPS on console, and MS did well for it.
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