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Can You Handle 'THEY'?
In a refreshing turn, over at Newsweek's LevelUp blog N'Gai has some suitably chastising commentary on the newly-announced FPS entitled simply THEY. This overly-simplistic name is accompanied by a nearly informationless press release, and reinforces the idea that whatever THEY is, it's not worth looking into. "Generally, the role of a press release is to inform. But having read the THEY press release, all we've taken away from it is hyperbole and buzzwords, assembled Mad Libs-style for maximum unintended hilarity. What is THEY? Apparently, THEY is a 'next generation mystery first person shooter for PC and next generation consoles.' Who are THEY, you ask? ''THEY' are huge--'THEY' are different--'THEY' are hostile!' How good will THEY be? It's 'so mysterious, so stunning and so amazing--that 'THEY' might become one of the most anticipated world premiere titles from this year's Games Convention!'"
Production Costs $17 million
Theatrical Gross $13 million
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #43,832 in DVD
a low budget, high-concept, Lovecraftian horror flick that still managed to lose money.
Platforms: PC & next generation console
Release date: 2008/2009
Genre: First person mystery shooter
Scenario: Near Future
* next generation 3D engine
* unique weapon system that makes you "love" your weapons
* mysterious science fiction background story
* diversified enemies--thrilling and intelligent
* heroes to identify with
* heavy usage of physics
* destructible environment relevant for gameplay
* haunting single player mode
* versatile multiplayer modes
Honestly, this pretentious crap needs to end. This doesn't make me want to purchase or play the game. Sure it's an announcement but honestly, every single buzzword is touted for every FPS game when they come out. Besides, it looks like a third-grader wrote this for a book report and copied the box on game. It provides just enough information to sound real but not enough to be useful, like this up and coming game from downtown ATL.
Title: Protecting and Analyzing the Next-gen Transportation System (PANTS)
Platforms: PC & next generation console
Release date: 2008/2009
Genre: First person strategy thriller
Scenario: Present Time
* next generation 3D engine
* unique tactics system that makes you "love" planning
* politically-charged background story
* diversified citizens--pissed off and delayed
* support characters with realistic backgrounds
* mild usage of physics
* adaptive environment relevant for gameplay
* intellectually challenging single player mode
* variety of multiplayer modes
Their critical knock against their marketing drew a ton more publicity then it deserves. I'm really hoping there is a comical back lash and NO ONE will pick up a copy to punish this lazy PR.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I happen to remember that many, many, many years ago some magazine editor decided to rag on some company that had sent the magazine some doodads. The doodads weren't even promoting a game! Instead they were announcing the creation of a new videogame company. The doodad was actually a knick knack with a bloody brain in it (or something like that) with the name of the company printed visibly on it. For some reason this irked the game magazine editor, and he proceeded to expound, on said magazine's editorial, on how gimmicky the whole affair was, and what a loser of a company this was going to be.
For some reason, Croal's post reminded me of that editorial... And I will tell you this: PR is PR, that's why we have hot babes selling beer and spam emails to make our dicks longer. But in the end, the game will stand alone and speak for itself, gamers will either love it or hate it.
You see, that company the magazine editor ragged on? A couple of years later it went on to release Grand Theft Auto for the PS2, and arguably single-handedly brought open-ended sandbox gaming to the masses...
I wish I could filter out the annoying Pickens articles...
Actually the first picture in the article looks ripped from Half Life 2, looking at The Citadel. The second picture looks like they took a monster from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
It goes:
...
This is my rifle.
This is my gun.
You missed the whole point of the drill, which is to pick up the correct and precise designations of the equipment and armament, which is essential for efficient, terse and comprehensive communication in the battle, without too much explaining (like this) over the channel. "Gun" can mean a lot of things, from pistol to cannon and that much ambiguity is unacceptable in armed forces communications. Rifle, OTOH, is a firearm with long, rifled barrel, basic infantry weapon.
Well, yes and no.
Yes in that indeed it doesn't actually tell you anything that you'd base a buying decision on.
No, in that it's another somewhat comical (and somewhat sad) example of bad marketing and press releases that sound like they were generated by the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator, or a variant thereof. You know, the stuff that we all like to make fun of.
And it also shows at least one reaction to such crap, and it's not a positive one. It turns out that there _is_ such thing as bad publicity.
It's not exactly a new revelation, though. We've seen stuff like that before. Daikatana was massively torpedoed by the backlash to its own dumbly-worded marketing hype. And I forget the name now, but there was another game where a dumb PR hack thought he'd build buzz by causing a scandal with "leaked" information claiming that the game contains all sorts of moral abominations (especially to a non-gamer)... which didn't even exist in the game. Unfortunately the reaction was such that the publisher preferred to cancel the game rather than deal with it.
And then there are the less known cases where a company paid big bucks for, say, a funky company name (a few years back the hype had hit big time that some modern day shamen can construct for you a company or product name that's just short of pure magic, and causes all sorts of positive reactions and associations in people who hear it)... and then discovered that either it has no effect, or in a few cases that the test audience finds it repulsive or obscene. It actually happened. 'Course, then there are those which didn't test it first.
Etc.
Why is it important for nerds? Because for a lot of us our job depends on some marketer selling it. And it turns out that a dumb marketer can do more harm than good. Imagine your job depending on one of _these_ destructive press releases or PR campaigns.
And considering that he has the social skills to sell his ideas to the boss, while a lot of us nerds are more fluent in C++ than in our mother tongue... "do not be alarmed. Be very, very frightened, Arthur Dent."
Don't get me wrong, intelligent and competent marketing is good and I think most of us can respect a competent professional in any domain. But it's also a domain where success is so hard to measure, and there are plenty of bogus metrics with which the incompetents and dishonest pricks can justify their salary. (E.g., a fake UI campaign tends to be counted as a success based on the number of clicks, even though most just result in annoyed potential customers and chances are you didn't raise their interest in your product at all.) And there are a lot which... well, let's put it like this: when you select people based on their ability to be dishonest and sell crap, don't be surprised when they lie to your face and their main interest is in selling themselves.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.