Notice anything strange about this year’s E3? Stranger than usual, that is? More than any other show in recent memory – even E3 2011, which was similarly afflicted – it was dominated by games that we’d already seen many, many times before. One of the only notable exceptions was Watch Dogs, one of the biggest excitements of the show – but if the recent spate of delayed games is anything to go by, it probably won’t be anywhere near us before 2014, which means another year at least of following it pre-release.
Increasingly, we have to stew in our own juices for a near-interminable length of time before we get our hands on titles which we already know, or think we know, a lot about. This is as much to do with publishers’ marketing approach as it is with the age of the Internet putting all imaginable information about a game at your fingertips. And the problem is that having to wait a number of years for a game you want usually leads to the accumulation of mountainous unrealistic hopes for how it will play on release. This wealth of expectations that games companies are allowing to develop unchecked in their customers isn’t helping anyone. It’s time for a change.
The past few years have been littered with titles that have spent a long time in development, before being released to heartfelt disappointment from even their most ardent supporters. Whether you look at Final Fantasy XIII, Resident Evil 5, Mass Effect 3 or the beleaguered Duke Nukem Forever, all these titles met a rather sour reception from many gamers, especially considering the high hopes that were held for them pre-release. Whilst some commentators have attributed this to the rise in perceived “gamer entitlement”, another potential cause is the manner in which publishers build hype relentlessly whilst the game is under development. The longer this gestational period goes on, the higher expectations can get – and the more bitterly disappointed players can be.
One of the most pertinent recent examples of this phenomenon is Bioware’s Star Wars: The Old Republic. Whilst the initial reaction to the game when it launched in December 2011 was positive, it’s since seen its sub numbers crumble as fans increasingly admitted to feeling let down by the title. When the game was first revealed in October 2008, gamers united across genre-divides to share their joy and speculate on what the final product would offer. Some were hoping for a title based on earlier builds of Star Wars Galaxies, the now-defunct MMO that was also built on Lucas’ IP. Others had no interest in the multiplayer component, but instead wanted a continuation of the events depicted in the Knights of the Old Republic series. Still more began chanting about the imminent arrival of the fabled “WoW-Killer”, praying at long last that Blizzard’s behemoth would be dethroned.
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Who in their right mind would admit to fans: "That thing you're really excited about? It's not going to happen."
At first, these conflicting viewpoints weren’t a problem - but then this continued for four, long years. Expectations were allowed to snowball relatively unchecked; after all, what company in its right mind would openly admit to fans: “That element you’re so excited about? Well it’s just not going to happen.” Through omissions, Bioware hyped up story, customisation and companions while implicitly suggesting the game could be all things to all men. If players had only been getting psyched for a year, it probably wouldn’t have been so bad. But that wasn’t the case and, as a result of the overhype, many were left feeling bitterly displeased.
Bioware is far from the only company to have misjudged the benefits of hype in the age of the Internet. Amongst a myriad of others, Blizzard also fell foul of heightened expectations with the release of Diablo III. While it’s admittedly hard not to disappoint people with a game they’ve been awaiting for 12 years, the stakes were raised further by announcing so far ahead of release. If the company had only revealed the game a year before it hit shelves, perhaps expectations from fans of the original titles would have been kept more restrained. But that isn’t what happened.
After it was announced in June 2008, details of Diablo III were drip-fed to the slavering masses over four entire years. For a title of this magnitude, the gaps between new information being released were agonisingly large for fans. So, naturally, many began to speculate about what they wanted, what the game needed, and what Blizzard would surely do to make this the best game EVAR.
In these periods where hype wasn’t shaped by Blizzard, players were building an image of the game that awaited them even whilst some of its fundamental aspects weren’t set in stone. You could argue that premature reveals such as this are irresponsible, like letting the horse bolt from the barn unchecked. When Diablo III eventually launched, it rocketed off shelves, but there were problems. Partly due to the franchise’s history and partly due to the fact that so much time had elapsed since the game was announced, a chunk of fans were expecting a different title to the one they received.
There’s a difference between building awareness and building hype, companies too often pursue the latter to their eventual detriment. Whether it’s by opting not to correct gamers’ assumptions, or by allowing expectations to snowball through premature announcements, the end result is a disappointment for all. It’s a not a phenomenon unique to games either, as the reaction to Ridley Scott’s long-awaited Prometheus shows.
On top of this, knowing too much about a title can wear out its appeal thanks to over-exposure. The companies out there that seem to recognise this, such as Nintendo and Apple, surely owe at least some of their success to the air of secrecy surrounding their products until shortly before release. Nintendo doesn’t really participate in the preview cycle; we traditionally see a game once or twice before it hits shelves, although multiple showings of Skyward Sword and New Super Mario Bros U suggest that the reticent Japanese giant might be getting at least slightly more generous. (It’s still far from the two-year-long series of marginally differing demos that Square-Enix chose to show for Deus Ex: Human Revolution.) Apple, too, shows us fully functioning hardware, then launches it swiftly after; the first iPad was announced in January 2010 and was in shops by April that same year.
So what’s the solution? Should publishers only be announcing their games when a launch date is fixed and within sight? Should there be an increase in honest dialogue with customers to excite them more responsibly? Or do we, as gamers, need to check our expectations every now and then and appreciate that maybe a game won’t be everything we want it to be, and that it’s not the end of the world if it isn’t?
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It's possible to go too far in keeping games under wraps
We already know it’s possible to go too far the other way when it comes to keeping games under wraps; the concept of ‘Valve Time’ is well known. Valve was also the recipient of a fan petition in January over their continued refusal to discuss the future of the Half Life franchise. Such silence fosters resentment in those getting excited about the title, and leads certain gamers to feel justified in pirating; a poor decision that ultimately hurts anyone who truly cares about the medium.
Talking about “gamer entitlement,” meanwhile, is a sure way to polarise people, but it’s at least partially relevant to this discussion. The issue at hand is not so much whether we feel we deserve more from a company we admire, or whether they’ve misled us; it’s how we deal with a game that doesn’t quite manage to tick the boxes we thought it would. Going forward, that’s what we need to take away from the recent string of disappointments we’ve had.
But then, it’s not entirely gamers’ fault that we get so caught up in the ultra-hype. The solution has to be bilateral: publishers and platform holders need to rethink how they manage expectations, even as we need to work on managing our own. Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime recently said that gamers are insatiable, always wanting more regardless of how much we’re given. It’s easy to see where he’s coming from, but that hype cycle is something that the games industry itself has created. If it’s going to change, it has to change from both sides.
Source : ign[dot]com
