Does hype ruin a game's chances of success?

[Vindekarr]

I've noticed over the last few years that games which advertise heavily, extoll their virtues, buy celebrity or magazine endorsements, or generally jump around screaming PICK ME! PICK ME! for want of a more civilised term, suck so hard they manage to blow at the same time. They are the sorts of games that, if they were people, would be that one soldier in a squad who comes in with all the credentials, the training, the pedigree, the family history, and who despite that couldn't hit a barn door if you bolted the business end of his rifle to it, and who has cowardice issues.

 

The latest in this string of overhyped disasters is Forza Horizon, released today, it's been advertised all over the internet-I've been seeing Horizon adds all over my TV for the last month, all over my homepage all week, and all over XBOX Live all day. But despite or perhaps because of this, Forza stalled on the grid; it is, again for want of more civilised superlatives; a total crapsack and a grave embarrisment to it's franchise and devs. And it's hardly the only one-Rogue Warrior I remember seeing advertised heavily, yet was an utter disaster for Bethesda, or Star Trek Legacy, which was the poster game for the Xbox 360 launch in Australia, which felt decades out of date.

 

The only game I can think of which bucks the trend is Spec Ops: the line, which got advertised plenty, but is also a genuinely good game(thanks to it's truly outstanding story), and perhaps big franchises like Halo and Gears Of War, which, love them or hate them, atleast are high quality. Does hype kill a game? does getting the community excited and then dashing their unreasonable expectations cause the fall if fall there is? or is it something else?

 

Discuss!

[JimboUK]

Those who preorder based on hype will no doubt end up disappointed on many occasions, why people can't just wait until release baffles me, games aren't cheap and with stinker after stinker being released you'd think people would learn their lesson. I guess a fool and his money really are easily parted.

[Lanceor]

Hype is a double edged sword. With the appropriate amount, it can increase sales/downloads etc. but overdone, it will lead to backlash.

 

A lot of hype raises the expectations of a game, movie or other product. Done well and appropriately, people will (correctly) believe that the product is superior to the offerings around it and be more inclined to buy/download/pirate it.

Example: Inception - A good movie where marketing hyped it up a lot, but not too much. Viewers expectations were met or exceeded leading to much positive word of mouth, extending ticket sales.

 

Unlike other forms of marketing though, hype sometimes takes a life of its own and starts to go out of control. If the expectations become higher than what the product can deliver, a lot of people will end up disappointed even if the product was good to begin with. While a vocal minority are always so negative that they emit cathode rays, the danger comes when the negativity stemming from disappointment starts to drown out the positive word of mouth. And that's when I would call it a backlash.

Example: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Not an awful movie, but the hype took on a life of its own and grew enormous. A huge backlash resulted.

 

Sometimes a company intentionally raises hype beyond what the product can deliver - this is a viable strategy if they know that their product is going to disappoint anyway... but it won't do their long term reputations any favours.

Example: Independence Day - The saturation marketing worked in filling theatres on the opening weekend. The ensuing negative word-of-mouth actually helped to lower expectations to a level where people forgave the movie for being incredibly dumb. But from then on, no "serious" movie maker would want to be associated with the Independence Day movie.

 

For Skyrim, I feel that the game was a little overhyped, causing a fair amount of backlash from the cathode ray emitters. Instead of videos showing gameplay and radiant AI, I thing Bethesda should have focussed more on brand awareness and the game's relationship to the older ES games.

[Vagrant0]

Example: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Not an awful movie, but the hype took on a life of its own and grew enormous. A huge backlash resulted.

There are those who would actually argue that even as a stand-alone movie with no other baggage, it is still an abomination that makes a person wonder if anyone even read the whole script before being shot. The plot is fragmented and has numerous points where nothing makes sense, and many scenes which are just too darn busy for their own good, or just too sterile. The movie itself just comes off as being too much of an effort simply to establish some sort of concrete backstory for Anakin, but without much thought or planning behind it. The hype and tie-in to an existing franchise is probably why anyone even bothered to see it.

 

The real issue itself is that many of these AAA games have just been utter crap and recycled elements for much of the last 10 years, and that funding for yet another CoD game is easier to get than for something that actually attempts to do something new. This is why many of the games which have been news makers have been indie games, and nearly everything which has been churned out by EA, Blizzard, and others have been stale, incomplete, or just plain rubbish.

 

The only real problem that is evident in Skyrim, is really the beginning. There's just too much exposition dropped onto the player's lap that ends up being incomprehensible to new players of the series. Even for those who played Oblivion or Morrowind, most of what is said just kills the initial excitement when starting the game and pretty much follows the most boring section of road that you could pick from.

[hector530]

Spec-ops was cursed with a awful sounding genic name and advertised as a standard third person shooter.

[Vindekarr]

Yup. It wasn't hard to exceed their hype; it honestly looks like crap until you play it, and hell, as a shooter, it IS completely average, but it's totally worth it for the story and storytelling, which is... impressive to say the least.

[Arcadiast]

"Hype" does not ruin the game but the gamer.

 

How So? Hype deludes judgement, clouds vision and make it nearly impossible to approach with the neutrality that would be needed for a healthy relation between Customer and Product.

 

One look at some overly heated hype infested Forums in the net will make it very clear that Hype ruins us all.

[brokenergy]

I say more of player expectation rather than hype, too many games get tossed because of not reaching 9's and 10's and it's showing.

[lonewolfkai]

Sure does. In fact, I was just thinking today that gaming companies need to go back to the basics and stop worrying so much about trying to get a piece of the billion-dollar gaming industry pie. Focus on the game, not the money. The money will come if the game is good.

 

However, I will give one example of an excellent game that didn't get enough hype. It comes from where my avatar came from: Okami. It was one of the best games I've ever played, even up to today, yet was considered a failure because it didn't sell enough and most certainly didn't get enough recognition.

[hoofhearted4]

also, some gamers only care about certain aspects of the game and then when thats not perfect, they bash the game as a whole. Multiplayer imo, is ruining games. a perfect example is Medal of Honor, the one released a couple years ago. people only buy FPSs for the multiplayer. i know numerous people who dont even touch the campaign. so when MoHs multiplayer wasnt an exact clone of CoD or BF, the game sucked. was the multiplayer complete crap? well kinda. i had some fun with it (as a non elitest FPS player) but i could see where it fell short. that said, the campaign of the game, to me, was absolutely amazing. ive played it through 4 times, and plan on going back again. ive bought the game twice, thats how good it was (traded it in once, then rebought it when i realized how good it really had been). so in that respect, multiplayer ruins games because some people only care about that. and now MoH had gotten a bad rep because the FPS elitest bashed it saying it was a crap game based soley on its MP. ive already started to see some bashing for the new MoH. i for one cannot wait to try it for its campaign.

 

the other way multiplayer ruins games is because of the first example, Devs feel the need to put some form of competitive MP in their game. even in games where its not needed. sometimes it works out to be a nice little multiplayer add on without taking anything from the single player. other times the SP is still good but the MP is just tacked on crap, and in this case, it would have been better off had they not even tried and used the resources for SP or putting the game out earlier. the last scenario is they focus too much on the MP and end up ruining the MP and the SP. then no one wins. so in this case, multiplayer ruins games because Devs try to get to that CoD/BF market.

 

i know none of this has nothing to do with hype, but just my take on what is hurting games.