Does hype ruin a game's chances of success?

[Thor.]

Hype does ruin the game to a point, but if the game is good it really doesn't matter, just read the reviews before cancelling your pre order.

 

One game though that does stand out from the rest that all devs should be doing is Project cars, anyone can play the game during development. Hype on top of actual experience, its still in pre alpha yet you can pick up a dev build anytime, and give feedback along the way.

Edited October 24, 2012 by Thor.

[Vagrant0]

I would almost be tempted to say that the FPS genre is currently too saturated for even a good CoD style game to do particularly well without just being CoD. The problem is that far too many games have moved from squad-based tactical gameplay towards one-man twitchfests. Even BF3. There may have been some graphical and realism based improvements, but most FPS games havn't really gotten away from old-school doom-style deathmatches. There are numerous ways that this can be changed, but all of them involve some amount of risk and might not interest a portion of the player base. So, rather than have a FPS game where the story is actually played out in multiplayer battles using a wide range of objectives and following a regular campaign, we get junk-food fps games that are all essentially the same aside from minor mechanic changes and how good their ironsights are.

[hoofhearted4]

I would almost be tempted to say that the FPS genre is currently too saturated for even a good CoD style game to do particularly well without just being CoD. The problem is that far too many games have moved from squad-based tactical gameplay towards one-man twitchfests. Even BF3. There may have been some graphical and realism based improvements, but most FPS games havn't really gotten away from old-school doom-style deathmatches. There are numerous ways that this can be changed, but all of them involve some amount of risk and might not interest a portion of the player base. So, rather than have a FPS game where the story is actually played out in multiplayer battles using a wide range of objectives and following a regular campaign, we get junk-food fps games that are all essentially the same aside from minor mechanic changes and how good their ironsights are.

it would be sweet to have an FPS, where the campaign was played out in online squad game play. i think that would be extremely fun!

[ziitch]

To a related topic, I still think the word-of-mouth is completely underplayed in today's scene, because it feels like a severe risk to those who made games with bloated budgets costing millions to dollars just to make one game (which is a problem in itself). With the current marriage between technology and social needs, why don't they try it once and let honest words determine a game's success? What's being spoken about it and its impact on the industry, and not how much it's made on sales, should be what determines if a game is a success or not. Seriously - What's wrong with aiming for a niche, or creating one, that's loyal enough to sell the game for you? Millions in players and sales should mean next to nothing and we should treat it as nothing to brag about when to several hundreds to thousands that genuinely buy and like your game.

 

Oh yeah - Without word-of-mouth advertising, we wouldn't have had the Pokemon craze. It didn't even sell well initially in Japan until word-of-mouth really brought in the sales.

 

P.S. - Let's stop using short, positive quotes and ratings from articles on post-release advertisements, especially when you have to look for obscure news/review sites to find anything good. Using tweets are getting just as bad as well.

Edited October 24, 2012 by ziitch

[hoofhearted4]

To a related topic, I still think the word-of-mouth is completely underplayed in today's scene, because it feels like a severe risk to those who made games with bloated budgets costing millions to dollars just to make one game (which is a problem in itself). With the current marriage between technology and social needs, why don't they try it once and let honest words determine a game's success? What's being spoken about it and its impact on the industry, and not how much it's made on sales, should be what determines if a game is a success or not. Seriously - What's wrong with aiming for a niche, or creating one, that's loyal enough to sell the game for you? Millions in players and sales should mean next to nothing and we should treat it as nothing to brag about when to several hundreds to thousands that genuinely buy and like your game.

 

Oh yeah - Without word-of-mouth advertising, we wouldn't have had the Pokemon craze. It didn't even sell well initially in Japan until word-of-mouth really brought in the sales.

 

P.S. - Let's stop using short, positive quotes and ratings from articles on post-release advertisements, especially when you have to look for obscure news/review sites to find anything good. Using tweets are getting just as bad as well.

Two games come to mind when you say Word of Mouth. First one is the lesser example, Borderlands (1). I dont remember seeing much advertising for it. i just remember seeing a preview on G4 and i was like ok ya i think ill like that. it wasnt hyped up before hand, only got average reviews IIRC for the most part. and yet look at it now.

 

the second example is really a perfect case scenario, Minecraft. an Indie game aiming for a Nitch and seriously hitting it strong based on Word of Mouth. never was it advertised, just simply hyped up by those who had been playing it. and now it and Mojong or Notch or w.e is a huge game/developer because of it and will gain a following for any future game just because of how well Minecraft did. i for one enjoyed it, and am looking forward to his new game 0x10c.

[Vagrant0]

it would be sweet to have an FPS, where the campaign was played out in online squad game play. i think that would be extremely fun!

What I was really talking about was the fact that these AAA game companies really havn't done anything new with the genre from a gameplay standpoint beyond adding in teams and capture points. At it's heart, most of these FPS games are still the standard shooting game where you just run around shooting other players, die, respawn, rinse, repeat until the end of the round where you get moved to another map without much rhyme or reason beyond just having a different environment to do the exact same things you were just doing.

 

This is why DayZ is probably the biggest thing to happen in the genre for quite some time. Sure, it has zombies, but who cares about that. What the game really has is a number of fundamental gameplay differences from pretty much every FPS game out there:

 

First off, it has death with repercussions... If you die, you lose any of the stuff you had, allowing anyone to just come along and loot you, and if your body sits there for long enough it will attract hordes of enemies so going back for your stuff is not usually recommended. Meaning that every death usually means having to start over from scratch and run halfway across a country just to re-join your group of friends.

 

Second, it has survival elements. You don't start off with all sorts of weapons, able to just run around mowing down everything you see without real concern for ammo since you only have what you can scrounge up. Combined with the death mechanics, using consumables, and being reasonably frail (can break your leg climbing a set of stairs), and your playstyle tends to be much more conservative and planned out.

 

Third, teams aren't official. You don't start out with any sort of squad, you generally have little communication with others, and even if someone is friendly there isn't anything keeping them from just killing you when your back is turned and just take the loot. But at the same time, it usually isn't a good idea to shoot everyone you see since this attracts unwanted attention and weakens your own group's ability to deal with threats. Afterall, your life may seriously depend on being able to shoot your buddy in the knee cap and run like hell if you get mobbed.

 

 

Some of these are RPG type elements, sure, but most of them could be applied to just about any sort of game where you aren't part of a regular military, or even as part of an off-world strikeforce that has to survive in a hostile alien environment based on what equipment you bring with. There are dozens of variations which could be done to incorporate elements like this into other situations, but the game companies can't seem to be bothered to take the risk.

[hoofhearted4]

Off Topic i know....but i have/had no interest in DayZ. to me it looks horrible. i think the game looks horrible and slow and boring and i really have no desire to work for something only to be killed and have everything ruined by a camping sniper or w.e. its not for me, and i love RPGs. :P

[Vagrant0]

Off Topic i know....but i have/had no interest in DayZ. to me it looks horrible. i think the game looks horrible and slow and boring and i really have no desire to work for something only to be killed and have everything ruined by a camping sniper or w.e. its not for me, and i love RPGs. :P

Yeah, the mechanics need to be polished, and needs some balance changes, but it is also probably the best example of both the hype end of things, and how game companies in general aren't pushing the medium and trying new things as much as they could be. It's also an example of what usually comes with those sorts of risks... People who aren't interested because they don't care for one of the main mechanics that makes it different from other games of the same genre. We may want new and great things... But at the end of the day, what makes the most money and gets the most players is just the same regurgitated mush we've been getting for years... Like most of EA's games.

[hoofhearted4]

DayZ is also a great example of Word of Mouth. it was a mod, so its not like it was advertised. and look how popular its become. so popular that its being made into its own game. so popular that Minecraft is adding like a MineZ to its game.

[ziitch]

After all, aiming to get attention from anyone (and by anyone I mean anyone) for your game is a bad plan no matter how you take it. Just trying to get attention from a certain group, say RPG players, would be much easier, and at the same time, what time you aren't spending on just to get the attention of other player types can be used to brainstorm what that audience would expect in the new game, and what they won't expect but will like through careful research and browsing expressed opinions, finding commonalities that exist in many of those opinions to form something that compliments them.

 

The recent ACIII commercials concern me not because of what they contain, but basically who they are aimed at. I wouldn't have put commercials on American TV. However, Ubisoft did, and several people are likely going to get it for the period of time it takes in, but it's content is not something several Americans would find appealing. They may very well become disappointed (or even outraged) that this wasn't anything that they wanted to do or expect out of the game.

 

You have to take responsibility sometimes, and sometimes that means limiting advertising to a group that would get what you're doing and not towards everyone where they might find one element of the game interesting but become completely disappointed in the other elements not crafted for them.

Edited October 25, 2012 by ziitch