The teaser trailer for Dead Island would have been more suited (actually, virtually perfect) as a teaser for TTG's Walking Dead. I just finished it last night, and I shed a few tears.
Developer Insists Dead Island Trailer Was Not Misleading
- Thread starter Marshall Honorof
- Start date
Harker067 said:
And yet there's no difference between the Mists of Pandaria trailer to it's game and the Dead Island trailer and it's game. Same theme/emotion screw up. See, if you'd have seen the trailer knowing nothing of the game, you'd think that first this human and this green orc are at battles, but then set aside their differences to fight against a Panda. Only after that the Panda shows them this peaceful land and everything is surreal. This isn't the case at all, and there's more separation in MoP than there was for WotLK, in which both factions at least shared the same city.
I'm sorry if some of you didn't catch some emotional themes in Dead Island, but that's your fault/lose, not the developers. The game had some very deeply emotional areas like when the mechanic shop girl had to kill her own father who turned zombie. There was also a part about a woman's husband who was in a bathroom dying and was bitten. You could save her as well as kill him. Just because the game had lots of action within it, doesn't mean it was in any way "gimped" in emotional story.
In general I'm getting sick of this. The bottom line is that the gaming industry needs to understand that gamers are getting tired of being lied to. The justifications don't matter, everyone on both sides knows exactly what's up. You show a trailer that is nothing at all like the game being made, and people are going to get upset with you. Other information being potentially availible is irrelevent.
It's sort of like when a game makes promises on a pre-order box or whatever, that happen to be untrue, a point made on a website or buried in a forum mentioned by a developer, that doesn't cover you for not lying, it just makes you an even bigger scumbag because you should have known better.
To me the excuses about marketing and game developers not talking to each other, and so on, don't matter. All that matters is the results. It's the job of the industry to keep this stuff in line, noone else's. The guys making the game and taking the money are responsible for the information circulated about it, period.
For years the industry has gotten away with taking turds, glossing them up with slick marketing and movies, and people are catching on the industry is taking flak for it. The industry doesn't need to cry, or try and justify themselves, it needs to change otherwise people are just going to get angrier.
One thing I will say for "Dead Island" though is that it WAS a decent game, if not the game a lot of people thought it was going to be. As a result Deep Silver has gotten some crap, but not as much as they would have if the game was genuinely awful, it would not have succeeded well enough to get a sequel.
Also I'll be honest, if your complaining about reaction to your marketing as opposed to what you delivered, be glad your not EA/Bioware. They went through a LOT of effort to lie to people about the ending of Mass Effect 3 and what it was going to entail. They not only failed to deliver on their promises, but released a "behind the scenes app" in which they more or less say that they never had any intention of keeping those promises. Pretty much going "hahaha, we punked you...". The reaction was titanic, and the rage is still ongoing.... In short, shut up and change, and be glad you aren't these guys. Any other company would have been destroyed, and truthfully, I have a feeling the real reckoning over this might still be to arrive, a lot is going to revolve around what happens when EA/Bioware releases their next big franchise game and how much damage they repair to the "Dragon Age" and "Mass Effect" names. From what I've seen so far, and the attitudes projected... it's probably going to be pretty epic. Given that they didn't change the endings and seem to be following their recent design paradigm, your probably going to see a once lionized company die, in comparison to "Deep Silver" which comparitively speaking got a slap on the wrist.
Deep Silver, and other companies, need to learn when to zip it, and realize that trying to "explain themselves" when everyone knows the score, just makes things worse. Sell "Riptide", let actions redeem you, don't try and claim you didn't pull a scummy move with the first game, we all saw it, and you can't rewrite history.
It's sort of like when a game makes promises on a pre-order box or whatever, that happen to be untrue, a point made on a website or buried in a forum mentioned by a developer, that doesn't cover you for not lying, it just makes you an even bigger scumbag because you should have known better.
To me the excuses about marketing and game developers not talking to each other, and so on, don't matter. All that matters is the results. It's the job of the industry to keep this stuff in line, noone else's. The guys making the game and taking the money are responsible for the information circulated about it, period.
For years the industry has gotten away with taking turds, glossing them up with slick marketing and movies, and people are catching on the industry is taking flak for it. The industry doesn't need to cry, or try and justify themselves, it needs to change otherwise people are just going to get angrier.
One thing I will say for "Dead Island" though is that it WAS a decent game, if not the game a lot of people thought it was going to be. As a result Deep Silver has gotten some crap, but not as much as they would have if the game was genuinely awful, it would not have succeeded well enough to get a sequel.
Also I'll be honest, if your complaining about reaction to your marketing as opposed to what you delivered, be glad your not EA/Bioware. They went through a LOT of effort to lie to people about the ending of Mass Effect 3 and what it was going to entail. They not only failed to deliver on their promises, but released a "behind the scenes app" in which they more or less say that they never had any intention of keeping those promises. Pretty much going "hahaha, we punked you...". The reaction was titanic, and the rage is still ongoing.... In short, shut up and change, and be glad you aren't these guys. Any other company would have been destroyed, and truthfully, I have a feeling the real reckoning over this might still be to arrive, a lot is going to revolve around what happens when EA/Bioware releases their next big franchise game and how much damage they repair to the "Dragon Age" and "Mass Effect" names. From what I've seen so far, and the attitudes projected... it's probably going to be pretty epic. Given that they didn't change the endings and seem to be following their recent design paradigm, your probably going to see a once lionized company die, in comparison to "Deep Silver" which comparitively speaking got a slap on the wrist.
Deep Silver, and other companies, need to learn when to zip it, and realize that trying to "explain themselves" when everyone knows the score, just makes things worse. Sell "Riptide", let actions redeem you, don't try and claim you didn't pull a scummy move with the first game, we all saw it, and you can't rewrite history.
Since when is this an issue? Any trailer and cutscene without gameplay could be considered misleading by the same metrics... Have you seen any Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, The Old Republic or Elder Scrolls trailers? Or any other MMO trailer for that matter... The TV commercial of Black Ops 2 had Robert Downey Jr driving a jet... a Jet! I am half expecting the uproar of people calling the FTC on any of those.
The trailer was not misleading. It had zombies, it had weapons, it had a tropical setting... all you need to know is there.
The trailer was not misleading. It had zombies, it had weapons, it had a tropical setting... all you need to know is there.
While it was misleading, yeah, they did a pretty poor job of pretending the game would be like that. So...is it a defence if you fail at whatever false advertising you were going for?
I agree. There was plenty of gameplay footage released after that trailer that clearly showed the game would be nothing like that. It was disappointing, yes, but nobody was mislead into paying for that game through that one early trailer, and if they were, they were foolish to ignore all contrary information available.
"...Three out of four of the canisters on the counter do not contain sulpheric acid, therefore suggesting that one of the canisters is "acidic" is ridiculous."
And I'm sure they bent over backwards to insist that the game was nothing like the trailer when they were negotiating the movie rights... [link]http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/107877-UPDATE-Dead-Island-Trailer-Buzz-Ensures-Movie-Deal[/link]
Look, guys. The game, by most rights, was okay. And you pretty much got away with the bait-and-switch. But you don't get to rewrite history and say that bait-and-switch never happened; it did, and people remember that, and they should.
For me I never look at a CGI trailer and say "oh alright this is what the game play will look like." Because you're right that that is silly. But let's look at World of Warcraft cinamatics and the feel they go for for each cinamatic is recognizable in the game/expansion they connect to. First WoW CGI for example said there will be adventure PVP PVE and big sprawling vistas, it wasn't aiming for a overarching plot and in the vanilla version of WOW that's exactly what it was. Now take my personal favorite of the five cinamatics Wrath of the Lich King and it's CLEARLY focused on a plot, on the weight regret, the power that the Lich King wields, and how it's all coming alive again... and that's pretty much where the focus of the entire expansion was. Infact in every cinamatic Blizzard puts out the CGI is easy to see how it connects to the expansion, and that's where the Dead Island trailer failed.Deathfish15 said:
It was a good CGI, that had no bearing on the themes of the game, so it was absolutely misleading. Should Deep Silver be shoved off a cliff with fire and pitch forks? No obviously not but they shouldn't defend their choice either when people point out accurately that the cinamatic makes no sense in connection to the game, they should say "sorry we'll be more careful next time". I think Deep Silver is just kind of going for controversy lately, like I have no idea how they would think that little statue they putout wouldn't cause a shit storm after 2012 the mother of all gaming shit storm years.
No oddly enough it's not my fault their game didn't make me like it. I went in wanting to like the game I actually enjoy some of the mechanical aspects of it. However Jin was the only one I cared about in the entire game, all the main characters were horrible people. I didn't want to spell it out but learning what happened to her the the end (compared to the main characters cough) is why I gave up on the game. If the rest of the main characters had half the character growth and humanity of Jin I wouldn't have a problem with dead island or its trailer. Unfortunately they're a bunch of self centered jack asses. If it wasn't for those eight deadly words I'd have actually enjoyed the game and have no problem with it. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EightDeadlyWordsDeathfish15 said:
As for pandaria, an action scene between orcs, humans and pandas seems to be the exact kind of high fantasy adventure that at least part of WoW is trying to appeal to. Other then that see Scorpid.
Well, I look at it in comparison to the recent situation with American Mcgee and the claims he was making about "Alice Madness Returns" and the marketing department. He called them liars flat out in how they presented the game, but then backpedaled (probably for legal reasons) and kind of danced around the topic by saying "Well, marketing isn't nessicarly lying" but his meaning was clear. I don't agree with everything American Mcgee said there in relation to his game (I wrote a few typically lengthy posts in response to The Escapist's article on the subject) but his accusations are kind of relevent here.Scorpid said:
At it's core Deep Silver understands that horror fans want a deep, emotional, and disturbing experience at the core of their games, in addition to the gore. Deep Silver had a trailer created for marketing purposes that presented the game in this light, rather than as a first person action RPG loot fest. It knew exactly what buttons it was going to push, and what the product was they were actually delivering. Saying they didn't lie but "marketed" becomes a technicality in a case like this, since it's still a deliberate deception intended to create hype and sales... or simply put a lie. They know what they did, refusing to own up to it just makes things worse.
To be honest I think Deep Silver is being pretty dumb, because really this has only become an issue again because they mentioned it. I'd almost suspect someone told them these clumsy apoligies were a good idea because any publicity is good publicity... and this IS getting people talking about Deep Silver again recently. That said I don't think that getting people talking is nessicarly going to help them sell their game, when it's largely reminding people of the reasons why they should be angry at Deep Silver, rather than the positive aspects of what they did with Dead Island which was a decent game overall (to me at least).
When it comes to their bloody torso, I think people need to grow up and get some perspective. This little item is no differant from similar things you'll see in specialty halloween shops around the holidays, to be honest I've seen far worse versions of the same basic piece over the years. A horror novelty in a horror game is actually a pretty good idea, and I think it's fairly cool.
Ask yourself seriously why people have decided to complain about the Dead Island torso, when they don't go ballistic every year when they sell similar things around Halloween when it's the season for horror? The answer is because it's a trolling attempt to generate contreversy and attention by people who know that aspects of the gaming community will rally behind accusations of sexism and generate tons of chaos and attacks that they can laugh at when there is no real issue. There is an audience here that can be manipulated, where if someone was to go railing about severed female body parts and such being sold as halloween props they would be ridiculed as opposed to generating armies of supporters to start a misguided crusade for their amusement.
2012 mostly stands out as being the year when people started standing up to this kind of trolling, which detracts from the real issues. Going after things like this, The Hitman Absolution trailer, or the Cyperpunk 2020 teaser, detracts from real issues when actual sexism and issues might be involved, and just generally spreads chaos, dissent, and does damage which is what trolls ultimatly want.
When I look at what this item actually is, and put it in context, it's no big deal. I don't think Deep Silver was trying to generate contreversy so much as give horror fans the kind of knick knack that they collect, tons of macabre stuff like that gets sold every year, and some of the more collectible items can resell for big bucks to the right people. I could see someome plopping the Riptide torso down on the table with all the snacks for a Halloween party, or doing something similar near the chips and munchies if they invite friends over for a horror movie night.
The issue some people have (not me) wasn't that it misrepresented gameplay. It was that it didn't even come close in tone. The game's tone was pretty bland rather than heartwrenching.
My issue with the game was that first person melee swing the weapon widely type fighting gets super old. I played as the guy who throws stuff, which was fun. Except when people online stole my weapons or when the zombie i killed sank in to the earth taking my weapon with it forever.
My issue with the game was that first person melee swing the weapon widely type fighting gets super old. I played as the guy who throws stuff, which was fun. Except when people online stole my weapons or when the zombie i killed sank in to the earth taking my weapon with it forever.
I disagree, what you are referencing is not "emotional tone", it gameplay. While Pandaria may be slightly a bad example, look at the CGI trailers for WarcraftIII and Frozen Throne. The emotional tone was just perfect for the what the story was going for, even if the gameplay is unrelated. Personally I think the Mists of Pandaria trailer did show the tone that the Pandaran civilization would take.Deathfish15 said:
Not to be a jerk or anything, but you do know what emotional tone means, right? Because acrobatic somersaults is not an emotion
50% of the time, trailers are misleading, that's all you can really say. The developer could just have said that and been over with it. Heck, advertisements, developer claims, and game info in general can be misleading. We've seen it so many times.
It's down to whether or not you say:
1. The gaming public is too gullible.
or
2. Gaming related people (advertisers, journalists, developers, etc) are getting too cocky with what they put forward.
It's down to whether or not you say:
1. The gaming public is too gullible.
or
2. Gaming related people (advertisers, journalists, developers, etc) are getting too cocky with what they put forward.
... This is 100% the fault of the viewer.
I don't know how many times I've seen a cinematic trailer get released for a game that we've never seen gameplay for and watched as the comments filled with 'OMG GAME OF THE YEAR' 'THIS IS GOING TO BE THE BEST GAME EVER' 'BLAH BLAH BLAH DERP DERP DERP DERP' etc.
I've seen maybe one or two cinematic trailers in my lifetime that gave a fair representation of what the actual game is going to be like.
I don't know how many times I've seen a cinematic trailer get released for a game that we've never seen gameplay for and watched as the comments filled with 'OMG GAME OF THE YEAR' 'THIS IS GOING TO BE THE BEST GAME EVER' 'BLAH BLAH BLAH DERP DERP DERP DERP' etc.
I've seen maybe one or two cinematic trailers in my lifetime that gave a fair representation of what the actual game is going to be like.
Count me as the 2nd because I loved the trailer and enjoyed playing through as Sam B and now I just managed to grab 3 more friends to play through the game again which makes me a happy gamer.wombat_of_war said:
Also I'm quite excited about riptide so I don't care one way or the other if people are going to pass on a game they wanted tailored for them 100%.
You smash zombie with everything you have and laugh playing with friends, that's all I got from this game. The fact that this guy still talks about people saying that the trailer was misleading has to make him at least think about it, they tried to set a tone with it that was nowhere to be seen in the game itself, or didn't translate too well cuz most characters in it where too damn stale.