"Hype" and expectations...why is it a problem?

[Vault101]

So one thing I hear...among the many other problems that plauge the industry (Pracy,DRM,lack of creativity,dumbing down and such)

is this thing known as "Hype"...aparently its among one of those "bad things".

now Im not entirely sure what we mean by "hype"...I imagine is when a game is marketed and has a whole lot of buzz around it

so anyway, I get the impression some people "blame" the hype or the game or whatever for their OWN expectations being high...

like


I mean seriously...isnt somones personal expectations....their own persoanal expectations?

 

[Sp3ratus]

I mean seriously...isnt somones personal expectations....their own persoanal expectations?

Pretty much hit the nail on the head. But really, it's human nature. If you're looking forward to something, wanting to know more about it is natural and the you hear about something(if you like it, that is), the more you get excited about that game, since you can't wait to get your hands on it and try those all those new and exciting things out.

I mostly to try steer clear of hyping, but that's more to do with that I want to avoid spoilers, but it also has the fortunate side-effect of not bringing my expectations up too much, since most of the time, I don't really know what to expect. That being said, I'm not immune to hype, of course I'm not. After what I thought was a brilliant game, DAO, I was, like a lot of other people dissapointed with the direction DA2 was taken. Not saying it's a bad game per se, but I was dissapointed, because I expected more.

Also, about the whole, "people blaming the game". It's always easier to blame someone/something else, than yourself, right?

 

[Vault101]

I mean seriously...isnt somones personal expectations....their own persoanal expectations?

?

good point, I probably find it a bit confusing because Im the same. The more excited I am about a game the more I will avoid news about it (like mass effect 3..I no practically nothing plotwise or anything) so I can be surprised and not have any pre-conceived expectations or Ideas

 

[Zhukov]

Depends, are you talking about hype as in marketing or hype as in lots of people screaming about how good something is/is going to be?

 

[madwarper]

I mean seriously...isnt somones personal expectations....their own persoanal expectations?

Except when they're not personal expectations... It is what's being promised by the game's creator, in no uncertain terms, and then the game fails to deliver.

The worst offender I can think of is Peter Molyneux.

 

[Nimcha]

I mean seriously...isnt somones personal expectations....their own persoanal expectations?

Problem is that people (especially on this site) usually see their personal expectations as the only benchmark for judging a game.

 

[Sixcess]

Hype can easily backfire. Bioware's claims for The Old Republic in the run up to and post-launch have become ever more over the top, to the point their most recent press release reads like a parody.

"One of the most common things we're already hearing is that people seem to find it hard to go back to other MMOs once they play The Old Republic"
- interview in October

"The Old Republic has become the fastest growing subscription MMO in the history of our industry,?
- Press Release a couple of days ago. How they can measure 'growth' when it's been out less than a week is beyond me.

"critics around the world are giving the game high praise for dramatic, genre-changing innovations in the MMO category."
- same Press Release.

"By adding voiced characters and story, BioWare is innovating the genre and giving players a much more immersive experience, much like the transition from silent films to talkies."
- and again.

"Star Wars: The Old Republic stands as one of the greatest and most ambitious achievements in video game history."
- and again...

I could go on, but I think this gives an idea of the kind of self aggrandising egomania that's on display in every single press blurb and interview Bioware are pushing out at the moment, and have been for some time. It's typical EA trash talk, as seen with the BF3/MW3 childishness - "Not only is our game the awesomest thing ever but other games suck." The really insidious thing is that they are hoping that press releases like this will be quoted as fact by media outlets, particularly those that don't do a lot of MMO coverage.

If you frequent MMO specific sites this has been getting spewed out for months now, and if it has raised the profile of this game I'd say it's also done a really good job at alienating a lot of people who play and prefer other MMOs. Hype is good for generating discussion of your product, but how good is it when much of that discussion revolves around how it's not nearly as good as they're claiming?

 

[Sixties Spidey]

Hype creates expectations, expectations color your opinion and impressions of the final product. See also: DNF

 

[Lilani]

I mean seriously...isnt somones personal expectations....their own persoanal expectations?

?

good point, I probably find it a bit confusing because Im the same. The more excited I am about a game the more I will avoid news about it (like mass effect 3..I no practically nothing plotwise or anything) so I can be surprised and not have any pre-conceived expectations or Ideas

The problem is when people get so "hyped" up about something, they let their personal opinions get in the way of their judgment. They aren't just excited about the game's release--they believe they know the end product is going to be a success. They aren't just claiming they want to play it, they're claiming it is going to be a great game, even if they've never played a second of it. And unlike regular excitement to play something, claiming it's a great game is a statement that can be either right or wrong. Because of that, some people become so convinced that game is going to change the world, they believe they are completely right in what they think and anyone else who isn't as excited as them is completely wrong. Then, if the game comes out and it's lackluster, they have a habit of trying to save face by ignoring those problems and saying it's awesome anyway.

So THAT'S when hype really becomes a problem. When people hype something so much, they become hostile to all who aren't hyped and they refuse to admit when their praises of the game's greatness turn out to be misplaced.

 

[Frankster]

Personal expectations are rarely purely our own, its hard to be totally immune to the suggestions of others (so hype from the people you know) or ignore the marketing campaign of a game thats being pushed hard or even just news of the game in question if you're passively interested in gaming to the point where you frequent gaming sites (to be more informed about games).

Hype can be a positive or negative force for the game as it affects ones personal expectations, and can backlash if hype expectations dont match up with the end product (duke nukem, even though i think everyone knew it was gonna be bad, or people who went to buy da2 after reading the initial extremely uber positive reviews) in the eyes of the consumer.

 

[tippy2k2]

Most of the time, hype becomes a developer/publisher/PR guy over-promising and under-delivering. Hype itself is not that bad but how many games can you name that were hyped to epic proportions only to fall flat on it's face?

A great example is Fable. Fable is not that bad of a game but because of all the things promised that were not delivered, it FEELS like it's a lot worse than it actually is. It's a game that probably deserved 9's score-wise that dropped down to 8's for a lot of people.

 

[Zom-B]

So one thing I hear...among the many other problems that plauge the industry (Pracy,DRM,lack of creativity,dumbing down and such)is this thing known as "Hype"...aparently its among one of those "bad things".

now Im not entirely sure what we mean by "hype"...I imagine is when a game is marketed and has a whole lot of buzz around it

so anyway, I get the impression some people "blame" the hype or the game or whatever for their OWN expectations being high...

like, I mean seriously...isnt somones personal expectations....their own persoanal expectations?

There's a huge difference between personal expectation and "hype". Hype is manufactured, whether by word of mouth, marketing, advertising or other means. Personal expectation is what each one of us expects from a game and is formed by a variety of factors, hype being one of them. I mean, my personal expectation for Dark Souls was that it would be great, mostly because I had played and enjoyed Demon's Souls. Dark Souls also got a lot of (justified) hype because of the sleeper hit nature of Demon's Souls.

A game that I thought received a lot of hype but didn't live up to that hype at all was Rage. First of all, a caveat, no, I'm not a huge fan of FPS games. However, the way Rage was built up, telling us there would be RPG elements, an open world, great graphics, great combat, amazing driving, etc and then failing to deliver any one of those elements resulted in a massive hype fail. RPG elements were minimal at best, the world appears open, but is mostly a series of fetch quests in narrow desert corridors, the graphical problems are well documented, combat is ho hum standard FPS shooting and the driving was rudimentary and no better than what was given to us in Borderlands, a game with better style and implementation on a smaller budget.

Hype is bad for the industry when games undeserving of the huge amounts of hype are found to be duds. Too much of game advertising is based on dodgy claims or exaggerations, rather than facts or reality. A game should be successful or not based on it's merits, not how big the advertising budget was or how biased beta participants are or whether or not favourable reviews were garnered with bribes or coerced with blacklist threats or other unsavoury tactics.

 

[Ordinaryundone]

I personally don't believe in "hype". Its all just advertising, exactly the same as any other competitive industry. Think of how many different games are released this year, by dozens of different developers and publishers. You basically HAVE to advertise to hell and back just to get your name and out sell copies. And who wouldn't talk up their own product? No one is going to go out there and say "Yeah, our game is basically this other game, but not as good".

Anyone who reads into and believes hype completely is a rube, pure and simple. Its like with Fable series. Anyone with half a brain could know that Molyneux was talking out of his butt, either by knowing what games were actually capable of at the time, or just by knowing his track record for aggrandizing his own product. Just make your own decisions people, and learn to not take everything you hear at face value.

 

[ShindoL Shill]

here:
lets say i say i'm going to buy you a prostitute. a bunch of people say the hooker is great. the whore has sex with you, and you are disappointed. you get angry at us for saying s/he would be very good, meaning you had bad sex. i get angry at the people, as i wasted money.
the people are bad because they misled us.

the people are publishers/devs and the prostitute is a game.

 

[Savagezion]

So one thing I hear...among the many other problems that plauge the industry (Pracy,DRM,lack of creativity,dumbing down and such)

is this thing known as "Hype"...aparently its among one of those "bad things".

now Im not entirely sure what we mean by "hype"...I imagine is when a game is marketed and has a whole lot of buzz around it

so anyway, I get the impression some people "blame" the hype or the game or whatever for their OWN expectations being high...

like


I mean seriously...isnt somones personal expectations....their own persoanal expectations?

Yep, and they are actually mad that they just fell victim to what is known as marketing. Now, it is true some games market their games in faulty ways (e.g. Fable) but very few others do. Skyrim as a recent example is a game that had a lot of hype around it but didn't really exaggerate anything. Now, I did witness the community run off on a tangent with ridiculous presumptions based on minor quotes from the developers. But that is the community fucking themselves over, not the marketing itself.

As another recent example look at Dragon Age 2. A lot of hype, and again, pretty upfront and honest about what they were doing. However, the community seemed to ignore that its release was about 1 year (15 months) from the Origins release date. If you read the articles and interviews with that in mind, it would be easy to be impressed, not devastated, by DA2.

Anyone who bases their expectations off of hype, is that "sucker" from the sales phrase "there is a sucker born every minute." 90%, if not all, of your expectations should be based off of cold hard facts you know about the game, not hype/speculation. That is how children shop.

 

[Reaper195]

I saw the Dark Knight expecting the next coming of Christ with the amount of wanking many people people were doing to that movie. What I got was an all right action thriller. I was so pissed off that I allowed myself to get carried off by hype...

 

[dimensional]

Hype isnt bad as such and is an important marketing tool as without it the game wouldnt sell nearly as well.The problem is hype leads to increased expectations and since everyone judges on different internal criteria it will inevitably lead to divide and conflict (not literally ofc ...usually anyway).

As such you get arguments which lead to gainsaying and then it just escalates into a mess from which neither side can back down. This is worse the bigger the hype and unavoidable there are of course other problems associated with them such as trend setting and the drowning out of smaller smarter games with not such loud voices but in itself they are not a problem its just they get out of hand.

Sometimes games can get buried under the hype so that it dosent become about the game anymore just the hype which is a worse case scenario as it dosent matter what the game is like anymore it is already decided in most peoples eyes that it is good or bad (most of which probably havent played the game or if they do they play with a closed mind) still cant see an end to either so we will just have to live with it as we have always done.

 

[willsham45]

Hype and positive expectations are a double edged sword. If a game is hyped it can result in unreasonable expectations. If the game is worthy of the hype then brilliant. Sales will great and lots will play the game.

If the game is hyped and then it is bad it results in lots of sales and then lots of unhappy gamers when they realised what they got for there money.

Then on another level games that are good but do not great or not to the level of the expectations of the hype it could also be slated or at least until the novelty wares off.

There are lots of examples.

Although at the end of the day you do not need to really care. It only matters to the companies that make money off it. You just have to be aware of it. If a game is hyped to be amazing just note it may not be and proceed with care.

 

[DustyDrB]

In the long run, hype can only enhance a game for me. If a game is lower than my expections, then I'll adjust quickly. It doesn't become a bad game just because it didn't meet my expectations. But if a game does meet my expectations (Mass Effect 2), then my hype carries on while I'm playing it. So I'm experiencing pure joy while playing it, even over the smallest moments. I'm just happy to be playing the game.

Some games that I was a bit hyped for (Fable 2) were just bad in my opinion. My expectations contributed nothing to my overall opinion of it after I was done. It was just a bad game and I would have hated it even if I'd never heard anything about it or played its predecessor. In fact, I hadn't heard any press about Fable 2 before I played it. I just loved the first game, and went in a store and saw the sequel there.

Hype doesn't kill games. If the game is still pretty good, you'll adjust and enjoy it. If it's just a bad game, then it didn't matter what you expected of it before playing it.

 

[Robert Ewing]

It's human nature to impose ones views on another, and be confused and astounded when somebody doesn't feel the same.