Jimquisition: Shadiness of Mordor

[Jimothy Sterling]

Shadiness of Mordor

The Eye of Sauron is watching, forever watching, and he wants to make sure your YouTube videos are "on message."

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[hermes]

Weird that they specified not wanting references to the movies or the books... Its from the same WB, after all.

 

[Roofstone]

Seeing this contract thing is just.. Weird. Never even knew reviewers and lets players had contracts. I thought they just played games.

Oh well, at least the game is good.

Weird that they specified not wanting references to the movies or the books... Its from the same WB, after all.

Was wondering about that as well. Seems strange.

 

[Barbas]

Shady, sketchy and completely unnecessary. Cheesus H. Christmas, I deeply dislike this sort of stuff from companies. Urgh.

 

[webkilla]

Ya I saw the TB vid on the game and that bit about the contract was shady as hell...

 

[Darkos Anomaly]

I wonder what caused the self-doubt in the company that led to making this over-restrictive contract in the first place? I know that when approaching launch day producers can get anxious but this is hysterical. I haven't being following Shadow of Mordor in the weeks preceding to launch so I wonder if there was any significant events that happened prior to release that may have caused this.

 

[lassiie]

Too bad this had to be a negative video about the publishers. This game was quite simply, amazing, and I am disappointed in the practices they tried to pull.

 

[UberThetan]

Weird that they specified not wanting references to the movies or the books... Its from the same WB, after all.

Was wondering about that as well. Seems strange.

Probably the same reason it's not called Lord of the Rings: Shadow of Mordor, in that the game actually isn't considered canon and is thus "separate" from the mythos.

Or something like that.

Edit: The devs wanted to avoid confusion that it had anything to do with the movies or books [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-10-02-video-why-theres-no-lord-of-the-rings-in-shadows-of-mordors-name].

 

[K12]

This is insane! I say the TB video of Shadow of Mordor and didn't properly take in just how overbearing they were being.

If I'd heard about this before buying the game then I definitely wouldn't have bought it. Hearing about this level of control over a particular product is just so suspicious that I'd be pretty certain the game would be awful... but the game is good, so what the hell was this for?

It's like walking through an airport shouting "I'm not a suicide bomber, honest!".

 

[BlueJoneleth]

Weird that they specified not wanting references to the movies or the books... Its from the same WB, after all.

They probably don't want some Tolkien fanatic make a video with every point in the story contradicting the books or something.

Anyway as Jim said, this is a pretty good game and didn't need such measures.

I do wonder how much video games people who make these contracts play though.
Hell, with all the uproar to get better ethics in game journalism that has been the talk lately, this is a pretty stupid move.

 

[WarHamster40K]

Having heard about this, it makes me doubt the validity of the previous coverage I'd seen of this game. It may be legitimately good, it might not be. Given that there's language that essentially says "make sure you mention this and keep it good (or else)", I have no way of knowing with certainty just how much of a reviewer's opinion is his/her own and how much of it is done to appease their contract. I want this industry to succeed, but I don't want it done with Stepford Wives-esque complacency. "Everything's fine, dear. Here, have another AAA game..."

 

[Jimothy Sterling]

Having heard about this, it makes me doubt the validity of the previous coverage I'd seen of this game. It may be legitimately good, it might not be. Given that there's language that essentially says "make sure you mention this and keep it good (or else)", I have no way of knowing with certainty just how much of a reviewer's opinion is his/her own and how much of it is done to appease their contract. I want this industry to succeed, but I don't want it done with Stepford Wives-esque complacency. "Everything's fine, dear. Here, have another AAA game..."

That is the saddest part. The game genuinely IS good enough to deserve a lot of the praise I saw. Shitty tactics like this undermine the goodwill that a game is quite capable of earning on its own. In some ways, I'm more saddened by a good game having its qualities doubted than I am by a bad game being lied about to make it look good. It's just a waste of natural credit.

 

[RJ Dalton]

Yeah, it was totally weird to me that they did that, because I was watching the gameplay footage and I thought, "That looks like a really good, fluid combat system. Why the hell were they afraid reviewers were going to be mean to it?" I mean, hell, this video, just watching its footage, was enough to make me interested in giving it a look that I wasn't before, even without Jim's thumbs-up at the end.

 

[VoiceOfTheVoiceless]

Great. Can't trust video game journalists. Can't trust YouTubers, Can't trust video game companies. The sadness of the business today.

 

[templar1138a]

I'm not sure what to think of that game yet. I haven't seen enough indicators of how it actually plays. However, knowing about this contract has made me decide to not buy it on principle.

 

[pilar]

Controversy is a good thing for media

It's just a PR team. This is one facet of a massive machine -- developers teams some times world and publishers -- trying to make this project work. This is a new industry: the wild west, and that should by understood by people who make this industry their actual livelihood. Hence Adam Sessler's very fitting tweet [https://twitter.com/AdamSessler/status/518130648867815424].

Having found that most of this industry media is not only gullible but liberal as well, it's not shocking to see their shock at this sort of practice.

But the media will not always be honest. And honest media personalities -- Yahtzee and JimQuisition -- will always be a too cynical to help this industry in a meaningful way.

Shadow of Mordor game is ridiculously fun -- people are pouring more hours into than that new console MMO.

 

[Darth_Payn]

I lot of this contract gobbledygook flew well over my head, but Jim did give me a new swear word to use. It'll be extra funny to say when I sneeze.

 

[hermes]

Weird that they specified not wanting references to the movies or the books... Its from the same WB, after all.

They probably don't want some Tolkien fanatic make a video with every point in the story contradicting the books or something...

I don't know. After all, the "positive attitude" about the game pretty much guarantees that the game will not be call on unflattering lights (at least, by the people that did sign up the contract)

This seems like they are trying to distance the game from the rest of the franchise, which sounds weird considering the game is actually pretty good and they still have movies coming out within the franchise. Anything that could raise interest by association should be welcomed (unless they thought the game was going to be so poorly received that it would tarnish their movies branch).

Everything in this game licencing sounds weird, like how there are a ton of references to obscure items of Tolkien's lore, but they had to recreate all enemies as Uruks, Graugs and Caragors because Orcs, Trolls and Wargs were taken, apparently...