Let's Discuss: How reasonable is a reasonable videogame consumer?

[Pseudonym]

A 'reasonable consumer' doesn't trust anything that developers and publishers say? Probably true, but in that case your false advertising laws have already failed. If a reasonable consumer would not trust an advertisement from a certain group at all, then that group should not be allowed to advertise anymore. In general, I think we as a society would be much better off if advertising was drastically reduced and forced to at least not be habitually dishonest.

I understand why the word reasonable is in there. It is to prevent somebody who was misled by something that really wouldn't have been misleading if he had any common sense from suing the advertisers. The thing is, I think a reasonable person doesn't instinctively distrust others, or if he does, those others can reasonably be concluded to be misleading.

 

[BarryMcCociner]

Well, you see false advertisement is tricky. You know in the breakfast cereal advertisements? How the milk looks so clean and so white? That's because the milk isn't milk. It's Elmer's glue.

Now, it's underhanded given how humans associate milk with "white" and Elmer's is "whiter" than milk, so the cereal is bound to look more appetizing in the glue than in the milk. However, nobody ever even bothers to chase up the Cereal companies for that because as SBH says "a deceptive ad must mislead a reasonable consumer." With that knowledge in mind, the cereal companies could simply say "Yeah, we used glue but what kind of idiot would put glue in their cereal?"

Now, LEGALLY these advertisements aren't deceptive but LEGALLY, some incredibly rich fucks get away with not filing a federal income tax. I prefer to think of bullshots as false advertisements that can't be punished.

But here me out, I think that they SHOULD be punished. Not because WE could get fucked by a bullshot, but because someone who doesn't play video games and has little experience with games could get fucked by a bullshot. They have no basis to form a reasonable expectation for video games, thus these advertisments are most likely to fuck them.

SBH is right, "Reasonable" is a shit word for a law to have, you can't expect inexperienced people to be reasonable in an area they have no experience whatsoever. There's no good reason for anyone to expect that.

 

[CaitSeith]

Im making another post because i want to go on a slight tangent. But i predict that AAA publishers are going to start putting disclaimers in their full retail price games. Labeling them as Beta builds, and that the game may not be have all the features on release. That more features "may" be added.

Basically steam early access, but for AAA blockbusters.

I predict they will use this to cover their asses, and while some games will add features down the line, i am positive others will not if they think they made enough money or it's not profitable enough.

If Street Fighter V was any indication, I doubt it. They'll keep releasing as full retail price and the only indication of future features will be a "Coming soon" message when selecting the option in the menu screen. Why to cover their asses when there is no real repercussion of having them naked? When it happened, lots of fans (and I assume, consumers) went into defending Capcom when complains about this happened. Do you think they were being reasonable? Were the complaining consumers unreasonable?

 

[CaitSeith]

How about the movie industry? Do we see cinema goers get all mad because a trailer badly misrepresented the film?

Is that a trick question? Because the answer is "yes" but the rest of your post makes me think you think its "no".

Do you not remember people getting angry at Sweeney Todd being a musical, claiming the trailer didn't make it clear it was? There were reports of people walking out of the cinema on that one.

And that's just one of the more obvious examples that I'm directly familiar with myself (because I loved that movie). There's a whole pile of misleading trailers that left people disappointed and frustrated at the final product. A courtesy google search turns up dozens, maybe hundreds, of articles talking about misleading trailers and customer backlash.

In fact it goes beyond that with the (arguably even worse) issue of trailers being exactly what the film is like but showcasing basically the only interesting parts of the film or even giving away key plot points; which would have been like advertising Final Fantasy VII by showing the scene where Aerith dies. At least games tend not to do that as much as movies do...if only because they tend to try to reveal as little as possible full stop before release.


On topic: Personally I'm on board with making advertising standards much, much stricter. A customer has every right to complain about bugs, broken mechanics, poor optimisation, broken promises, lacking features, etc etc. Why? Because they're a customer. Buying a product. Paying money. If that product does not match up to the expectations that were raised by the advertising of the company due to overhype then they should be due a refund. See as an example: No Man's Sky.

But lots of people didn't bought into the No Man's Sky hype and had their expectations on check or decided to not buy at all (and scratched their heads when seeing people getting very exited with NMS announcements). Do you think those who bought into the hype were being unreasonable? Or did the advertisements, news and announcements mislead even reasonable consumers?

 

[CaitSeith]

There's a big difference between a McDonald's cheeseburger and a video game. With the McDonald's cheeseburger you still more or less get what's on the menu, it just doesn't look as pretty. With a video game the difference can mean almost an entirely different product.

Do you consider reasonable to expect such a big difference between videogame and the real product? Is it unreasonable to get interested in one or two specific game features and expect them to be in the game?

 

[Saelune]

How about the movie industry? Do we see cinema goers get all mad because a trailer badly misrepresented the film?

Is that a trick question? Because the answer is "yes" but the rest of your post makes me think you think its "no".

Do you not remember people getting angry at Sweeney Todd being a musical, claiming the trailer didn't make it clear it was? There were reports of people walking out of the cinema on that one.

And that's just one of the more obvious examples that I'm directly familiar with myself (because I loved that movie). There's a whole pile of misleading trailers that left people disappointed and frustrated at the final product. A courtesy google search turns up dozens, maybe hundreds, of articles talking about misleading trailers and customer backlash.

In fact it goes beyond that with the (arguably even worse) issue of trailers being exactly what the film is like but showcasing basically the only interesting parts of the film or even giving away key plot points; which would have been like advertising Final Fantasy VII by showing the scene where Aerith dies. At least games tend not to do that as much as movies do...if only because they tend to try to reveal as little as possible full stop before release.


On topic: Personally I'm on board with making advertising standards much, much stricter. A customer has every right to complain about bugs, broken mechanics, poor optimisation, broken promises, lacking features, etc etc. Why? Because they're a customer. Buying a product. Paying money. If that product does not match up to the expectations that were raised by the advertising of the company due to overhype then they should be due a refund. See as an example: No Man's Sky.

But lots of people didn't bought into the No Man's Sky hype and had their expectations on check or decided to not buy at all (and scratched their heads when seeing people getting very exited with NMS announcements). Do you think those who bought into the hype were being unreasonable? Or did the advertisements, news and announcements mislead even reasonable consumers?

A 'reasonable consumer' doesn't trust anything that developers and publishers say? Probably true, but in that case your false advertising laws have already failed. If a reasonable consumer would not trust an advertisement from a certain group at all, then that group should not be allowed to advertise anymore. In general, I think we as a society would be much better off if advertising was drastically reduced and forced to at least not be habitually dishonest.

I understand why the word reasonable is in there. It is to prevent somebody who was misled by something that really wouldn't have been misleading if he had any common sense from suing the advertisers. The thing is, I think a reasonable person doesn't instinctively distrust others, or if he does, those others can reasonably be concluded to be misleading.

Pseudonym really nailed it I think.

I was distrustful of NMS from the start not because I think its reasonable to assume everyone lies, but because I DID trust many other descriptions of past games, which made it clear to me that you cant always take a company's word, but that isnt a good thing. Destiny being the most recent and obvious one, and that game had Bungie and Activision behind it.

 

[Lightspeaker]

But lots of people didn't bought into the No Man's Sky hype and had their expectations on check or decided to not buy at all (and scratched their heads when seeing people getting very exited with NMS announcements). Do you think those who bought into the hype were being unreasonable? Or did the advertisements, news and announcements mislead even reasonable consumers?

Lots of people didn't buy into the hype. I didn't. Its still not unreasonable to buy into "the hype". I am not a "reasonable consumer" for not buying into it; rather I'm a "cynical bugger". Because that is what the garbage standards of advertising have done to people.

Lets spell it out here: "the hype" largely consists of images, videos and statements made by the development team making specific commitments with respect to the quality and contents of the game. As a creative endeavour there are any number of things that can be done in a game, therefore there is very little you can use to provide a basis for comparison; as a result the limits for something being "obviously wrong to a reasonable consumer" are sky-high. There is very little that you can outright say is OBVIOUSLY incorrect; a game claiming that you can do without food if you play it is obviously wrong. But the content of the game? It could be anything. You don't have to be an expert in programming, AI coding, 3D modelling or any of that stuff to buy a game and therefore it is unreasonable to expect a consumer to be an expert or even slightly knowledgeable about any of those subjects.

As an analogy: an advert showing a car driving on a ceiling is obviously rubbish. Many people know what cars are and their capabilities. But if an advert states the car can go 0-60 in two seconds? Or has a zero-emission catalytic converter? Or has an automatic gearbox that is the most efficient you can possible make a gearbox of that design? How do you know? Could any of those be argued to be obvious lies? Is it reasonable to expect everyone who buys a car to be well versed enough about anything ranging from mechanic engineering to catalytic chemistry to be able to spot all of the lies? There's a reason there was an emissions test scandal recently; those were lies fiddled on the basis of changing things about the car to make it reduce emissions. But the assumption behind it was "well, no REASONABLE person would expect that these would be done in anything other than absolutely optimal conditions".


The fact that cynicism is now apparently a required trait among game enthusiasts is less of a "reasonable consumer" argument and more a damning condemnation of the state of developer and publisher public relations, the godawful state of 'preview journalism' and the poisonous influence of 'hype' that has infected games advertising as a whole.

Pseudonym summed it up best I think:

A 'reasonable consumer' doesn't trust anything that developers and publishers say? Probably true, but in that case your false advertising laws have already failed. If a reasonable consumer would not trust an advertisement from a certain group at all, then that group should not be allowed to advertise anymore.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

There's a big difference between a McDonald's cheeseburger and a video game. With the McDonald's cheeseburger you still more or less get what's on the menu, it just doesn't look as pretty. With a video game the difference can mean almost an entirely different product.

Do you consider reasonable to expect such a big difference between videogame and the real product? Is it unreasonable to get interested in one or two specific game features and expect them to be in the game?

To the first one, no. To the second one, yes. I think we should have higher standards than that. Esp. if said one or two features don't end up actually being in the finished product. It's not unreasonable to expect that, is it?

 

[Lufia Erim]

Im making another post because i want to go on a slight tangent. But i predict that AAA publishers are going to start putting disclaimers in their full retail price games. Labeling them as Beta builds, and that the game may not be have all the features on release. That more features "may" be added.

Basically steam early access, but for AAA blockbusters.

I predict they will use this to cover their asses, and while some games will add features down the line, i am positive others will not if they think they made enough money or it's not profitable enough.

If Street Fighter V was any indication, I doubt it. They'll keep releasing as full retail price and the only indication of future features will be a "Coming soon" message when selecting the option in the menu screen. Why to cover their asses when there is no real repercussion of having them naked? When it happened, lots of fans (and I assume, consumers) went into defending Capcom when complains about this happened. Do you think they were being reasonable? Were the complaining consumers unreasonable?

I was one of those capcom defenders so i may be biased. But i follow fighting game news, i knew beforehand what i was getting before i bought the game. I knew the promises that were being made ( at the time) and i had made an informed choice, like many other Street fighter fans. Way before the SFV release, capcom has been very transparent about what their plans for the game was. How the game was going to even release early for the " fighting game season" ( tournaments and such). And in knowing that i ,personally, was okay with that.

Now, on the flipside. There are the , and excuse the term, casual market, the guys who don't follow the news and announcements. The guys who want a story mode, an arcade mode and other vs CPU modes. These guys were burned hard. These are the ones who were complaining. And personally i think it was unwarranted. Because a quick google search would have been enough to let them know that maybe they should wait before purchasing the game. Actually a common complaint was that they shouldn't have to do reasearch for the game beforehand. That it should have been written on the box that the game was incomplete and more features were going to be on the way. The reason being that SFV was different that the norm in terms of content on release and their business model. Basically everyone expected to get what they always got in previous games. Which isn't entirely unreasonable.

Now this screwed Capcom hard. Capcom underestimated the "casual" market, because SFV didn't make their desired sales, which was around 2 million at the time. While they game sold well with the hardcore fans, it burned a couple casual fans, and then the responsible gamers, those who do research beforehand, saw what was included in the game ( or what was missing) and decided not to buy it. So basically Capcom lost a big part of their sales by focusing on the hardcore players and neglecting the casual players.