That's not advertising, it's hype.bringer of illumination said:snip
A lot of the time during hype, people are still working on an unfinished product. They're often talking about what they'd like to put into it, or their opinion on it, rather than what they actually can put in it or what the fans can expect to see.
The biggest example ever here is undoubtedly Peter Molyneux. He "lies" constantly during development and we accept it because we understand it's just hype, he's just spewing random bollocks about what he'd personally like to put in the game, and yet when it comes from Bioware suddenly it's all official and shit!
Since this is coming out exactly like the last thread I just made, I may as well repeat the story. I pre-ordered Sword of the Stars 2 because I absolutely loved the original game. The day before it went live, Kerberos' head of PR wrote a huge press statement saying basically how proud they were of the finished product and how much they hoped the fans would enjoy it. The game wouldn't even play on my computer for two weeks. Nearly half a year later, despite regular patches, it is at best barely playable, and now costs 1/3rd of the price I paid for it.
That is lying, that is the kind of outright bullshit which people demand their money back for and actually get it. I personally forgave Kerberos because it was clear they had real problems, although I resolved never to listen to their PR material again.
Basically, don't think I don't understand how much it genuinely hurts to feel like you've been lied to just to get access to your wallet. It's a sucky feeling. However, this isn't even close to being a bad example.
Giving interviews which hint at the ending of a game being this beautiful non-linear experience and then not delivering on that is not really even a thing. It's like Peter Molyneux saying that the Fable games would have real time growing trees. It's something which probably sounded great right up until the point someone actually had to implement it, or the time and money ran out, and then it got scrapped. That happens quite a lot. Don't even get me started on cliched bollocks like "you as the player decide what your story is", of course you don't. That's patently rubbish, you and I had no input into making the game at all. That's hype-speak for "we think we have a player-focused design policy".
Basically, I think the thing we all need to learn is don't believe hype. Hype doesn't have to reflect the finished product, it isn't a "promise", and breaking it isn't a "lie", certainly not on behalf of the developer.
It's basically people who are incredibly biased and have a huge interest in selling you a product giving you their personal "opinion" on it.