What the Developers Tell Us VS What Actually Happens

[BaldursBananaSoap]

I shall begin.

"Your actions in the game will actually have a meaningful effect on how other characters react to you."

Translation: The game with have a contrived moral choice system which makes certain characters who advance the story be nice to you or be horrible to you. Each conversation will still end the same way.

I've heard a lot of stuff about AI but I can't think of anything right now.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

"The games architecture was inspired by _____"

It uses unreal engine 3, and everything looks the same.

"Multiplayer is very compelling"

You occasionally unlock a meaningless upgrade.

"The games has a very very powerful and memorable story"

We spent ten dollars and some cocaine on writers and used footage from Bad Boys 2 as cutscenes.

"We will be seeking to expand the game even after it's release"

We cut half the content from the game when we realized we could charge you for it later.

 

[BaldursBananaSoap]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot:

"THOUSANDS OF WEAPONS" usually means around seven weapons but they included having each combination of colors and attachments.

 

[LandoCristo]

"We'll be releasing this highly anticipated add-on content by the end of the month"
vs
It'll come out sometime within the next two years. (This mostly applies to Valve)

 

[londelen]

Oh yeah, I almost forgot:

"THOUSANDS OF WEAPONS" usually means around seven weapons but they included having each combination of colors and attachments.

And only one of them is actually worth using.

 

[GothmogII]

I shall begin.

"Your actions in the game will actually have a meaningful effect on how other characters react to you."

Translation: The game with have a contrived moral choice system which makes certain characters who advance the story be nice to you or be horrible to you. Each conversation will still end the same way.

The difficulty in that is, it's impossible for them to offer you that outside of procedurally generated content, and even then, you can't get proper dialogue or writing of that kind of system without it ending up sounding/reading like a mish mash of 'insert word here' paragraphs.

You need writers. And you are going to have set endings to dialogue trees and events. Though I suppose, long interconnected trains of trees are more engaging to the player, because it provides the illusion of choice, even then your choices will be exhausted eventually. If the writing is good though, you won't notice it as much, and you really will feel like your character is having an effect.


Okay, my turn: "We're bringing a fresh new look at the FPS genre, innovation is our goal!"

Translation: "We're totally going to copy what's selling right now, and our 'innovation' will be a single gimmick that we'll milk for the entire game."

 

[BaldursBananaSoap]

Oh yeah and "You can do ANYTHING" in Fables case means you can buy houses and fart in the middle of the street to get people to marry you. Just listen to this shit from crazy Pete himself:

"Fable II must have been one of the hardest games to review. The world is so big and the story and gameplay are enormous. How reviewers manage to distill such an experience into a few pages is incredible. I found myself becoming incredibly emotional as I read peoples reviews and saw how differently the reviewers were reacting to Fable 2. Some reviewers played good, others evil some enjoyed the combat more than the story. Some ended up rich and others poor and it's the sheer variety in how reviewers have played the game which has struck us most. I'm now going to say a bold, bold claim. And this is a stupid thing I'm going to say, and I don't know why I'm going to say it, but I'm going to say it anyway. I reckon that Project Ego is going to be the greatest role-playing game of all time. Which is insane. I could say the second greatest, I could say quite good, I could say, hmmmm it's quite nice, but I'm going to say greatest game of all time."

 

[mParadox]

Okay, my turn: "We're bringing a fresh new look at the FPS genre, innovation is our goal!"

Translation: "We're totally going to copy what's selling right now, and our 'innovation' will be a single gimmick that we'll milk for the entire game."

Pretty sure they did that with Singularity or is it just me?

 

[RobJameson]

"Cinematic experience"

Campaign is 2 hours long, has a few set pieces.

 

[Jkudo]

Okay, my turn: "We're bringing a fresh new look at the FPS genre, innovation is our goal!"

Translation: "We're totally going to copy what's selling right now, and our 'innovation' will be a single gimmick that we'll milk for the entire game."

Pretty sure they did that with Singularity or is it just me?

And with brink and many many other games .

 

[Kapol]

"We really look forward to what the community does with our in-game development tools."

Translation: This game is going to pretty much be completely about levels that the public makes, as we know nothing about making a game, but know a lot about how to build the parts to build one. Oh yea, did we mention only 1 in about 1000 are actually going to be good or even just decent?

"You can change the world with things you do!"

Translation: While there are a few choices that change the world, it's almost always a 'one or the other' system and doesn't add as much replay value as we'd like you to think.

"We believe the sequel to *insert popular game here* will reimagine the way the original game with better technology."

Translation: This game is going to be more of the same, just slightly prettier.

 

[mParadox]

^Hear Hear

"Strategic combat"

Coming in gunz-a-blazing is NOT strategic.

 

[LeonLethality]

We're making a sequel to Super Mario Galaxy
=
We're making the best fucking game ever!

It's true.

 

[Durgiun]

''X was inspired by (insert TV show, movie, comic, book, real life object, animal, person, event, city etc.)''

Translation: We basically coppied something that was done before, but swapped the colours or put on some other paper-thing disguise so we can't get sued.

In fact, anytime someone uses the word ''inspired'' these days means ''coppied''. And being an artist that makes me want to disembowel those bastards.

 

[ReckzB]

What they tell you: "Our character customisation system will allow for thousands of different and unique combinations to make your character feel truly unique!"
What they mean: "We'll throw in a bucketload of customisation options, but everybody will end up looking the same because there's very few combinations that actually look good."

What they tell you: "We're going to be taking this genre to a whole new level. I really think you're going to be impressed by what we're doing here. This is groundbreaking innovation."
What they mean: "We've been reviewing footage of old games, looking for outdated features, and coming up with ways to replicate those oft-loathed features and make them seem new and innovative again."

What they tell you: "This is definitely not a WoW clone."
What they mean: "This is definitely a WoW clone."

 

[BaldursBananaSoap]

"Aside from the usual Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch modes, we have implemented new modes that will have players undertaking unique objectives"

Translation: Capture the *insert object that isn't a flag*, *insert differing name for one team attacking and one team defending something here*.

 

[ReckzB]

What they tell us: "This is truly going to be one of the most scary horror titles you'll play this year! You won't believe how creepy and atmospheric it is!"
What they mean: "We've made a generic third-person action game with weird light effects and creatures that look like unoriginal amalgamations of human body parts and pieces of rusty steel."

 

[Beryl77]

A lot of stuff Peter Molyneux has said.

 

[Tzatziki3301]

"Play, Create, Share!"

=

Play our levels, try and fail to make anything good yourself, trawl through the dross online looking for the ones made by the game developers in their spare time that are the only ones that are actually any good.

 

[BaldursBananaSoap]

"This game will have truly next gen graphics"

Translation: Bloom to cover up the horrible textures from far away, everything is shiny and brown, a lens flare that burns out your eyes. Pretty much this (made by /v/).

and this(also made by /v/)