Why are gamers so eager to trust and even forgive the snake oil salesmen

[Nag]

Thomas Mahler (of Moon Studios) has written a post/rant about about his feelings on developers over promising/outright lying about game development.

 

Resetera

 

Thought some of the more intelligent people here might want to discuss it, I'm not too sure where I stand... kind've 50/50 I guess.

 

Anyway, in the words of Ivan Drago... if it dies, it dies.

[one-armed dwarf]

Tbh I don't know why people get so bent out of shape on this. A video about a mission in cyberpunk did the rounds there a bit ago and outside some stuff like remote hax and more meaningful character options it honestly didn't look too far from the finished product

 

It's like some people treat the marketing as almost a contract being struck with gamers, the only thing that I think is really bad about what happened with Cyberpunk is the blatant lying about the quality of the last gen product. That is really messed up. But the stuff about Molyneux or the overpromising about NMS (which I think now is pretty close to what they said it should be) and the way people take that on board with a sense of betrayal about the whole situation feels out of whack. Like you've got to keep your head on a bit when looking at these games during the preview and even review stage and not be so gullible.

 

Also tbh Ori isn't a game with a massive high scope. Feature creep is a thing, it happens and things get cut.

[Nag]

I think I'm at a point in life now (and not just with gaming) where I know that if something looks too good to be true it generally is... I can definitely see where the guy is coming from but then again I'm not one of these people that will dig up a three year old E3 trailer once a game ships to see if there's puddles missing.

 

I can't really comment on the whole No Man's Sky thing as I've not played it but taking two years worth of updates to get the game to where it was described to be on release doesn't sound too clever.

[HandsomeDead]

I'd say this has been going on for a long time in this industry, even before these examples he gave.  They are just the ones that spectacularly fell flat on their faces.

I think I disagree with the part where Thomas says the likes of Sean Murray and Peter Molyneaux are "snake oil salesmen" as that, to me, implies purposeful misdirected, and I just don't believe that.  They promoted their games at the concept stage and instead of shutting up until it got closer to the games' actual form they went and did interviews talking about stuff that should have remained in design meetings.  I mean, both these guys are developers, I suppose it's not surprising they only know how to talk about their games in this way.

It's certainly something to be critical of as it's reckless but "snake oil salesmen" isn't the right critique.

 

But the reason it's even like this is because this is a successful way of selling people on upcoming games.  Lots of games, if not most of them are sold potential and allowing a gamer's imagination to go wild.  How much they do or don't live up to this varies from game to game but its usually the marketing strategy.  All these particular failures do is highlight this but I do think it's a shame these are singled out when they should be used to show the problems with this kind of marketing as a whole (one thing I'd say is it facilitates toxic fandoms but that's for another thread).

 

Ultimately video games were born in late stage capitalism and especially the last 20 years the level of psychology and economics that goes into it is baffling and a bit evil.  They're especially into developing para-social relationships to sell stuff and games definitely do too.  Which is why I suppose these individuals were singled out in this post.

[DisturbedSwan]

It’s weird and kinda cool having an Era thread on here. 
 

The Mahler dude sounds like a bit of a douche to be honest, bit of a pot calling the kettle black when Ori 2 could barely run on base Xbox’s at launch and then he criticised reviewers on Era in the Review Thread for giving a lower score cause of said technical issues as they hadn’t had the day 1 patch, only for said patch to do fuck all difference.
 

He has a weird obsession with Sean Murray as well, mentions him almost every other post he makes on Era. 

[Maryokutai]

12 hours ago, DisturbedSwan said:

It’s weird and kinda cool having an Era thread on here. 

 

And without those easily offended snowflakes from over there, so it's a win-win.

 

But speaking of easily offended, I started skimming through Mahler's post when I read Molyneux. People really love to fixate on his questionable approach to overpromise, but hardly anyone ever points to the fact that while, yes, the games he made weren't as feature-fed as promised, they've always been pretty good. Looking back I couldn't care less about what he said about Fable 1 & 2 before they came out because I absolutely loved the finished product. And I think most people did, it was a really well-received franchise, so it's not like it was this NMS scenario where the initial release just disappointed a lot of players.

 

As for Cyberpunk, these missions that are being shown off years before release are always fake. If a game's features would already all work in tandem two or three years before release then, well, the game wouldn't be two or three years from release. Double Fine's documentary about Broken Age was a real eye opener in that regard because they were 100% transparent with every step along the way. The first trailer they showed of the game for example wasn't a clip from the game but instead a straight up pre-rendered animation. They didn't even have an engine at that point and no playable build that included the graphics and character models you could see in the trailer. But they didn't do that to scam their audience, they did it because they believed they could achieve the exact same result in the game (which they did) and to show the vision they were going for. Cyberpunk being a more complex game there's of course the risk that not all pieces will fall into place exactly like anticipated, but it's weird to see a developer pointing at other developers for doing it. 

[Jimboxy]

11 minutes ago, Maryokutai said:

Double Fine's documentary about Broken Age

Do you have a link for that or anything? I'd be interested to watch that.

 

EDIT

I googled it, because I have the ability to do that

http://adventure.doublefine.com/

 

[Craymen Edge]

5 minutes ago, Jimbo Xiii said:

Do you have a link for that or anything? I'd be interested to watch that.

 

EDIT

I googled it, because I have the ability to do that

http://adventure.doublefine.com/

 

 

They also later added it to their youtube channel.

[Jimboxy]

Just now, Craymen Edge said:

They also later added it to their youtube channel.

even better, thanks

[Maryokutai]

Didn't even know they made it freely available (I watched it as a backer), I added the link.

[shinymcshine]

For all "it keeps happening" he's supported it with Peter Molyneux, self confessed over-hype/ideas over substance merchant (last game, Godus, 2014), NMS which came out in 2016 and has been supported/improved since, and last years big release casualty/PR disaster, Cyberpunk.

 

So I'm not sure what his issue is - hype happens in pretty much every other entertainment based industry, and noting the examples above, it doesn't seem disproportionate within the video games industry.

 

Maybe the only thing it highlights is his belief that gamers are gullible suckers ?

 

 

[DANGERMAN]

the stuff around Cyberpunk reminds me of when you'd by old computer games (Amstrad, C64 etc) and the back of the box would have screenshots from the Amiga or something. I'm sure they'd say it was so they didn't have to redesign new covers, but even as a kid it felt like them trying to deceive people. Cyberpunk felt like that, showing the PC version whenever they showed anything. Which isn't abnormal, but people were slightly wary after the rumours surfaced of them having problems with the older consoles, but what they pulled with the reviews showed it wasn't just a case of putting your best face on, they were trying to hide that the game on the older consoles, especially the base consoles, just wasn't ready

 

Whether CDPR had any say in it, wither it was just CD Projekt and the PR company, the talk around that game took a turn, it's reputation has taken a kicking, and people are really negative on it now. Fwiw I like the game a lot, and I suspect the conversation around it in 2 years time will be different that it is now, but the refunds, it being pulled from sale, it's justified and people need to learn from it. Both publishers (especially with how things are at the minute), but consumers too. Unless you've seen the game running on your platform you can't really be sure how it will run. That will settle down again as we get in to this generation, although with the Series S I suppose there might be a bit of a threat of it

 

Even then though, from experience, Batman Arkham Knight and the original Rage ran like shit on my PC. Batman was a widespread problem, Rage was a conflict with my combination of card and CPU, which they did eventually fix after a few weeks then it ran really well, that's the sort of stuff you can forgive. Batman less so

 

Scott Murray I can see why people forgave. They over-promised but they did eventually get there, and he seemingly has learnt his lesson. Molyneux just carried on doing it until the press started calling him out, then he disappeared 

[mfnick]

Small lies with no accountability lead to big and dangerous lies with no accountability. Especially when so many people are so quick to flat out defend them.
 

I’m so sick of people lying constantly and getting away with it and being defended for it. I’m so tired of it. Hits a particular nerve with me especially at the minute with everything going on outside of gaming in the news and TV everyday basically being people of power lying directly to our faces even with video and factual evidence pointing otherwise. But that’s a much larger issue I can’t get into here or put into words correctly what I think and feel.
 

Basically coming back to gaming, if you don’t know if you can make a feature work,  don’t announce it yet. Simple really. & on a tangent but relatable, if your previous gen console versions don’t work properly like with Cuberpunk, don’t fucking hide it from the press and people spending £40+ on it and tout bollocks like your ‘QA testers didn’t find these issues.’ You utter wankers. So frustrating, while giving that little speech he knows he’s lying and knows anyone with any brains will know he is, but he also knows nobody can do anything or will say anything about it. He knows the majority will just shrug their shoulders and that’s the problem. Smug cunt. This happens because gamers/people ‘forgive’ so easily. This is why lying such a ok and normal thing. But I’d say it’s more because of indifference rather than forgivenesses and trust. 
 

Some of this is on us definitely, sometimes they make it clear it’s early in development and certain things are targeted and may not reach full product yet people still take it as gospel. But most of the time that may as well be in small print in the middle of a 100 page EULA for how they go on and use features to falsely sell games.

[Snaggletooth]

There is a fine balance between what is interpretted as a lie, vs their ambition for a game, especially when being given informationabout it early in a Development cycle,

we should all take the developrs ambitions with a pinch of salt, quite often its the Publishers marketing that causes issues.

 

Again though using No Mans Sky as an example to me what I heard Sean Murray say in early interviews, was very different to what news outlets were reporting to expect, quite often I think the way we or media interpret what is being told to us can very drasticlly person to person as to what we expect in the final product.

 

Then there are the Flat out lies, which the Console version of CyberPunk is a prime example, its was never anywhere near ready and the delivered product was a mess.

These lies need to stop.

[shinymcshine]

Isn't much of the world of business borne on lies/mis-truths : where no-one wants to tell their boss the bad news; where the PR department doesn't understand what the tech department is telling them; the R&D dept say you can have this but we could give you this and this (but...); where the sales team just want to hit their targets; the finance team say you need the product now for the sake of the balance sheet; and where KPIs only demonstrate a certain amount of (measured) truth (it's no good that 93% of trains are on time if yours is 3 hrs late/cancelled).

 

No-one is out there to do a bad job, it's just how much of business operates.

[mfnick]

Edit - meant in response to Snaggle.
 

I need to go back and watch some but I’m sure I remember him touting features but not just in a ‘we hope to’ but more of a ‘this game will’ kind of way which were just nowhere to be seen (until the most recent patches). Especially the multiplayer components. Again I need to watch them so may be mistaken. 
 

I agree though, media and our own interpretation are also at fault in a way. Media coverage in particular seems more like advertising than anything, feels owned by the publishers sometimes. Which in a way it is or they lose ad revenue and game access. Which again, shouldn’t be allowed IMO. A genuine game critic should not be cut off from preview and reviews just because they may have reviewed a previous game badly. Or called out your business practices. 

[one-armed dwarf]

With games like Cyberpunk allegedly there was also a culture of magical thinking at the company where they made one of the best games of all time (Witcher 3) and there was a belief that CP2077 would all come together in the last couple months.

 

I think at the time of that last delay I said something like they should cancel the last gen versions cause it was looking like they were getting ready to release a seriously broken piece of shit on those machines. But that is also probably impossible for financial/business reasons that I don't really understand.

 

Cyberpunk was something that people called from a long way down the line, the throughput of those old machines didn't look like it would handle a world of that complexity. If armchair devs on the internet had that figured out how did CDPR not recognise the situation they were getting themselves into?

 

You'd wonder about the collective mental health of that team during those last few months. I'd assume a lot of them did know but at a certain point stakeholders are like "we're releasing this shit hell or highwater by end of fiscal" and you just have to go with it.

 

I also wonder what the discourse around Cyberpunk would be if everyone had the next gen version, I would still think we would be talking about it like it's a Peter Molyneux game. Overpromised/overhyped but decent yet weak compared with the competition (imo, based on the game I played). But it wouldn't be a scar on the company's reputation, more like a slightly troubled sophomore effort (I know it isn't their second game but Witcher 2 took a very long time to come to consoles)

[Jimboxy]

What I find interesting about CP2077 is that they have a rep of putting their workers under pressure and crunch, but not one of them blew the whistle on how poor shape the last gen version of that game was looking. That's either loyality or fear.

[shinymcshine]

19 minutes ago, Jimbo Xiii said:

What I find interesting about CP2077 is that they have a rep of putting their workers under pressure and crunch, but not one of them blew the whistle on how poor shape the last gen version of that game was looking. That's either loyality or fear.

 

What I don't know is how games are put together - it seems that many different departments work on different game elements and then its all put together, with developers not actually working on / directly with the base machine/console - so whilst there's numerous people working on different bits they might not know how it performs as a whole, let alone on a base console versus their development platform.

 

I suppose that could then lead to accumulative failure, simplistically if Team A & Team B & Team C meet 95% of their objectives then individually it looks okay, but if the Project requires A+B+C then the impact of their 95% = 0.95 * 0.95 * 0.95 =  Just 85% met against the overall completion...... Then lets say you expect a 90% performance compromise rate for the old gen consoles, .85*.9 =  76% functional, from where you wanted to be - when all teams have reported 95%.

 

So I guess someone in CDPR is responsible for the QA on each system, its maybe not that many that see the final cut on each platform before release (noting too that the release cut off, for burnt discs/digital downloads might be weeks behind what they're now working on (e.g. common theme for day one patches etc)

[Sly Reflex]

For me it's had a major effect on buying games, especially at release. You guys seem to be really hung up on Cyberpunk, No Mans Sky and Molyneux. This is fine, but it's a hell of a lot deeper than this.

 

This is the games industry, or at least the upper part of it. Destiny promised 10 years, it stumbled across lie after lie until it hit Destiny 2 (which they said wouldn't happen) which threw the baby out with the bathwater after finally getting Destiny 1 to a nice place. They squandered and lied about a lot of stuff, moving the goalposts at every opportunity. I thought maybe this would stop after Activision dropped them, but it seems to be continuing.

 

Ubi did a like for like with Division, overpromised, but released a broken game and took forever to get it right. Said we need to do a do over because we can't fix. Division 2 was a fucking mess and I think it only really got away with being a mess because there was a bigger fire elsewhere that came out at the same time. It crashed frequently, it was full of bugs and the touted smart AI was awful. Complicated yes, smart? Well it had it's occasional money's at typewriters moment, but overall it was fuckin gash.

 

The aforementioned dumpster fire was Anthem. An enjoyable but threadbare game that would lock your console, lots of promises that we're still waiting for to materialise in  Anthem 2.0, if they're still working on it. I think if this game had never come out, people would have held Division 2's feet to the fire, because it deserved it

 

Mass Effect Andromeda. They promised an extension to the Mass Effect universe, what we got was a shit game (I've not played it, but by all accounts it's what people seem to agree on) and lots of memes on it.

 

Fallout 76 is the other big one, where  barely a day could go by without it stumbling into some catastrophe

 

This list is longer than I want to go on. Watch Dogs, Battlefield, Sim City, Master Chief Collection, there's more. All of them said or did something that

 

It really hampered my day 1 buying experience. I'm just not doing it anymore. We've got to this point where what we are being sold is wildly different from what they're advertising. Like Ben mentioned, it's always been a bit like this with the box arts and the adverts that have zero gameplay in them, but in an age where the devs can jump online and say anything and whip up the fantasy of the players that will eventually get let down when it gets buggered up or omitted.

 

The other thing is trusting other people. This is you and me. I've become especially wary of people saying "Hey, this game is great, you should give it a try". We have a knack of overselling shit and glossing over parts that are bad. It's something I try to avoid now, both being on the sending and receiving end. I think on some level we're all guilty of it, but when you enjoy something you're willing to overlook flaws that some might not. It's easy to do when you've invested into something and you're wanting people to play with.