There is such a thing as too much exposure. As the gaming industry has struggled in recent years, amidst the ever-changing landscape of E3, with when it is “too soon” to reveal a game and its associated trailer, consumers have also had to come to grip with how they feel about the whole thing and how it impacts their buying habits. Square Enix fans seem to be never be nonplussed about the inevitable announcement of a delay of a Final Fantasy title. Other fans voice much Sturm & Drang about game delays, but then complain about games releasing with bugs. I can’t comment about how everyone else feels and the choices they make. I do know that too much marketing, too many demos and trailers, cause people to talk about a thing. At a certain point I get tired of constantly hearing about a thing. I’ll just wait until it’s out, but then I’m at a point where I start to feel bothered by a title as being over-hyped or just too exposed.
Being someone who tracks the news cycle of games and the gaming industry, and the greater consumer tech industry and its products, I go through this multiple times a year. I am soooooo happy when the new iPhone and Samsung Galaxy’s release so that people can SHUT UP about them. In those fields, the marketing drum-beat from Apple and Samsung are bearable, but the endless consumer speculation and puff-pieces that get written about what they might be are maddening. In the games space, we get this exposure from fans over-hyping a game. I am so weary of the blog posts and twitter posts that declare a game a potential game of the year contender before the game is even out….in MARCH. Truth be told, I do not really have a lot of tolerance for the GoTY posts even after a game is released. There are a large number of games to be released in the holiday season, and while they may not be something on an individual’s radar, I see little reason to start GoTY conversations until the last major release of the year is out.
So it’s not only the industry, the media, and Wall Street that play into this dynamic, but also the hype-trains driven by fans. With movies, I go on social media blackout maybe 3 – 4 weeks before a big movie drops. In that case, I am trying to avoid spoilers, and less so the speculation (but, yeah, that too). Given the much longer production pipeline of a game, it is not quite so feasible to go on media blackout. And admittedly it’s a bit easier to avoid spoilers. In games, it’s the hype and speculation that are more voluminous and less desirable. Perhaps even they are more of a threat that I will develop a pre-release disdain for a title than it being overexposed at E3.
But let me not put all of that on fans. One of my frequent jokes is that I felt like I constantly knew what the Bungie devs were ordering for lunch during the development of Halo 3. Credit that to the marketing campaign around that game that was in excess of $40 million and the constant developer video documentaries that were dropping. That being said, I was sold on that title. In some cases, there are elements of a game that make it bulletproof for me.
Barring a major gaff in release, like being riddled with game-stopping bugs or things that destroy game saves, there are titles that come along that I am down with regardless of how marketing potentially screws the pooch. Often it has to do with faith in the developer, creative director, or the team’s vision. Sometimes that is something that the team or a public figure has done or said to gain my trust and undying faith; something real and tangible. Oft times it is something that I have entirely made up in my own mind. It cannot be attributed to anything that the team has done; they have not earned it by any particular act. Something in my brain just clicks and assumes a commitment posture to a game. I think this is a factor that gaming enthusiasts refuse to admit and believe. They become anchored to their fandom in a manner not unlike inexplicable religious fervor and fault others for not having an equally ascribed faith.
But the truth is, you cannot “will” a good game into existence. You can’t make it good by just talking about it at volume before and after release. There are so many cases of in recent gaming and tech trends that fandom tries to make a thing. 3D Televisions, VR, and dozens of games. Stating that gamers who dislike a title have something wrong with their tastes, that their perceptions are “broken”, or that you simply don’t get why they are “complaining” (or really just being critical) about an element of a game, doesn’t make the game’s goodness valid. In general, you cannot prove validity of a thing by invalidating the opinions of others. That’s just gate-keeping. And it does not “make” a game good and encourage others to buy it.
There’s a lot of this done after a game’s release, but it also comes before launch. As early, in fact, as the showing of that first trailer at E3. And therefore, the cycle of show-tell-react is a very real dynamic surrounding games. Stuff happens in development cycles, and despite a team’s best hopes to reveal their game with a chance that it only has to be shown at E3 twice before release (3 times at E3 is the point where I start to slide off my interest), development will sometimes take longer. I do not know if there is a ton to be gained by trying to “control the message” with fans. Fans are going to do whatever they do. If the reactions are too negative, I think devs can but lean on that hope that something they have done or said or that “magic” makes their title resilient to any shade. Ghostwire: Tokyo was shown at E3 in 2019, and has been a title of discussion at three E3’s now that the release data has been pushed back to 2022. Whether it was the charm of Ikumi Nakamura (who has since left the studio), the support that I have for AA games that are something other than a thing from one of the industry’s marquis studios, a desire to see more games that are similar to what Arkane Studios does…who knows. Despite this title lingering a bit longer in development hover before starting its approach run than I would have preferred, I still have very high hopes for this title. Let’s hope that blind faith pays off. After the E3 2021 trailer, things seem a bit hazier. But I’m still rooting for it.
Rounding Off Infinity 