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Does hype kill games?

SephastusSephastus Member UncommonPosts: 455

Overhype a game before you know anything about it? How about underhyping it?

We all like to fantasize about how a game will be, and honestly it's human nature to place hope (dare I say, faith), in things to come. Unfortunately, this might be detrimental to the final outcome of what would have been a decent, or even overly decent game.

Case in point: EQN. Very little is known about this game, except that it is going to be a sandbox style game, that it is going to have above-average enfasis on story and that this will be based on the Everquest lore and what players do, that it will have "spellweaving", that it will be Freemium, among other things. THAT IS IT. Yet with that alone it has managed to outhype all other upcoming games by over a full point.

We very soon shall see if hype does kill or not upon the reveal in a few weeks.

My prediction is that way too much is being imagined by forum goers, and when they notice that this will not deliver what they expect or more, that the hype will go in the completely opposite direction, and it might in fact cause some negative overall impact on the game itself... even if it is good by its own merits.

Second case: GW2. This game received much hype, but not because of non-facts.. it was because of the method in which information was given out. People were spoonfed "leaks", and were only presented with what was purely polished and finished. This did increase the hype tremendously, and the game did start with a good following. Yet no where near where people were expecting it to be. In this case, overhype actually helped this game, because the developers were not interested in keeping the player base forever... they just wanted people to sign up to the lifetime subscription at a cheaper price than what other games had it at. Quite brilliant IMO. Sell the lifetime subscription, and disguise it as a "buy to play". They didn't even have to spend much money on actual boxed copies since most of their purchases were done digital. Yet, the game itself? Pretty average for an MMO... and with zero progression at end-game. Yep... just a regular RPG with a beginning, middle and end, while throught you have the ability to do some PvP... At the end, just different skins with some story thrown in.

So, does hype kill games? Is it a tool used by developers to garner interest in their games? Do players REALLY control hype, or is the proper use of (mis)information/controlled leaks the true cause of hype?

Comments

  • TygranirTygranir Member Posts: 741
    Hype doesn't kill games. If the game was genuinely fun to play, people would play. I still play EQ1 because I genuinely have fun playing.

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  • SephastusSephastus Member UncommonPosts: 455
    Originally posted by Tygranir
    Hype doesn't kill games. If the game was genuinely fun to play, people would play. I still play EQ1 because I genuinely have fun playing.

    Star Wars? Overhyped... more people played it than would have honestly tried it had they known more truths about the game... Quick rise due to hype, overly dramatic fall, because when people start to leave in troves, others follow to not be considered to have made a "poor choice".

  • MMOGamer71MMOGamer71 Member UncommonPosts: 1,988

    Q.  Does hype kill games?

    A.  Bad games kill games.

  • TygranirTygranir Member Posts: 741
    Originally posted by Sephastus
    Originally posted by Tygranir
    Hype doesn't kill games. If the game was genuinely fun to play, people would play. I still play EQ1 because I genuinely have fun playing.

    Star Wars? Overhyped... more people played it than would have honestly tried it had they known more truths about the game... Quick rise due to hype, overly dramatic fall, because when people start to leave in troves, others follow to not be considered to have made a "poor choice".

    SWTOR was not overhyped. It was overreaching. It did not have the endgame to sustain long term play. It still had a great levelling experience, but stopped being fun at all the moment you finished the class story. If it was fun, it would be played. There is a reason Angry Birds is so popular.

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  • TheocritusTheocritus Member LegendaryPosts: 9,739
    Does Angry Birds have an endgame? sorry for my noobness Im sure Im the only one on the planet that never played it.
  • SoraksisSoraksis Member UncommonPosts: 294
    Hype does not kill games, poor development kills games.
  • whisperwyndwhisperwynd Member UncommonPosts: 1,668

    Hype don't kill games. A virus maybe, or the creator taking the money and run off..into space, but not hype.

     

  • waynejr2waynejr2 Member EpicPosts: 7,769
    Expectations can kill a game if the game doesn't met said expectations. Hype often leads to crazy amounts of unrealistic expectations.  People around here should know that by now.
    http://www.youhaventlived.com/qblog/2010/QBlog190810A.html  

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  • DavisFlightDavisFlight Member CommonPosts: 2,556
    Hype kills games that have no systems to encourage the player to stick around, aka, WoW clones. Once the content is done, people leave.
  • darkhalf357xdarkhalf357x Member UncommonPosts: 1,237
    Originally posted by Sephastus

    Overhype a game before you know anything about it? How about underhyping it?

    We all like to fantasize about how a game will be, and honestly it's human nature to place hope (dare I say, faith), in things to come. Unfortunately, this might be detrimental to the final outcome of what would have been a decent, or even overly decent game.

    Case in point: EQN. Very little is known about this game, except that it is going to be a sandbox style game, that it is going to have above-average enfasis on story and that this will be based on the Everquest lore and what players do, that it will have "spellweaving", that it will be Freemium, among other things. THAT IS IT. Yet with that alone it has managed to outhype all other upcoming games by over a full point.

    We very soon shall see if hype does kill or not upon the reveal in a few weeks.

    My prediction is that way too much is being imagined by forum goers, and when they notice that this will not deliver what they expect or more, that the hype will go in the completely opposite direction, and it might in fact cause some negative overall impact on the game itself... even if it is good by its own merits.

    Second case: GW2. This game received much hype, but not because of non-facts.. it was because of the method in which information was given out. People were spoonfed "leaks", and were only presented with what was purely polished and finished. This did increase the hype tremendously, and the game did start with a good following. Yet no where near where people were expecting it to be. In this case, overhype actually helped this game, because the developers were not interested in keeping the player base forever... they just wanted people to sign up to the lifetime subscription at a cheaper price than what other games had it at. Quite brilliant IMO. Sell the lifetime subscription, and disguise it as a "buy to play". They didn't even have to spend much money on actual boxed copies since most of their purchases were done digital. Yet, the game itself? Pretty average for an MMO... and with zero progression at end-game. Yep... just a regular RPG with a beginning, middle and end, while throught you have the ability to do some PvP... At the end, just different skins with some story thrown in.

    So, does hype kill games? Is it a tool used by developers to garner interest in their games? Do players REALLY control hype, or is the proper use of (mis)information/controlled leaks the true cause of hype?

    Im sorry.  This is something kids today made up and follow.  I've been playing video games since 1975 and games have always been hyped. Anyone remember 1982 ET from Atari?  They sold the hell out of that game.  We bought it, the game sucked, but we didnt sit around saying that we were duped by the hype.  Its all part of the risk of marketing something new.

    Now today granted is different.  Kids have WAAAY more access to information almost immediately where they can effectively analyze a million different perspectives around the game.  Of course that level of 'reality' is going to force the publisher to up their game around advertising.  Everyone seems to forget that someone else's view on a game is opinion and not fact.  A game one person hates another person can love.

    Hype itself is a tool.  Nothing more. Nothing less.  If someone listens to the hype and buys something blindly based on what they heard and doesnt investigate for themselves given all the sources they have ... they full on deserved to be duped.

    Im tired of stupid people saying hype ruining a game like it was some agenda to steal money from people by reaching into their pockets.  Second, if you cant afford to lose money you probably shouldn't be spending it.

    Half you forgot what its like to simply play a game and enjoy it for what it is instead of talking about its development, financial and advertising model.

    Are you an analyst or a gamer?  

    image
  • NagelRitterNagelRitter Member Posts: 607

    Not for me, personally. In the end, the quality of the game is what will kill it. As for sales, generally, hype is advertising and advertising is a good thing, even sometimes negative advertising.

    GW2 and SW:TOR were both hyped quite a bit, and I am fairly ambivalent towards GW2 because I feel it's a solid game, if imperfect, while rather hateful towards SW:TOR because it is just not up to par to what would be expected of a BioWare game with a huge budget.

    Favorite MMO: Vanilla WoW
    Currently playing: GW2, EVE
    Excited for: Wildstar, maybe?

  • UtinniUtinni Member EpicPosts: 2,209

    As has been noted, bad games kill games. I do see hype putting other people off just because of how exhausted they are hearing about it.

    I will say EQN has had almost zero real world hype. Outside of this forum, TTH, and other nerdly lairs, It doesn't really exist. Noone I know has ever heard of it unless I told them. We had $1million trailers for SWTOR 2 years before launch. Our raid group and class composition was done almost a year before launch. 

  • Eir_SEir_S Member UncommonPosts: 4,440

    GW2 had a ton of hype and it's done just fine despite some people thinking it was something it wasn't, though I'm not sure why, with the way the MMO market is today, the devs (or the president of ANet rather) thought it could "beat" WoW.  If a person doesn't enjoy a game when they play it, whether they were hyped up on it or not, they'll most likely stop playing anyway.  This game is not dying, it's actually getting better.  The case for SWTOR was that the game is very generic, it was built off of the success of WoW and tried so hard to emulate its style but it was far and away more linear, with boring NPCs and a lot of "paths" that didn't allow for much exploration.  The combat was ok for a while, but again, we'd seen it before.  It was Star Wars, and it was made by Bioware.  The game was going to be super-hyped whether people knew it was mediocre or not.  It didn't "die", so hype didn't kill it, but at the same time, the devs and EA were probably hoping for MUCH higher numbers on name recognition alone.

    So, yes and no is my answer.  It depends on the IP and the amount of money put behind a game.  If you'd asked someone 10 years ago if they thought a Warcraft game would be bigger than a Star Wars game, they'd look at you funny.

    I also remember when DF:UW was majorly hyped and then reality came crashing down on fans who thought it would be some kind of blockbuster.  Hype is probably the ONLY thing that sold copies of that waste of time.

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