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[Poll] Do you think games get announced way too early?
mrputts
Member UncommonPosts: 283
It seems to me any more that games get announced far to early. While I understand the logic behind building hype for investors to see.
It seems (to me) a lot of times games are announced 2-3 years (sometimes more) before they are even in beta. (Pre Alpha picture nonsense and the like)
So people get all whipped up into a frenzy about how epic this game is going to be, talking about this feature or that, and just getting over excited for something that is years away.
They over grandeurize (is that a word?) the game making it be 1000x more awesome than the game will be able to be, get pissed off that it is not what they expected for the last 3 years since announcement, and walk away jaded.
Or the game turns out to be vaporware. Leaving people to have wasted their time waiting, thinking, and talking about it.
Personally I don't think a game should be made public any earlier then 6 months before a closed beta. But that's just me.
What do you guys think?
Mr putts
Ea is like a poo fingered midas ~ShakyMo
Comments
With crowd-funding, it will be far worse. They are hyping a game that hasn't even started development yet.
The way mmo's were: Community, Exploration, Character Development, Conquest.
The way mmo's are now : Cut-Scenes,Cut-Scenes, solo Questing, Cut-Scenes...
www.CeaselessGuild.com
Absolutely.
Though it's working in their favor right now. Announce a project 2 years out, sell founders/supporters packs, then sell early access, then sell alpha/beta access, then sell collector's editions, then launch as "F2P."
They're making money before they've even built their product. People are buying feature lists and promises (actually they're not even promises, usually just concepts/ideas that the devs would like to do). The entire process is backwards and likely one of the reasons we're seeing what we're seeing in terms of game design.
Old way: Try to make something compelling enough that will make people want to buy it when you show it to them. If you fail at making something people want, you lose. If you succeed, grats! Now get to work on updates or the next game.
New way: Sell people what they want to hear, and then deliver something kinda sorta like what you said but not really. Some players will complain and ask for refunds, some will fanboy, others will just suck up the cost - but all of them will head right back out and jump on the next hype train.
The old way was better for players. The new way is better for stakeholders. This isn't to say we can't get good games, we can, and sometimes we do; but the process is fubar'd.
"Do you think * get announced way too early?"
* stands for software in general.
There is a trend to underestimate the work involved with any software. It ends up in collecting all kinds of requirements and features by stakeholders (the customer is in general the stakeholder that joins at a very late stage) would like to see. The company/ team is required to say how they want to realize the product. Then they are required to say how long it will take and how many resources (money, hardware, manpower, etc.) will be required. The first guesses are very far from accurate.
Of course the "marketing" (either marketing for the public or persuasion of internal stakehodlers) is necessary at all stages. Sooner or later you will always have a mismatch between what was demonstrated to show some progress and what is really implemented and works reliably.
I'm feeling that all is almost futile and things won't change. You need to advertise your project in some way to secure resources. On the other hand even if you try to be careful about not causing a too great hype you have no control of what other people might think or deduce.
That's the crux of the whole problem isn't it? The earlier a game is announced, the earlier the marketing begins and the less likely it is that what is planned and shown at early stages is what is delivered when it goes gold.
Minimizing the disconnect between desire and reality should be a priority, but it's not because they keep making all their money off the early desire part. I'm hoping at some point people get burnt out on this model and things can go back to "concept, plan, develop, market, release" instead of "concept, market, plan, market, develop, market, release, abandon."
A little bit.
But the main problem for me on PC is that they are not curated like on consoles. There's no one filtering out the bad and unfinished games like Sony and Microsoft do on consoles.
There's no agreed upon standard of quality, there's no one managing anything, I don't think that's good.
There's the rating agency, but that has solely to do with violence / explicit content, there's no independent agency checking quality.
Announcing games in advance isn't such an issue for me, it's more the kickstarter / indie attitude of just releasing low quality games and hoping to cash in.
Yeah, I think a new game should be announced 9 months before launch and expansion 3-6 months, far too mant games totally lose the hype when they get announced way too early. One Duke Nukem Forever is enough.
I also think the games get released too early as well, a few like LOTRO and GW2 were acceptable but others really lost a lot on their early release and that is many players gone that never will try the game again.
Who really needs to know about a game 3 years before launch? And it would also stop people waiting for many of the games that never will release at all.
See this is my thoughts almost exactly.
It doesn't seem to be working too much in a companies favor. Expectations end up being to high.
Ea is like a poo fingered midas ~ShakyMo
My thoughts are this... when you are looking for a new game to play, you're not planning 7 years in advance, you're talking like in the next few days if not sooner. We want to play *the game* now, not a mere shadow of the game, not the itch that was in the developer's pants... so why the hell waste all this time and money selling us a game we can't even play?
Stop this nonsense of pre-early-oh-my-god-lets-throw-this-at-the-ceiling-and-see-if-it-sticks crap. When you have a game, let us know, until then, keep your mouth shut. By the time the game actually ships, I won't give a rats ass about it anymore because I will have seen it in demos et all for a greater part of 7 years... I don't even have to have "done that" because I will have "seen" all that there is to see before I even bother to play it.
You have to sell it to me this far in advance, I can assure you it will be a turd. Because only turds need that sort of greasing. A good game sells itself... a bad one has a marketing team.
Well agree
but customer have fault to - buy and hype to any because dont have any to play , because next its better actual
and actual never better old
Market adapt , adjust , and still work in make money (NO GAME its MONEY) dont matter its indie or not
It would be nice if more gamer sites did switch their business model to be more of like what Kataku the Gamers guide did by changing their mission statement last year as they said that " While we remain a site that puts gaming first and will continue to tell you about the most interesting games as soon as possible, we are shifting from what has been a heavily pre-release approach to covering video games to one that gives a lot more attention to games after they've been released." They appear to be as tired as we are about over hyping and pushing out unfinished games with features that have been advertised but are no longer in the finish product.
The full article can be viewed here http://kotaku.com/the-future-of-kotakus-video-game-coverage-is-the-prese-1644297778
Right, and I think you would get more sales off of initial hype than 3 year old hype.
Ea is like a poo fingered midas ~ShakyMo
a lot of games hype early because they need funding. the initial hype is what gives them the opportunity to make the game. problem is by the time the game is close to finished people lose interest and have moved on. crowfall is an example of this. of course we have yet to see where the hype will be in a couple years. but they are generating it now to get money.
From whose perspective? From mine, no they aren't, since I want to know what's coming just like I want to know what new tech is coming years before it actually gets here (e.g. OLED TVs.)
From a developer's perspective? Yeah probably, since they better have a solid plan to keep the hype at the same level or building until release. Case in point... EQN. The hype was at its highest when it was announced and before the reveal... it's been downhill ever since.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Ea is like a poo fingered midas ~ShakyMo
Maybe you've been digging deep into the lower-quality crowdfunded games, but from my experience the ones most successful at getting funded are the ones who've done a significant amount of pre-production work on their game and are ready to jump into the next phase of development. The artists know the art direction, the designers know the design direction, etc.
Knowing those things doesn't happen instantly. It does take some work. It's much cheaper, because often it can be accomplished with a single lead in each discipline (art, design, programming), but it's still work.
But sure, I'm sure there are many examples of unprofessional teams with no game experience who manage their projects poorly, and the average player might not be able to sniff that out if they're distracted by thinking the game is going to provide them some impossible set of features.
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
I totally agree. I used the COCOMO model for almost 2 decades. It has been my experience that an elaborate projection of project costs and delivery dates tends to scare management. The result, project planning is a very hit and miss affair at all levels of software development, and the projects with grossly unrealistic dates, staffing, and costs are the ones most likely to be given the green light, and those the management won't (not that they can't) understand are rejected. Software engineering is a misnomer. Very few engineering practices (or disciplines) tend to be incorporated into the development process. The further you get from an actual engineering firm, the further the software development process varies.
Imagine if bridges were built with a 'good-enough' philosophy. You can drive on the early access Alpha release Bridge 0.61 if you like. I'll wait for Bridge 1.32. (Yes, I am a veteran Micro Prose gamer).
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A bigger issue might be the fact that companies that release projects too early tend to lose control over their customer's expectations. It takes a massive public relations effort to keep the masses from imagining, speculating, dreaming, or otherwise inventing project features in their minds. When faced with the actual product which is far different from their unchecked expectations, many customers will be extremely disappointed. Although we've not had hands-on EQ:N, the results of the incomplete, concept-heavy announcement of this game can be seen with the development of several distinct camps within the fraction of the potential customer base that frequent MMORPG.com. SOE, now Daybreak, have done a masterful job of keeping the community involved with the development, but the lack of any concrete deliverable items (or finalized features) opens the door for just this type of unfocused community.
But how effective has their public relations campaign been at establishing a consistent product vision? I doubt that more than a small handful of the forum members have the same mental idea of how sitting at their computer and playing this game will be. The customers have already divided themselves. A lot will be severely disappointed. Some may be pleasantly surprised. But only a fraction of the customers will have their expectations fulfilled without modification.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.