Alright, this isn't fully what you would think, not about the violence and what not in video games. I'm talking about the promotion of video games. Me admittedly not being a Star Trek fan, I really didn't look into the new game that came out. I was on one of my reviewers websites when he added a vlog about how the new Star Trek was really screwed up. Apparently Steam and Xbox/PS3 didn't give out review copies of the games until the day it came out or later. He took a look at Meta critic which basically allows anyone who signs up to do a quick review and saw this: http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/star-trek-the-video-game If you look at the ones which are mostly 9 and 10's, those are the ones who reviewed once and only for this game. While the rest are mostly much lower or middle. Apparently the Co-op also has been down since it was released until Wednesday at the least from the posting of this vlog. Which someone on the day of release says it works fine with steam servers. He's also got a log of 158 hours on Star Trek on his profile and only has played that. EDIT: Oh yeah, he's the Senior Producer of the game from Linked-In. Source of Vlog: http://angryjoeshow.com/2013/04/star-trek-the-game-angry-rant/ WARNING: It does contain several bits of swearing. I'm just wondering with the way video game companies are going with advertising and the Internet, do you think it's going too far with the way they try to get people to buy games? Do you think it should be changed? If so, how?
Hard-sell advertising is never pleasant, but from my time on the internet I have never felt like video games were being pushed that hard, at least not harder than anything else these days. Granted, this is probably the only real video-game centered site I visit on the internet, so my exposure to them is somewhat limited compared to others here.
Having seen all the advertising and what the companies basically bribe the "reporters" for free advertising. The Video Game Journalist Awards being the only one who pops in my head with the fact that the most creative journalist who advertised their favorite upcoming video game would get a free console when getting their reward, I would say yes. It is starting to get out of control. This will at least damage the companies rep when caught if not destroy the company completely. If you keep on sending out crappy games, which people will buy because it sounds "good" you have what it was in the early 1980's: People no longer buying video games from a lot of companies because of the bad games they purchased. It won't be as bad as it was in the 1980's, but it will severely hurt sales for video games.
I saw Joe's vlog about this, and I have to admit it's really underhanded and obvious shady dealings have been put forward to smoother the facts. These developers know they're game is incomplete in terms of playability, with numerous colliding mesh dimensions missing, in the wrong place or just plain broken, along with the inability for PC users to Co-op at all. In some way, this game was income type of development hell, I can bet. But since the game was announced and shown along with the movie coming out soon, the business side of the media wanted to cash in before it was a dead in the water game with no profit at all. This type of format has been going for years in the gamin industry move license games, shoddy work that tries to meet the time frame of the movies release with the money instead of quality marking their reason for doing said gaming venture. On average, movie license games have been improving a lot, yet recently we've been plagued by Alien: Colonial Marines and now this game bringing down the quality of the industry. I don't like it, but unfortunately as long as unaware consumers want to buy games that have a movie tie in or well placed marketing, then they will be made, for better or for worse.
There is no changing the advertising companies use, or the methods they use to get that advertising out. Companies have and always will do what they can to make a buck. That's what companies do. Gaming companies are very fragile. If they don't make enough money on each and every game they produce, they can easily fall under. So I don't blame them for going to the extra lengths to get people to buy the video games they make. I might not agree with the methods, but I don't blame them. It's up to the buyer to investigate a game before they buy it. If you can't do that, then you deserve to play crappy games. I'm just saying, you could at least look at the back of the game and read the description.
The problem is with that is that they're not going to mention all the bugs and glitches on the back of the box. They're not going to mention the fact that their co-op is still not working when the product is released. When I go to Gamefaqs and other sites for a review, I try to keep the blinders on when it comes to games. Especially when it has a huge following like Final Fantasy and Pokemon. I look for the middle reviews usually unless I want to see how entertaining the trolls can get on the really low reviews. The problem is when it's skewered like this, a lot of people either don't buy it because it looks really crappy because of the people compensating for the good reviews or it looks wonderful because of all the reviewers from people being paid by the developer to basically lie to get sales. People depend on reviews, and especially when it's not released early for the reviewers or the reviewers outright lie because they're friends with the companies, then it just hurts one group of people: The consumers. Note: The ones shelling out 60 bucks for each game.
There's not much else I can tell you to do other than keep the receipt. If you don't like a game, take it back. Or, here's a good one, try renting the game first before you buy it. It's not that much to rent a game for a night, find out whether you like it or not and go from there. If you need reviews to help you decide whether or not you should buy a game . . . well . . . I don't. I don't trust reviews. I trust what I see with my own eyes. Generally, I like almost any game anyway. If it's a crappy game though, I'll just take it back. Really, it's your problem if you're gonna shell out sixty dollars for a game without doing some of your own research (not reviews). Like you said, you can't trust the reviews. Simple solution, review it yourself.
The practise of the publishers posting user reviews on Metacritic is unfortunately nothing new. It's happened in the past and publishers have been caught out before. It really doesn't hold any ground and lets be honest who actually buys a game based on the metacritic user reviews? The type of person to use that site is pretty savvy. Metacritic is more useful to developers/publishers than it is to consumers. As for the idea that publishers/developers/PR agencies may have gone too far? Probably not, at least not further than most other forms of media. It's the marketing departments job to sell you a product no matter what it is, and it's the consumers job to spend wisely. Really the issue for me is the power publishers have over the press. They are in control of most of the news via press releases. They also control who gets promo copies before release. Piss of the publishers and you won't get the game and blacklisted. While they need the press for marketing reasons, the publishers have more power over the press than the press does over the publishers and that is an issue. There isn't another way around it or a way to change it. Unless we change the way we see gaming news. The press should be getting scared because publishers are starting to do news and videos themselves without the need for journalists. Activision only allow sites to embed the trailers they uploaded themselves. With social media and community managers, the publishers can directly show consumers press releases and news by themselves. Their need for the traditional gaming website is still useful but diminishing. This may lead to publishers having more control and can show people only what they want to see and then we will get more situations like Aliens: Colonial Marines.
Is it out of control? Not really. It's bad PR, and someone always finds out. In the interest of breaking even on multi-million-dollar ventures, companies make absurd gambles and launch aggressive marketing campaigns to ensure their game sells, instead of something like, I dunno, making a better game. But this is nothing new in the gaming industry. It's well-known and well-documented, and at this point our only fear is mass consumer apathy. To be sure, there are a lot of people out there saying "A game is a game," but at this point in time there are also more companies putting out games than ever before, plus a thriving indie scene, all of which are threatening to a company with bad press. So the more this kinda crap happens, the more companies involved risk going under, especially the giants who spend exorbitant sums on CoD-killers. Their audience bleeds away easily. tl;dr Yes, it goes too far, but it's a long walk off a short pier. Let the stupid ones fall off.
I think how we advertise games today needs to change slightly. Many games give us a false sense of what a game contains whether it's through game trailers or information seen. One example is The War Z. It said it had massive maps, different servers either PvE or PvP, and much more. When people bought it, they were lied to. it had NOTHING what was told on the Steam site. Even now despite it's been fixed mostly, people can't trust what a game's faults have done. If a mistake has been made, it stains a company very seriously. Trailers need to be more realistic and show what a game REALLY has. Take Dead Island for example. When people saw the trailer, people were amazed and even emotionally turned by it. Except the game was nothing like that. It was just another zombie hack-and-slash game. I'd be lying if I said I hated it. I enjoyed the game, but I wish people and gaming industries would stop sugar-coating the game and be more straightforward with us. Long story short, they need to me more honest with us. More and more industries are resorting to giving us a false sense of a gaming's content and it really needs to stop.
