Can hype ruin your experience?

[IOwnTheSpire]

My example for this question isn't a game, but it applies to games and media in general.

My brother has been pressuring me to watch Firefly, and I've heard tons of good things about it, but I'm worried because everybody I hear praise it says it's the best sci-fi show ever, and I feel that even if I watch it and like it, it'll still be a letdown, since I may not think it lived up to so much praise.

I'd like to know if anyone else has had this problem of too much hype or praise. (My apologies if this has been discussed on here before.)

 

[Prime_Hunter_H01]

I actually developed my own way to combat major hype without turning me in to a cynic. (I speak specifically in terms of gaming but it can apply easily to anything else as well)

Hype comes in two flavors, marketing and fandom. Marketers are just doing their job and are supposed to hype a game up, After a while you learn to see through it if you keep a level head and seek multiple sources of information, and don't jump the gun you will be fine. The way i think about it, is that if a game with a bunch of hype around it interests me, I think of it as a must follow not must buy, which means that it is a priority to gain new information about that game and see if it is worth it as it comes around.

Second, fans if they love something will say what they think, so keep in mind that for them it may be the best thing ever. So you are nto going to get a balanced expectation from a major fan unless you know to refine it in your own mind to a reasonable expectation. For me I take that the fan has an emotional connection with the media and realize that I cannot blame them for their own personal experience, but I can know that a person, or many people find a certain piece to be really good, I may not think its the best thing ever but it may still be really good. Lower the expectation that a fan gives you, because personal opinion and view always affects how they praise or criticize a work.

And for your friend they really liked Firefly, so of course they will sell it as the the best sci-fi show ever, lower your own expectations because it is not their job to lower their praise.

And apply this to all media if it seems like over hype is a problem for you.

 

[willoftheboss]

Yes. See Destiny. It ranges from mediocre to average in some regards, but it seems everyone believed the marketing nonsense when they were told that it would be the greatest thing ever. Now people judge it on that premise and much more harshly, rather than simply judge it on its own merits.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I don't follow hype. I've got a tendency to dislike things because of hype before I even see what it is. Happened to me with Harry Potter, I disliked it immensely without ever reading a page or watching a movie and later was proven horribly wrong because I ended up loving it. So after that I took a step back and ignore all forms of hype and let the material's merit be the judge and not whatever surrounds it.

 

[Spider RedNight]

So far I'm getting that vibe from Big Hero 6... I personally haven't seen much marketing (other than action figures/commercials/etc) but DAMN the fans are just eating this shit up. I can't help but think that it's pretentious to draw tons of fan art or this/that/the other when you don't know how good something's gonna be. I'm trying not to be a cynic about whether or not the movie's actually gonna be good (I'm sure it will be and if nothing else, the visuals look GREAT) but still. Cosplaying?

Otherwise for media in general... I suppose hype can ruin something for me personally if the hype has been so great that having a different opinion about it results in alienation and no one respecting my opinion.

 

[Gamerpalooza]

Personally being hyped doesn't affect me because I know what to expect and what my standards are. If I like it and I'm looking forward to it 100% I'm gonna like the experience.

Sadly I don't speak for everyone but there's a lot of people that I personally know that "lower their expectations" mainly because they don't understand their own enjoyments in their hobbies and most of them are not only casual but they just can't find joy in much of anything due to disappointments and their true passion is mainly outside of gaming to begin with.

Those that I do know that do enjoy gaming and look forward to games on average keep track of what they want and desire in their respective taste, be it a genre or a particular franchise and no hype can't ruin it but only enrich.

Yet all this fits a progressive narrative. How the people I know would react to a game generations back that they didn't try is beyond me. Yet I can honestly say that I don't care if the game is an old 8 bit title that I missed or a last gen title. If it meets my standards of entertainment I'll give it a try and I'll enjoy it. Yet if it doesn't fit my standards of entertainment then I'll pass up on it because it wont entertain me.

Now there's this trend I see a lot in online communities where people that missed out on an experience get "skeptical" due to the passage of time that they feel like it wont live to the hype others placed. I understand that issue but what one should be questioning isn't weather you'll enjoy it or not because of time. What one should value more is weather or not you as an individual will enjoy an experience based on your own values not someone elses.

 

[Timmaaaah]

So yea, SPOILERS! But... (I don't know how to do that spoiler tag thang)

Halo 4... Dear GOD what a piece of crap in terms of writing. We run into humans for a bit, but they never really do anything, we don't know why the covenant are at war with humanity again, we don't meet Halsey (the intro cinematic made it look like it would explore some interesting themes, but they get dropped immediately), Spartans besides MC seem to exist again (there's a female spartan who shows up for 10 seconds and does exactly nothing, we've got some random Deus Ex Machina alien race that is extinct but can still contact Master Cheif and explain the villains plan and "advance his evolution", but never shows up again... I mean, the first Halo had actual characters that interact with each other and have conversations, but it wasn't a game that needed all that much information to keep you invested in the plot because it was paced well and the marines actually had rather human lines instead of just shouting military jargon and talking about battle tactics. Halo 2 had various characters with different motivations and traits, different plot threads going on, and actual consequences that are driven by their actions... Halo 4 was just kinda... Bad guy wants to do bad things, stop bad guy! There are other bad guys here too for some reason! That's not even getting into the CoD boss fight at the end. It makes me wonder how the fuck it got such good reviews, especially in one instance when Far Cry 3 was listed as a disappointing game but Halo 4 was praised like some sort of cybernetic saviour of gaming.

The Last of Us was damaged by the hype for me. Everyone talking like it was this profoundly amazing game... It wasn't. It was still pretty great, but it's not like the writing and characters were that much better than a standard Walking Dead TV season. The gameplay wasn't really that great and I'm so damn sick of zombie apocalypse games... Also it kinda had an ending that makes very little sense... A cure for the weird virus thing - would it turn the zombies back to normal Because if not there's not really much of a point. Immunity didn't save Ellie from anything but the spores. Also it kinda felt like the story had pretty much no momentum in between when Ellie shows up and when Joel gets sick in the Winter...

In terms of characters, Ellie was great but Joel kinda just became a weird psychopath, but not really an interesting or likable one for the most part. I feel like if we had some time to see his descent from loving father to numb shell of a man would have been far more interesting than the big flabby middle part of the game. All of his character development happens off screen, save for him slowly projecting onto Ellie. The only thing that hinted at the fact that Joel has kinda been crazy for a while is his interaction with his brother - the one part of the game where characters address the fact that he's a pretty bad guy - His brother mentions that he still has nightmares about times with Joel who claims that he was only "helping people survive". It would have been cool to see what happened, because throughout the game I lost most of my sympathy for him because of the giant 20 year gap after his daughter died.

So yea it was actually pretty good, but if I didn't have a crazy hype monster bashing me over the head telling me it was so amazing I would have liked it a lot more.
At least the game was at least aware of the fact that the protagonist wasn't really a good guy, unlike Uncharted (Another game that bloated my expectations due to hype) where I couldn't root for the main character after 5 minutes into the game... Got even worse in Uncharted 2 where his motivations just straight up don't make sense for the majority of the game. Everyone says "urrr it's just a game", but that's no excuse for bad writing. It's phrases like that one that enable the industry to put out mountains upon mountains of games with crappy B-movie writing and trying to act like it was something worthy of an oscar.

 

[Something Amyss]

A good game is still a good game, a good movie is still a good movie, a good book is still a good book, and a good song is still a good song.

However, when someone promotes something like it's the second coming, the Superbowl and Christmas combined, there's often a momentary feeling of disappointment, like "that's it?"

This is why I usually don't evaluate things in the moment. Otherwise, The Phantom Menace might be one of my top movies (in my defense, the lightsaber battles were awesome and I was too jazzed in the moment to notice how bad the rest of the movie was) and I might hate Firefly.

 

[lazinesslord]

I usually try to keep a level head and enjoys stuff for what they are and not what their hyped to be but sometimes hype has soured my views. What comes to my mind is "Rick and Morty." Everyone went on and on about brilliant it is, how great the characters were, how it was the next Futurama, and etc. It was just a funny show and that would've been enough for me to enjoy but I can't find myself liking it as much as I would've because everyone made it out to be something it's not.

 

[Me55enger]

I have met people who have seen Firefly and simply gone "meh."

I can understand that. I laugh at their tastelessness before making out with their sisters, but I can understand it.

I stopped being excited for anything when I was 16. So no.

EDIT: Guy above me said Rock and Morty. I finished watching that only yesterday. That is a damn good show.

 

[The White Hunter]

So yea, SPOILERS! But... (I don't know how to do that spoiler tag thang)

Halo 4... Dear GOD what a piece of crap in terms of writing. We run into humans for a bit, but they never really do anything, we don't know why the covenant are at war with humanity again, we don't meet Halsey (the intro cinematic made it look like it would explore some interesting themes, but they get dropped immediately), Spartans besides MC seem to exist again (there's a female spartan who shows up for 10 seconds and does exactly nothing, we've got some random Deus Ex Machina alien race that is extinct but can still contact Master Cheif and explain the villains plan and "advance his evolution", but never shows up again... I mean, the first Halo had actual characters that interact with each other and have conversations, but it wasn't a game that needed all that much information to keep you invested in the plot because it was paced well and the marines actually had rather human lines instead of just shouting military jargon and talking about battle tactics. Halo 2 had various characters with different motivations and traits, different plot threads going on, and actual consequences that are driven by their actions... Halo 4 was just kinda... Bad guy wants to do bad things, stop bad guy! There are other bad guys here too for some reason! That's not even getting into the CoD boss fight at the end. It makes me wonder how the fuck it got such good reviews, especially in one instance when Far Cry 3 was listed as a disappointing game but Halo 4 was praised like some sort of cybernetic saviour of gaming.

The Last of Us was damaged by the hype for me. Everyone talking like it was this profoundly amazing game... It wasn't. It was still pretty great, but it's not like the writing and characters were that much better than a standard Walking Dead TV season. The gameplay wasn't really that great and I'm so damn sick of zombie apocalypse games... Also it kinda had an ending that makes very little sense... A cure for the weird virus thing - would it turn the zombies back to normal Because if not there's not really much of a point. Immunity didn't save Ellie from anything but the spores. Also it kinda felt like the story had pretty much no momentum in between when Ellie shows up and when Joel gets sick in the Winter...

In terms of characters, Ellie was great but Joel kinda just became a weird psychopath, but not really an interesting or likable one for the most part. I feel like if we had some time to see his descent from loving father to numb shell of a man would have been far more interesting than the big flabby middle part of the game. All of his character development happens off screen, save for him slowly projecting onto Ellie. The only thing that hinted at the fact that Joel has kinda been crazy for a while is his interaction with his brother - the one part of the game where characters address the fact that he's a pretty bad guy - His brother mentions that he still has nightmares about times with Joel who claims that he was only "helping people survive". It would have been cool to see what happened, because throughout the game I lost most of my sympathy for him because of the giant 20 year gap after his daughter died.

So yea it was actually pretty good, but if I didn't have a crazy hype monster bashing me over the head telling me it was so amazing I would have liked it a lot more.
At least the game was at least aware of the fact that the protagonist wasn't really a good guy, unlike Uncharted (Another game that bloated my expectations due to hype) where I couldn't root for the main character after 5 minutes into the game... Got even worse in Uncharted 2 where his motivations just straight up don't make sense for the majority of the game. Everyone says "urrr it's just a game", but that's no excuse for bad writing. It's phrases like that one that enable the industry to put out mountains upon mountains of games with crappy B-movie writing and trying to act like it was something worthy of an oscar.

[ spoiler ] Here is something spoilered [ / spoiler]

remove spaces and:

Spoiler

here is something spoilered

Can quote to see the working code.

OT: Tbh it's very rare I get hyped for anything, and when I do it's usually something that turns out fucking awesome. See DKC Tropical Freeze, got hype, was awesome.

 

[VectorSlip]

I wouldn't say it ruins my experience so much as colors it. One example I have is saints row. I played the third game because i got it from a humble bundle sale I think, and loved every single second of it. I had so much fun that the moment I saw that SR4 was going to be on steam I pre ordered it. To this day it remains the first and only game that I've preordered on steam. In this case my hype was self generated and validated because I had even more fun with SR4 than SR3.

On the flipside though Bioshock infinite was being hyped up to all hell and back and so I was excited for the game. When I actually got to play it I'd say it disappointed me more than anything. I still loved the game and it was beautiful and fun and engaging. But it wasn't the near perfect experience is was touted to be. If i hadn't been hyped it would still have been a good game for me but I would have met it on its own terms instead of the hypes terms.

Keeping that in mind though i think the best hype is self generated which is why i take trailers that show no gameplay and community that hype things up with a grain of salt. Hype can be great and awful at the same time. It just depends on where it comes from.

 

[Evonisia]

Snip

You surround the text with

Spoiler

and then

Spoiler

again but put a / in front of the second spoiler.

OT: Rarely, but yes it does paint my image of the game. Like I've said in the past GTA V was the most disappointing game I played on the 360 purely because it looked like so much fun and looked very interesting and then it was a poorly made mess (but by no means a bad game).

 

[[Kira Must Die]]

Not really. Stuff that I get hyped for tend to be things I know I'm gonna like (Super Smash Bros, Bayonetta 2,) as they tend to be worked on by people and developers I trust.

I tend not to pay much attention to games being hyped up. It does peak my interest a bit, but I never get excited for it. When it turns out that a game doesn't meet the hype, though, I don't go into an angry rant or start judging the game more harshly. I do get disappointed, however, as I still don't wants a highly ambitious game to turn out bad even if I'm not hyped for it. I think most people feel this way.

 

[broadbandmink]

When it comes to gaming, I can think of two instances where the hype affected my subjective impression of the game in question less favourably. Both happened during my mid-teens.

The first was Perfect Dark for the N64. This was mainly due to the marketing of the title, which I did the severe mistake of swallowing wholeheartedly. The graphics, the story, the AI; everything this game had to offer was going to take first-person shooters to the next level. While I actually enjoyed the game, and I still think that this title pushed the N64's hardware to its limits, I quickly realized that my expectations for this game had been completely unrealistic.

The other was Black & White. This time around it was the media coverage from video game journalists that somehow convinced me that this was going to be a be-all-end-all product. When I got my hands on it I was very surprised by how short the game was, and while the AI of the creatures and the physics engine arguably pushed the envelope of what was possible to do with the technology available back in 2001 I found gameplay to become rather monotonous fast. It is my understanding that a fair amount of journalists came to reassess this game's perceived significance as time went on, with the folks at Gamespy even going so far as to consider themselves perpetrators in heaping praise upon this title before it was even released.

However, I still think both aforementioned cases provided me with valuable lessons. If a given game is given exposure (in terms of previews or marketing) to the point of being nigh inescapable I usually steer clear of articles or videos until it is actually released. Then I wait for the dust to settle. After that I can usually gather enough information by way of reviews and forum discussions such as these in order to make a fair estimation of aspects I deem important, such as assorted gameplay elements, lasting value, and replayability.

 

[laggyteabag]

Definitely. I've turned into somewhat of a cynic over the past few years. Every E3 that comes around, I watch and say "Well, that looks impressive, but there is no way that it is real." Right now I am doing this for AC: Unity (30,000 NPCs on screen you say? Not without the game running like ass it wont), and The Division (Let me know when the game is actually publicly playable, because I believe a whole 0% of this). Otherwise, I have stopped pre-ordering games from non-existing franchises (which is a pretty intelligent thing to do, I feel), and if the last installment of the franchise was a disappointment, I become super skeptical about it. The problem entirely stems from marketing, because most of it consists of pre-rendered cutscenes and vertical slices of gameplay that dont resemble the final product. It takes a lot to get excited for a game now, but the few that do excite me, REALLY excite me.

Take Alien: Isolation for example. The game looks great, and really promising, but I can't help but be a little skeptical. The developers have made pretty much exclusively RTS games in the past, and the only real deviation from that was Viking: Battle for Asgard and Spartan: Total Warrior, but neither are horror games. Otherwise, the most recent Alien game was a goddamn disappointment, and even though these games are unrelated, I cant help but point it out.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Yes. Ive played many games/watched movies that got negative hype and have been pleasantly surprised. Like Two Worlds 1&2 or Alpha Protocol - both fun for the right price. Not perfect, but fun. I think its best to treat hype with a pinch of salt and wait for reviews of vids of gameplay before making up your mind.

 

[Windcaler]

Hype can certainly play a role in how disappointing something is. For example Pacific rim got heralded as an amazing movie but when I watched it I didnt think it was very good. You see I got told it was basicly "Giant robot anime the movie" and thats something I loved but that film had a lot of problems that didnt meet my expectations of what a Giant robot anime the movie movie should be.

As for firefly if the idea of a western set in space with some sci-fi elements interests you then you'll probably enjoy it. If not, then you probably wont. I liked the series but its not my favorite sci-fi series of all time (thats probably Babylon 5). However its still a well written and produced sci-fi series. You should check it out and if you dont like it then you dont like it. No big deal, we all have different tastes

 

[Erttheking]

Portal. Is it a good game? Yes. Is it the second coming? No. And to be honest I'd rather I'd approached it just expecting a good game and not the second coming.