Hype Envy?

[MrHide-Patten]

Just thought if share this line of thought and see if it makes any lick of sense. Now with the most recent E3 over and done with, the Nintendo fans have been rather... vocal with Nintendo's "win" (better late then never) and going full steam ahead with the hype train all over my news feed.

Now I'm not a Nintendo fan and all the gushing has been filling me with naught but contempt. Yet it's not my place to shit all over some bodies good time or to divert the hype train down to disappointment station.

So I had to look back at myself and wonder why all the fan wanking was driving me mad. Then I dawned on me that I was jealous, for the mere fact they were excited and I wasn't.

As a person that's borderline Sony Fanboy, even I found Sony's presentation pretty "meh", with only Infamous's Child of Light getting the slightest; "Oooo" from me. Generally anytime I see any good teaser, it's followed by the thought; 'probably be shit' like Dead Island 2's, which has only really sold me the song thus far.

So has the internet just made me incredibly jaded, to which any signs of faith fill me with a hostile anger of fear that I'll somehow catch it, and be underwhelmed by the final product?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Hmmm...maybe.

I know I find over-excited fans rather annoying.

Possibly, though, it's because I think something is getting more recognition, praise and therefore success/money/power than it deserves, which is unfair.

 

[Vegosiux]

The most excitement you're getting out of me is cautious optimism. Hype is something I truly, truly despise with an all-consuming passion. To the point that I find even the concept of events like E3 infuriating.

Now, I do get told "Yeah you're just jealous" but not really, I'm just annoyed. I also get called "Spoilsport" and "Why do you have to kill the excitement for everyone" if I happen to get annoyed enough to actually throw a few rhetorical punches. The answer is, again, because I simply don't want to have to look at gushing and hype when I'm trying to figure out what game to buy next.

Also because when hype expectations are set too high, it's literally impossible for anything to meet them.

PS: Props to Nintendo for showing, y'know, actual gameplay as opposed to snazzy trailers.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I think we're at the point where anybody that shows actual gameplay at E3 wins the entire expo.

 

[Pink Gregory]

The internet isn't some sort of closed room.

People can be excited if they want to, you can't really stop them. When does excitement become hype? When they don't temper themselves, the only thing they're going to let down is themselves. Listening to other people's hype and not your own impressions is a ridiculous thing that everyone seems to do seemingly to appease some nonexistent majority.

And they never learn, and they do that fucking boring jaded/cynical face.

Also, I don't really understand how seemingly so many people seem to be actively frightened of being disappointed. Especially when half the time they're creating their own expectations.

 

[Vault101]

So I had to look back at myself and wonder why all the fan wanking was driving me mad. Then I dawned on me that I was jealous, for the mere fact they were excited and I wasn't.
?

I got the exact same thing with Skyrim and Bethesda RPG's

here's everyone having a great time and loving them and I can't enjoy them

which makes me hate them....

 

[Zhukov]

Possibly.

It's as good an explanation as any.

Although these days I find myself hype-exhausted rather than hype-contemtuous.

It's pretty hard for a game presentation to impress or excite me these days. I just see this endless parade of cocky, swaggering gobshites or gormless, humourless Steve Austin lookalikes blowing stuff up and spouting dialogue that makes my ears want to shrivel up and drop off. That or the kind of thing that I would have loved at age nine. (Which is fair enough, nine-year-olds deserve fun games as much as me, if not more so.)

And now they're doing the retro 80s thing. "Look how fucking dumb our game is! But we know it's fucking dumb, so that makes it clever!"

This must be what getting old feels like.

On the other hand, Mirror's Edge 2 looks potentially sweet. Y'know, the fifteen fucking seconds they showed padded out by talking head developers have a bit of a wank.

 

[Enamour]

I clocked out of the gaming scene when they tried to sell QTEs as game play mechanics. When I hear Single Player has "Always Online", I clock out; Star Craft II and Diablo 3. Blizzard has taken thousands from me over the years while I played WoW.

Gave WoW the finger after the Lich King expansion when all the skills became "better". Meanwhile on the game play side every tank started playing identically, the casters felt the same, the melee and ranged dps became extremely boring and the new homogenized skill trees made playing the game so easy that I didn't blink to abandon years of hard work on my guild and stop playing. The game had become easy, boring and thus unplayable.

Predictably there followed an exodus of players from WoW.

Twelve years of hype went into Diablo III. I used to joke with my friend's younger brother that he'd have graduated and become a dad before Diablo III is released. Then my friend tells me one day "There's going to be a real-money market!". And that was the moment I stopped caring, when I realized the super long development hadn't been spent on the game. Most of the development time had been spent trying to figure out how to maximize customer money output through this market, while the long development time ratcheted up the hype, thus the projected sales figures went up.

Diablo III was super successful; never bought it, not going to play it. If you want to play the real Diablo III then you might want to google Path of Exile.

Waited 12 years for a hyped-up and failed real-money market. Blizzard wont be getting my money again.

There was a lot of hype surrounding Rome 2. Bought it, it was an overpriced, unfinished piece of shit with blatantly dishonest marketing and hype. It took 9 patches before the non-functional, unfinished AI was upgraded to simply Dumb.

Neither Creative Assembly nor Sega will be getting my money again.

E3 is a place to go so that developers and publishers can present to you, the obfuscated reality about their games. If I'm trying to sell you a piece of shit, I'm not going to tell you its a piece of shit; I'm going to tell you that the aroma in your nose is Cherry Blossom or Lily of the Valley after a light afternoon drizzle.

Hype = That funny feeling in your crot... belly when you believe someone whose telling you something too good to be true. It seems to work like a pin number which allows you access to others' bank accounts.

Hype makes for pre-orders. It's possible for a game to already be "successful" before anyone's actually played it.

Pre-ordering is for suckers. Buying blind is for suckers.(Rome 2 was a blind buy. I was suckered.) Getting excited based on promises and pictures of Lily-of-the-Valley is for suckers.

Marketing is for suckers.

Don't be a sucker.

 

[Ragnar47183]

If you see a game with gameplay that looks good, and you think you will enjoy playing it, then you're allowed to be excited.

Just don't get super excited over CGI trailers or glaringly fake gameplay. Unless it's a teaser, if a company shows little to no gameplay, asks for preorders and then doesn't even allow for review copies to be sent out, then it generally means it isn't going to be very good.

But if you take something like Smash Bros for example. Nintendo hosted an entire tournament to show the gameplay of the new Smash Bros. That's enough to get me excited for the game's release because I know EXACTLY what I'm getting and I know I'll definitely enjoy it a lot. It's the same with Little Big planet 3. The trailer for LBP3 showed mostly gameplay, and after experiences with its predecessors, I know it's a safe bet I'll enjoy the game a lot.

I absolutely hate the "cautious optimism" types. Because they twist the term into meaning "absolute buzzkill". I also completely disagree with Zero Punctuation's logic of excitement, because in the end, it just makes you extremely bitter.

Also, if someone's not excited for a game, but someone else is, then the prior has absolutely no reason to be so cynical about it. It's simple really.

Sorry to get off topic real quick but I couldnt focus on your post because of your MASSIVELY creepy avatar that I am going to have nightmares about now. Why do you hate me?

 

[Pink Gregory]

And now they're doing the retro 80s thing. "Look how fucking dumb our game is! But we know it's fucking dumb, so that makes it clever!"

I get the impression that, if they're honest about it, they're not trying to accentuate that it's ironic.

I enjoy dumb stuff. I also like intellectual stuff, when it's not basically wanking. Shouldn't I be catered to?

Platinum Games don't pretend to be clever. And I love them.

Metal Gear doesn't pretend...all right, I'll give you that one. But I still love them.

 

[K12]

The thing is it isn't just jealousy that irritates me with the hyper-excitable mega fans. It's because you know that these are the exact same people who be shouting the word "betrayal" because Link has the wrong colour hat in the new Legend of Zelda (for example).

It's the lack of perspective and the full scale of response that's annoying, not people excited for something that I'm fairly lukewarm about.

 

[Pink Gregory]

The thing is it isn't just jealousy that irritates me with the hyper-excitable mega fans. It's because you know that these are the exact same people who be shouting the word "betrayal" because Link has the wrong colour hat in the new Legend of Zelda (for example).

It's the lack of perspective and the full scale of response that's annoying, not people excited for something that I'm fairly lukewarm about.

I have to admit, I do sort of recoil at that footage of the announcement at E3 I think of Twilight Princess; the guy just screaming 'OH MY GAAAAWD!'.

It's Link riding a horse. Calm down, man, you'll hurt yourself.

 

[sXeth]

But if you take something like Smash Bros for example. Nintendo hosted an entire tournament to show the gameplay of the new Smash Bros. That's enough to get me excited for the game's release because I know EXACTLY what I'm getting and I know I'll definitely enjoy it a lot. It's the same with Little Big planet 3. The trailer for LBP3 showed mostly gameplay, and after experiences with its predecessors, I know it's a safe bet I'll enjoy the game a lot.

Yeah, while I don't own a Wii-U (and following Nintendo's schedule was troublesome), I kind of walked away with LBP3 being a highlight. Not only was it gameplay, but it was obviously not canned or rehearsed. Compared to The Division one where the "players" were obviously rehearsed, and the Far Cry 4 one (Sony's with the actual gameplay), which was canned, and looked very much like something designed for the show, and probably not something in the final game.