Is anyone else becoming Jaded towards game annoucements?

Recommended Videos

IamLEAM1983

Neloth's got swag.
Aug 22, 2011
2,581
0
0
The older I got, the more pre-release hype became meaningless noise as far as my purchase decisions are concerned.

Say a game is released and the Auteur dev pulls a Molyneux. "This game is awesome, it'll revolutionize its entire genre! Look, you guys, I can't possibly contain this much enthusiasm! I am a fucking genius and this is The Count of Monte Cristo in Video Game form!"

What I hear is "I'm filled with ambitions which may or may not fall by the wayside by the time the final product comes out! Share in my enthusiasm if you please, but take everything I'm saying with a big freaking boulder of compressed salt!"

I tend to wait several months after a game has been released to consider purchasing it. I read several reviews, watch friends play it and maybe try renting it if I can. If it's on PC, I'll admit to occasionally cracking a game before making a final purchase - it saves me on making hazardous gambits in relation to my hardware and has spared me quite a few bucks, once I found out the game I tried doesn't strike my fancy.

Nowadays, most forms of pre-release hype seem so hilariously desperate (Hello there, Mankind Divided!) that I'm inclined to ignore them entirely. I haven't bought into the pre-order culture in years, with the last Collector's Edition I bought dating back to 2009. All I really need is the game - "exclusive" plastic whatsits are just that, useless cruft used to inflate the base price - and the hardware needed to run it.

That approach has weeded out my library to those games I really do want to play, and that leaves me with a few outliers that don't follow the common opinion. The Sims franchise, Spore, Destiny... I do have games that garnered critical appeal, but I also have games I enjoy no matter how imperfect they might be or how slammed their franchises might be in the court of public opinion.

The problem is that there's always one or two games that you can't bring up in a conversation unless you're fine with being labelled as an instant sheeple or sellout. Unless you're with open-minded types that can understand how the above titles can actually pack some entertainment value.
 

kilenem

New member
Jul 21, 2013
903
0
0
Ouroboros said:
No, I haven't trusted them in a decade or so. I have a precious backlog on PC and Consoles which sustain me, so I buy most games when they have their "GOTY" edition and are actually complete. A 1 year "tape delay" on the game market will save you a lot of money and aggravation, and for the odd masterpiece like MGS or Witcher, you make an exception that doesn't hurt at all.
Yeah I was foing that for a while and then I got borderlans 2, and freakin loved. Bought Borderlands 1 and got to over hyped for the presequel. Not a bad game but Borderlands 1 is so much better
 

Shoggoth2588

New member
Aug 31, 2009
10,250
0
0
I wish the gaming industry was more like the film industry in that every time a company starts work on something it's allowed to be talked about. The process of making a video game can be as long as the process of making a movie after all but the main reason I want this to happen is because I'm more annoyed by a game's pre-order bonuses and limited editions being announced and advertised before the game itself is. I suppose Square Enix is already like this when it comes to Final Fantasy but I'd really like to see more openness from game developers and publishers. I know better than to hope for honesty.
 

Something Amyss

Aswyng and Amyss
Dec 3, 2008
24,759
0
0
Happyninja42 said:
The 80's, you didn't really hear about games until they were out, and usually it was word of mouth, or maybe Nintendo Power. So I had it ingrained early that media for games isn't something that is necessary, so I've never really used it.
Part of the reason we bought crap in the 1980s is because we didn't really have much of a way to discern it from the rest, yeah.

I was super happy when my local video store started having more than like 5 NES titles and I could try games before I bought 'em. Even in the 90s, games media mostly was puff pieces about upcoming games and only told me what to look for. Which I would then usually just rent.

I admit, I do occasionally take a chance on a game. Just not often. My parents taught me to value money, and the games industry taught me to assume they were going to try and sell me crap. GTA V was the first game that got me on the hype train in a long time, and it was mostly because my friends were actually interested in playing it, so I finally had an online MP sandbox I could play with friends, not so much the grandiose promises they only half-kept.
 

FalloutJack

Bah weep grah nah neep ninny bom
Nov 20, 2008
15,489
0
0
What? You mean like for Fallout 4 or Persona 5? Uhhh...no, not really. I want them.
 

G00N3R7883

New member
Feb 16, 2011
281
0
0
I don't really get excited about game announcements for many of the reasons already mentioned in this thread.

When a game is announced, if its something that I think I might want to play, I'll add it to my wishlist (on Steam, and another list that I keep in Excel).

And then when the game is released (I mean full release - not early access, beta, episode 1 of 5, or any other way of selling me an incomplete product) I'll check the reviews, forum comments, Youtube videos, etc, to make a decision about whether to buy it now, wait for sale, or ignore it.

In between announcement and release, I don't really care for the previews, trailers, interviews, screenshots or other ways of building hype. I mean, I'm pleased that there are games coming like Fallout 4, Xcom 2, Deus Ex Mankind Divided, Rise of the Tomb Raider ... but I'm not like "omg this is gonna be epic!". I hope they turn out good, but I'll wait and see.

And yes, Aliens Colonial Marines was the turning point for me as well.
 

Dragonlayer

Aka Corporal Yakob
Dec 5, 2013
971
0
0
Not in the slightest: I'm hyped as feth for Fallout 4 and have been eagerly checking the websites for Darkest Dungeon, Mass Effect: Andromeda and Telltales Game of Thrones every day for the past fortnight, looking for the tiniest scrap of information about new updates. Now I do often ignore game development for a few months at a time, both to let information "build up" and to make the wait easier, but I'm always excited to hear about interesting game announcements.
 

Kyrian007

Nemo saltat sobrius
Legacy
Mar 9, 2010
2,658
755
118
Kansas
Country
U.S.A.
Gender
Male
Xsjadoblayde said:
Can't say it better myself. It isn't as fun to be aware of the world, but it sure comes in useful. That said, I still feel the odd jolt of lucidity during certain announcements. For some reason the last guardian has me hyped and I never played any of team ico's games before. They just seem to appear like the sort of developer to put a lot of care, time and effort into their work. That is something worth trusting in more than fancy CGI/music trailers and middle aged company execs/representatives that are paid per gallon of gush they...ummm, gush for each game announcement.
Oh yeah, even through my cynicism I can look forward to things. I'm going out of my mind for Fallout 4 right now. I've taken the rest of that week off from work. I've completed fairly quick run throughs of previous Fallout games (1, 2, 3, and NV) and I did so with more than a month or so to go so I wouldn't get "Fallouted out."

And yet it's just the advertisements that I don't buy into. I'll still be pretty unsurprised if Fallout 4 is like most sequels these days, prettier and with added features we didn't want and less of what we did want.
 

jhoroz

New member
Mar 7, 2012
494
0
0
Sceptical and cautious? Sure. Jaded? No. I'm usually familiar with a company's track records when it comes to their video games release record, so I manage my expectations accordingly. I'm hyped beyond hell for Persona 5, and I know the quality of the product will be solid from how polished Atlus' games are and the delay we're getting. Expectations for any new Ubisoft games on the other hand...
 

baddude1337

Taffer
Jun 9, 2010
1,856
0
0
I've been jaded since the final years of the previous gen. I pretty much completely disregard all AAA titles now. Hell, the only one I have bought this year was MGS 5 and while fun, the story and repetitive gameplay has overall disappointed me.

The complete disdain publishers seem to have for their audience is what puts me off most. We get mountains of DLC shoved in our face (many of which is announced alongside a games actual announcement) and are expected to be happy about it, when it's something like 1 skin for £3. And since Bethesda's pursuit of taking money from modders it seems the industry will stop at nothing to milk gamers dry.

Second to that is the absolutely false advertising we get at events like E3. I just don't get the hype. hardly anything that get's shown these days is anything resembling what the game will play or even look like. And now thanks to Shenmue 3 publishers are gonna think it's fine to not even fund their games, and simply show it off and beg to the fans for money. Great.

There hasn't really been any breakout, truly "whoa next gen" games at all either. They've just been slightly updated versions of older games, and worse, straight up "remastered" versions of last gen games, which is a fancy way of saying ported PC code at a low cost.
 

The Rogue Wolf

Stealthy Carnivore
Legacy
Nov 25, 2007
17,491
10,275
118
Stalking the Digital Tundra
Gender
✅
I've watched the hype train crash and burn enough times to where I really don't even look up at its passing anymore. When the first trailer for The Division- a game that should be ringing a good number of my bells- came out, my first thought was "there's no way in Hell that this game's going to actually come out looking like that". Lo and behold, more footage comes out and it's not nearly as good as the first bunch. I expect that there will be only more disappointment in store.

I know that some people will still fall for anything, but for a lot of us, the developers have poisoned the well.
 

thewatergamer

New member
Aug 4, 2012
647
0
0
Ehhh, I wouldn't say jaded since I try to avoid judging games too much before they come out, unless a dev/publisher does something stupid but pfft that never happens, but yeah the past few years have really pushed me to the breaking point...
 

loa

New member
Jan 28, 2012
1,716
0
0
Well after games like alien isolation, until dawn, ori and the blind forest and now soma and undertale I am less jaded.
It's not like I trust trailers or marketing to begin with. Those are just fluff with no substance.

I wouldn't buy anything from konami past mgs5 though.