Hype. It's the game industry's lifeblood, but also its poison. Developers and publishers prey upon the expectations and excitement of their customers, doing whatever they can to generate and maintain a buzz around their upcoming projects. We in the press are no better, all too eager to give game makers the platform they need to whip public interest into a frenzy of eager hope.
Sometimes a ride on the hype train pays off, with recent games like Dead Space and Fable 2 benefiting greatly from the extra attention and living up to their publicity. Other games have not fared so well, such as Too Human, which just couldn't deliver everything that game creator Denis Dyack was promising.
As a reviewer, I had always been told never to talk about a game's hype when officially criticizing a game. The more I think about hype and the way it has become so intrinsically linked the industry, however, I find myself asking if it's actually fair to dismiss a game's promises when discussing the final product.
Should hype affect review scores? Read on for my thoughts ...
Whether you're a reviewer or not, you cannot help but have expectations about a game. Positive or negative, one always prejudges, sometimes anticipating good things, sometimes anticipating bad. Publishers of course would much rather you expect the former, so will do all they can to sway your opinion and hopefully guarantee a pre-order or first-day-buy.
If the game does not deliver what you were promised, however, you're bound to be disappointed. Furthermore, it's likely that your lowered opinion of the final product will be significantly lower than it would have been, had you not been made to anticipate so much. While the publisher has made its money, this is of course bad news for the customer who got burned, having just spent sixty dollars on a total letdown.
It's a reviewer's job to be as objective as humanly possible, and as fair as one can be when discussing a game. Of course, we as people have our personal preferences and there is always going to be some internal bias, but that shouldn't stop one from being able to recognize the positive and the negative in all things. That said, it is also a reviewer's job to write for their audience, an audience that is under no obligation to be "fair" when judging a game.
This is where I feel it may be important to consider hype when rating videogames. If you, as a reviewer, wait for a game which has been built up as the second coming and get significantly less than you were hoping for, is it really so professional to simply forget that and write about the game as it stands? If you truly are writing for your audience, then maybe you should discuss the publicity, since your readers likely have the same expectations you had.
Of course, I can see the merit to the argument that hype shouldn't be discussed in reviews. A reviewer is there to talk about what a game is, not what a game isn't. By that same token, however, sometimes a game is a massive disappointment because of what it isn't, something which the publisher highlights when it starts writing publicity checks that its final product can't cash.
If you are buying a new home cinema that promises surround sound, but the final product delivered to your house has only stereo, you have a right to be upset, and a reviewer of said home cinema would be right to point out that the system's advertising is lying. Similarly, if a food critic goes to a restaurant that promises the best steak in town, only to find out that they don't have steak on the menu, is he to ignore that fact when writing about the tofu salad he had to eat? No, of course not.
But somehow, it's unprofessional to talk about hype in a game review.
With the rise of the Internet and the fact that gamers are now able to connect with the industry 24/7, it's only natural that developers have found a much bigger voice in recent years. Charismatic figures like Hideo Kojima and Cliff Bleszinski have become a lot more prominent thanks to the Internet, where everything they say is recorded and dissected by eager gamers. Fortunately for those two, they have the gamemaking skills to back up their words, so they rarely have to worry about overhyping their stuff. People like Denis Dyack or Peter Molyneux, at times, are prone to speak too highly of their products, and sometimes promise what simply isn't there.
With developers now able to say so much, and eagerly saying it, it's almost impossible for even the worst game to get built up as something more. Many times we can see through the bullshit, but sometimes a game can look magnificent and wind up a big disappointment. For example, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was expected to be the best Star Wars game in years, only to receive a mixed reaction in reviews and generally be regarded by gamers as a massive disappointment.
Looking at the Metacritic scores for Unleashed, one wonders if some of those "60" scores would be a lot lower if they had considered how little of the game lived up to its promise.
Another thing to consider is that it's a two-way street. While it's true that the games industry sometimes talks a bit too much, it isn't as if gamers remain completely blameless for getting overexcited. I remember back when Mirror's Edge was first revealed. After only thirty seconds of footage, comments cropped up from the masses declaring "DO WANT," as the general public already set their hope levels astronomically high over what was, at the time, nothing but concept.
We all do it, your writer being no exception, so where would we draw the line between who is responsible for a game's disappointment? If we were to factor hype into review scores, can we even make a fair distinction?
It's a grey area, and one that I feel deserves more consideration than it gets at the moment. Should hype factor into review scores? I think it should definitely be weighed up on a case-by-case basis. As it stands, publishers will say whatever they can to make you buy a game. They will promise you the stars regardless of whether or not they are delivering trash. That's their business, but the business of a reviewer is to give an honest appraisal of a game, and if one of the points is that the publisher is lying, then gamers ought really know about it.
Ultimately, though, the decision should lie with the you, the reader. Do you believe that hype ought to be a part of the review process, or do you believe instead that it unfairly sways the tone of a review? We write for our readers, so we'd like to know.
Contest:
9:51 AM on 11.01.2008
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My thoughts are that you should have a core review first, where you review just the game, and then maybe have a section at the end where you talk about whether it got hyped by the dev, and if it lives up to said hype.
Good read anyways.
and gta 1 and gta 2 was about the worst experance of my life but at least GTA 4 did not make me sick looking at it being played for 4 hours so that is a mild improvement and it might even have less bugs and crap than the other 3d ones like gta 3.
wait no it don't.
I don't think hype should influence a game because, in my opinion, 9/10 times hype fails.
Anyway, on topic. Nice article Jim, it's a difficult situation to handle. For me though, hype should never affect a review. It is enough in and of itself that a heavily hyped game that turns out to be dross should be reviewed/scored lower than expected due to the hype, as that speaks for itself.
The problem with this is of course that hype does unfortunately sell games, as it does CDs, DVDs etc. But there is little to nothing that can be done about that, people cannot be forced to watch gameplay trailers or whatever it takes to develop an informed and objective opinion (as far as possible) about the subject. They'll see it advertised think "Sweet!" and buy it, like the headless chickens they are. It's the way of the world.
Don't believe the hype! Yeeaa Boyyeee!
That of course sounds silly at first so I#ll try to explain what I mean by this. Of course Jim you are right that when a game company promises something that later doesn't make it into the game, the reviewer should point this out in his review.
After all game reviews are hardly an evaluation of the skill and talent of the developer. Game reviews are first and foremost and advice the reviewrs gives to his readers whether that particular game is worth shelling out 60 bucks for. And that makes it the reviewrs job to point out when the game company's advertisement doesn't match the final product.
On the other hand the reviewer should not be affected by the hype surrounded the game. A reviewer that already had the message "OMG THIS IS THE GREATEST GAME EVAR" planted into his head before he even started to play the game for review, will never be able to give a fair review again. Best example for this is, of course, GTAIV. All those reviewers that gave it a 10/10 rating either were already hyped to a point where they were no longer able to judge the game fairly or they just thought that their readers were expecting a 10 and so they gave it to them.
I still love Destructoid for not jumping on the bandwagon and instead pointing out the game's (many) flaws and then giving it an honest and fair review.
So in a nutshell, I want a review that tells me wether I am going to have fun with this game, and that part of the review I want to be as neutral as humanly possible, but a good review to me also has to tell me wether I will have as much fun with the game as the advertising told me and if that is not the case than it is the duty of the reviewer to point that out to me and because there should always be a punishment for lying to the customer, he also should adjust the review score to that.
Just one last advice or more a request I have: When you are reviewing a game and you discover a fatal flaw in the gameplay you shouldn't just write that this part of the gameplay is flawed, instead you should also write, how this flaw that completely ruined your gaming experience could be fixed. We know for a fact that developers read the reviews and if you give constructive advice in there it'll help the developers improve on their next game and therefore help raise the overall quality of the games.
Hype should definitely be addressed within the text of a review, as far as mentioning how well highly anticipated features in a game work, or whether a game lives up to what a producer (such as Molyneux) promised, but that shouldn't factor into the score. After all, I don't see "Good game, but was overly hyped and thus gets a lower score than similar games of a similar quality" anywhere in the Dtoid review manifesto.
I agree. Suddenly (or not so suddenly, actually) it's sooooo cool to crap on highly touted games. That's the internet for you, though. Go against the grain and be super duper awesome!
I find it hard to believe that hype could have helped GTA IV. If anything, hype hurts high profile games, because those games can never meet expectations. If GTA IV had been some generic game that came out of nowhere, people would have been amazed, but because of all the hype, many of you were disappointed. Why would hype help a game that people believe underperformed? That just makes no sense. If anything, excessive hype hurts games (see: Too Human, Force Unleashed, Fable, etc.) and lack of hype helps games in reviews.
I mean, you guys actually think a reviewer said, "Hey, GTA IV is supposed to be awesome, so I'll give it a great score even if I don't actually think it was that good"? That is somehow more likely than you having different taste in games than that person?
Once again, a 10/10 game isn't supposed to be perfect.
I believe hype should be discussed but the score should be based on what the game is and not what it isn't.
Right now, it's my sense that addressing my expectations of the game (and how they most definitely were not met) is fine for the text of the review, but to leave those feelings out when generating the numerical score. For some reason, that feels more fair to me.
What do you guys think?
tl;dr GTA is a prime example of hype gone amazingly right, as so many people bought it and so many didn't beat it. Whether it was a 10/10 game it's up to the player. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
but it does.
Ultimately, everyone who previews video games is partly responsible for excessive hype. Every preview of a game that is just a glorified PR piece; with often little spoken about potential problems, bugs or lackluster elements. Take EDGE magazine, they don't bullshit in their previews. If they see something that sucks, they don't bury it in developer promises and pretty screenshots.
If electronic entertainment wants to sit at the big table and be taken seriously, hype in no way must affect reviewing scores in games.
Are we talking about what the developer and publisher are shilling (more so the developer, as the publisher is obviously going to push the living shit out of something) in interviews with publications and bloggers? Or are we talking about what a bunch of never-to-be-pleased gamers are expecting out of a game, allowing their own imaginations to take over the "WANT" train only to get a nasty derailment when the majority of gamers have no idea how much work and effort goes into a game, what is realistic to accomplish, etc (though they will assure you that they know these things).
The former? Calling out hype is fair game. The latter? That stuff needs to stay out of the review.
I think hype should affect a review only when a significant part of the game is lacking. Who decides what's significant? Obviously, the reviewer while thinking about his/her audience.
Initially, Peter Molyneux promised a game that was 100X the size of the original Fable. However, I would venture a guess that I'm not in the majority for remembering that fact (though I could be wrong). He failed on that promise, obviously, but should a review be affected by that? I don't think so.
If a game is falsely advertised, then yes it should be blasted. However, let's take Rock Band 2. They initially advertised a Juke Box feature, where you could simply listen to all of the songs in the game and not play to them. That got cut in the last months. Does that make the game bad? No, it's sad they got rid of it, but when advertising came about, they never claimed it had the feature.
If they had put "Jukebox!" on the back of the box and it wasn't there, then you should bash them. If they overextended themselves and weren't able to do everything they wanted to, it shouldn't hurt the final product's score.
Okay, when reading a review, everyone wants to know the same thing: Is it as good as, better than, or worse than I've heard? Hype should be at least addressed, because it's what makes up our opinion of the game up until that point, and the reviewer's job is to confirm or deny what we've been told.
Even when there's a review for a game the critic and the audience knew nothing about beforehand, isn't the lack of hype always brought up in one way or another?
Simply put, the review should start at where the game is expected to be, and go from there. Never heard of a game before? The review starts at a neutral 5 (or 7, depending on the source). Is it GTAIV? Then it starts, in your mind at least, at around a 9, 10, or whatever you were expecting. A different score might be attached to the review when you go back to remove all bias, but why should you?
As long as you explain your position on the game before you played it, and how that changed when you actually did, there's no problem factoring hype into a review.
As how a lack of hype can help a game? One word and one number: Persona 3. Most people have never even touched the Persona or SMT franchise (I only heard of it because I have a friend who's apebatshit crazy for Persona), and they regarded it with curiosity.
Meanwhile, people were drooling over the hyped and mediocre Blue Dragon because of the names involved, Persona 3 ended being the more critically acclaimed game overall.
I really think that review scores should be held to the same standard. What was said to whom and when by people trying to hype and hence Sell their product before it is finished has no real bearing of the quality of the game that comes in the box. Just because marketing, PR, developers, publishers or your best buddy told you something about a game doesn't have any impact on what someone will think when they play the game.
Consider that many people will forgo following a game and its hype (or simply not be aware of it until they see it advertised post release) and will use the review scores as their first metric of the game. Surely those people want a fair and balanced opinion of the game and care little to none about the promises made about the game months and years before it was released. Not to mention the growing number of people who rely on sites like metacritic or gamerankings to accrue average scores and disregard the text of the reviews themselves.
Granted, your prejudices and expectations will have an impact on your experience when you play the game but that information is inherently personal and will change drastically from person to person. I suppose you could make an argument that game reviews are not acts of journalism so much as the personal opinions of people that the public chooses to listen to because of their point of view and as such the prejudices of those individuals are in fact Very relevant to the reviews. Taking that viewpoint I can see how a discussion of how well the game experience holds up relative to the reviewers' expectations is all fine and good - but surely the full review should be written from a mostly objective viewpoint so that it can speak to the full spectrum of readers.
Not enough hype + quality game = sleeper.
Too much hype + quality game = letdown.
Also, judging a game on the failed promises of hype is only natural, as all media needs to be compared to something that could be considered a predecessor in order to be assigned a value based on a previously set benchmark. Whether that predecessor is another franchise, a previous entry in the series or the trailers and dev diaries is irrelevant - all shall be judged.
Only in rare cases can you not judge a game by these standards, and those rare times are what test your objectivity to the fullest, i.e. Katamari Damacy when it first released.
At the same time, you do a disservice to the product by not considering the positive aspects of a game despite the things it never lived up to, or at least failing to discuss them fully in order to further get into the mindset of the reader.
Personally i think it depends on the context in which the review is found and read, on a site like destructoid i wouldn't have a problem with Jim or other reviewers speaking openly about expectation vs delivered product. They can reasonably assume that if you're reading a destructoid review, you've read a lot of the hype that destructoid have reported on as an enthusiasts blog. If it was a more 'mainstream' publication, particularly in the print media they should perhaps view it without taking hype into account, as the reader is less likely to have been exposed to said hype.
It's all about the readership, power to the people!
Anyway, a little snippet for your viewing pleasure. No new points, just something to make you sigh and say "aaah, yeh"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOKrFBSDIg0
WORD!
I nearly died when I saw that GS gave it a 10/10.
As much as I had lost my faith in them because of the whole Gerstmann-Gate, I still would have expected them to continue being conservative with their 10's, not throwing them out of the window every time the hype-train passes by.
I don't see it as making that big of a difference. To me, if a game is shit, its shit. And the reviewer will probably tell me why and I'll decided my own mind whether or not it sounds like something I'd try.
I read this site though, so usually I'm able to get informed about upcoming games without fooling myself into believing a game is going to be something its not. Mostly because the people that keep Destructoid rolling along, kick ass ^_^
Hype should be addressed in reviews the same way comparisons to other games can be handled.
Whether or not the game lives up to its hype or how it fares against comparison to previous games in the genre (or its own series) are definitely points that should be touched upon...
...but I feel that the review should focus mostly on whether or not the individual game is worthwhile on its own - free from hype or comparison.
However, I am a hardcore gamer in any sense of the term and i constantly gorge myself on multiple sources of info about any and all games coming out that could possibly interest me. So i think that a much better way to assess the hype any videogame review reader might have been exposed to is to post script the review specifically for this purpose.
P.S. - an article/add/"gameplay-footage"(which isn't always) released by developer XYZ/as seen here (hyperlink) on MAY 94th claimed "Blah blah lie blah bullshit" . . . and specifically mentioned/depicted element "Z" is not in the game.
Though this would obviously take alot of work.
my point is i want the main review to be
unaffectedaffected as little as possible by hype yet it would be fine with me to acknowledge it specifically in a different post or a post script note(s)Or on the other side of the coin, if a game comes out of nowhere with low expectations and ends up being a good game, it doesn't deserve super fucking high scores just because it blindsided everyone. Again, that deserves to be in the text, but not the score.