My issue is more with them showing graphics that arent representative of the end product.
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Downgrade Controversies Are Toxic and We Should Take Care To Avoid Feeding Into Them In The Future
- Thread starter Crossing Eden
- Start date
And we are done here. Great post.
This is also another major reason why I generally stop following pre-release media before playing the game.
Toxicity in always uncalled for and should be avoided (not just in gaming but in general), but I don't think downgrade discussions should all be avoided because some people could get toxic about them.
There are a lot of downgrade discussions that I'm personally not interested in as I feel the subject isn't big enough that it would impact my enjoyment of the game, but there are times like Watch Dogs where the initial reveal is so different from the actual product that its hard to fault anyone for feeling like the publisher was deceiving them.
I also think it's important to keep in mind that while it might not feel like it at times (with how fandoms get enamored with games and developers), at the end of the day, games are products that these companies are selling to you (even before you can actually play them) so I think it's fair criticism when the final product isn't as it was advertised before release (did we forget CP2077 and it selling over 10 million copies through pre-orders, already?).
There are a lot of downgrade discussions that I'm personally not interested in as I feel the subject isn't big enough that it would impact my enjoyment of the game, but there are times like Watch Dogs where the initial reveal is so different from the actual product that its hard to fault anyone for feeling like the publisher was deceiving them.
I also think it's important to keep in mind that while it might not feel like it at times (with how fandoms get enamored with games and developers), at the end of the day, games are products that these companies are selling to you (even before you can actually play them) so I think it's fair criticism when the final product isn't as it was advertised before release (did we forget CP2077 and it selling over 10 million copies through pre-orders, already?).
Another thing I'd like to bring up (not to argue either way but more as an interesting factoid) that people may not know about game development is that once a game hits a certain point in development things change from fixing bugs and troubleshooting how a dev team can maintain its vision to "Hey, we have to get this out the door". This means that anything that causes complex issues or horrible performance are just straight up cut from that point forward because they would take too much time and resources to fix. It can also be moved to "We will fix it after launch" but the team can often never get around to it because fixing other issues becomes more important or the planned roadmap for post launch support changes for a myriad of reasons.
That's kind of how you end up with a situation like Dark Souls 2 - where From came up with this fancy new lighting that looked great but it was absolutely not usable in the final game because it killed the performance in some places. So it became "easier" to just cut the new lighting entirely and brighten up areas that would have required their new lighting through a torch and just make the regular old torch from previous games work there instead.
That's kind of how you end up with a situation like Dark Souls 2 - where From came up with this fancy new lighting that looked great but it was absolutely not usable in the final game because it killed the performance in some places. So it became "easier" to just cut the new lighting entirely and brighten up areas that would have required their new lighting through a torch and just make the regular old torch from previous games work there instead.
Yes, first one being: "It wasn't possible in the first place because of course, a vertical slice will get more attention than possible for an entire game".
Maybe it's a better idea to show things when they're ready to be shown ?
While I understand this use case, I really don't agree that this is worth it or really the main point of trailers. You can make material directed at recruiting. You can even broadcast those on your platform if you want for consumer marketing. But to purposely pass that off as "this is what the product will be" and relying on (according to others in this thread) people to know that "of course it won't possibly look like that" is kind of a silly idea.
It's a very difficult thing. Games should just never be shown until they're finished. But then how do you drum up excitement for a game without showing it first? And if it doesn't look good, that harms the game's future outlook. Further, if a game isn't shown, what prompts people to buy a game, especially if it's not part of a well known series? When TV commercials and magazines were the only way to promote a game, this was acceptable. But as the industry boomed, industry events became more important. How can you have industry events without impressive showings of games?
I dunno, that word does get thrown around a helluva lot more than it should, right up there with "anti-consumer", but this is probably a more apt use of it. People don't just get "silly" or "pathetic" over this, they get downright vile and, well, toxic, over a game having some sort of perceptual graphical change from an early trailer to the final release.
OTOH, I will not ever understand Molyneux fans who take his pie-in-the-sky promises of game features that he ultimately only delivers a portion of. That's way worse than just some small graphics changes made down the pipeline. And I'm not talking about the stupid crap from Fable where people were mad they couldn't kill children.
For the record: I agree. It's not a great choice in most cases and can absolutely be misleading.
In the example I used though I know for sure it was a double-sided attempt to announce the project and draw talent to the studio since they were having a huge challenge doing just that.
I don't think that's fair to say at an age in which the hardcore gaming public has embraced the Early Access release model.
As covered already, some developers don't have that luxury compared to certain publishers like Nintendo, Rockstar, or Bethesda. And then when it's radio silence, the gamers get antsy, conspiracy theories start up, doom and gloom from the public on forums or social media, and lots of prodding from hundreds on developers' social medias to show something.
Let's be honest: Who has the luxury to make vertical slices ? Who's being blamed for the downgrades ?
EA. Sony. CDPR. Nintendo. Ubisoft. The big publishers.
The AAA game industry.
Vertical slices are pretty common at a whole bunch of developers because its how these developers secure investment, whether thats from a major publisher, Kickstarter or some other means.
They are also extremely important for testing out if a game is worth making, in many ways.
I should rephrase indeed: Expensive vertical slice. This is a common practice among devs to pitch a project. But who's getting shit for those downgrade accusations ? Let's be honest here: Mostly AAA publishers.
While I agree that minor stuff like puddle gate is stupid, stuff like Watch Dogs deserves all the shit it gets. Nothing wrong with calling out downgrades. People can then decide if it influences their desire to still play the game.
I disagree entirely because we have recent high-profile entries to the contrary. Stranger of Paradise is the perfect example: yes, they certainly took heat for the performance of the demos, but they still managed to continue to show the game off--blemishes and all--and largely reverse the prevailing opinions about the game.
Forspoken is going through this now to some degree. Sure there are loud bellyachers about dropped frames, but there is also a lot of understanding about how development works, how performance polishing usually happens right before release, etc.
The problem is that there aren't enough upgrade controversies to balance them out
Obviously the toxicity is bad and individual workers should not be targeted or made to feel threatened but to a certain degree companies usually bring this on themselves and should be more forthcoming when promoting their products, which often would just involve putting a "product under development and all content subject to change" disclaimer somewhere.
Obviously the toxicity is bad and individual workers should not be targeted or made to feel threatened but to a certain degree companies usually bring this on themselves and should be more forthcoming when promoting their products, which often would just involve putting a "product under development and all content subject to change" disclaimer somewhere.
I think a large part of this is that it's also the AAA industry who are usually the ones opening their games for preorder. It's easier to swallow a game being changed for specific reasons, when it's happening before you've put down money on it and are no longer eligible for a refund.
But the moment you start taking people's money up front, there exists some level of expectation that the devs are going to disclose when they have to remove a lighting system/downgrade the AI from what was shown in marketing/cut a feature, etc. Taking Dark Souls 2 as an example, I would tell people to get bent if they complained about the lighting system downgrades if the first time you could purchase the game was on release day.
Preorder culture is a massive problem in the industry. People don't care as much when an indie dev has to cut certain features for release, because in the overwhelming majority of cases, they don't sell their game before release.
I get what you mean, but that is often impossible to avoid if you want to advertise your game years in advance. And publishers definetely do for obvious reasons. And gamers love the big press conferences where stuf is announced years in advance. That would have to stop if presentations should only by representative of the final product. When a game is unveiled for the first time it is often a guesstimate of what their engine will be able to produce on the target platform. They might get it right or they might get it wrong. Hence downgrades (in some rare cases, upgrades actually).
I would much prefer not to hear about a game until 3 months before it's out. Unveiling a game several years before it's out is not only a (possibly) false premise but it creates false hype.
"Woooow, that looks so good! Those graphics are beyond anything. They are wizards!"
No. The graphics are beyond games that are out now. But when this game launches it will be among other games that look just as good. Technology will catch up. A trailer that shows you the prettiest game ever made is pointless to compare to other games if it's not coming out until 3-4 years from now. If it's even coming out at all. You never know. Don't get me wrong, pretty graphics are pretty graphics. But a game showing you something you've never seen before is not really "impressive" as such unless it's coming out soon. It just looks like what we would expect games to look like 3-4 years from now.
They are selling a dream. Treat it as such until they show you a product.
But none of the above excuses going after devs. They don't owe you shit. And if you buy a game before reading a review/watching post release gameplay then it's on you. If you buy dreams then you might end up with hot air. Buy products. When someone buys a book or an album would you respect them for attacking the author/composer because it did not live up to their words of "it will be the best I've ever made!"?
Read/watch reviews. That's literally what they are for - to inform buying decisions before spending money.
Unless it's super egregious, I don't care about downgrades. Have realistic target renders and it's not really a big deal if some things are changed.
Misleading marketing and advertising should be called out for what it is. Within reason of course.
Some individual animations and actions remain in the game, who cares? That's not what was impressive about it.
And let's not forget that a Ubisoft employee got harassed by ND fanboys for literally calling this video for what it was. Did ND set the record straight? You bet your ass they did not.
Why are you defending this? This is the one semi-recent bullshit video that peeved me off because it lead me to believe I was seeing the future, but all I actually saw was a 15-minute long cut-scene of Naughty Dog jerking themselves off. In retrospect I was kind of a dumbass for believing it was possible (this realization probably annoys me the most lol), with animations that always impossibly, perfectly transition from one to the other in a way that absolutely does not happen in the actual game or in any game since. This wasn't just a scripted demo. This was an animated sequence. For the longest time, because of this stupid video, I also had the wrong idea of what motion matching actually was or did.Because the marketing team decided, "hey, we have all this footage that shows EXACTLY what they're talking about. Let's use it."
Dev: Now that we have this other state that the player can be in where you're very low to the ground, how else can we use this other than just hiding in vegetation? Well we were like there's a lot of manmade things or different structures that have collapsed that allow just enough space for you to crawl under."
The exact visual as this is being said:
^
This is from the e3 demo
Do I need to redownload the game, load up this exact spot, and do this exact thing, for you to stop playing semantics with me about how this is supposedly misleading? You know what's also kinda ridiculous. What if I told you that a bunch of animations in TLOU2's demo are identical to the final game? And only aspects that needed to be scripted contain noticeable differences in animation quality. Man, if only I made a point about why this sorta thing is super commonplace in downgrade controversies in the OP.
Oh wait I did that exact thing...
Some individual animations and actions remain in the game, who cares? That's not what was impressive about it.
And let's not forget that a Ubisoft employee got harassed by ND fanboys for literally calling this video for what it was. Did ND set the record straight? You bet your ass they did not.
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I don't agree at all.
Publishers, and developers, create marketing material (i.e. demos, trailers) to entice funding (investors, consumers, internal buy-in). It's entirely reasonable to me that if that marketing material ends up misleading that people are rightly able to criticise what was shown.
There is no inherent requirement to show off a game or product years in advance (and no, trying to secure additional funding by demonstrating there's consumer demand through engagement with your marketing/through pre-orders is not an inherent requirement), or to demonstrate an aspirational demo rather than the game in its current state (and yes, in many cases that state will be bad years prior and yes, that might impact your sales and reception); it's a choice that's made by a marketing team.
Setting incorrect or misleading expectations, particularly when it's often to entice a purchase (from somebody, whether internal or external, often with no recourse), is absolutely reasonable to criticise; the onus is not, and should not be, on customers to actively understand why the marketing was misleading, it's on publishers not to publish misleading marketing in the first place (or address that if it happens). If I developed misleading demos for clients about an upcoming feature I was planning, took investment for it, and set live a feature that fell short in multiple aspects, I would absolutely expect either refund requests or backlash (e.g. negative NPS commentary). I think customer's do hold a level of responsibility to avoid pre-ordering and day-one purchasing if they aren't willing to accept the possibility that the final product may not reflect marketing, but ultimately this is to a far lesser extent than it is on publishers not to be misleading in the first place.
The massively inappropriate communication some in an audience use is a totally distinct issue which is pervasive across communication online; this is something best handled severely by moderators on the respective platform (e.g. death threats against developers aren't inappropriate for 'downgrade' criticisms any more than they are inappropriate in general - the issue is the communication platform not swiftly acting and preventing these in the first place regardless of the context). I don't agree it's sensible to roll that into the context of criticism regarding 'downgrades' for the purpose of suggesting that downgrades should be uncriticised (or a discourse opened) as it's a much larger problem.
Particularly when 'downgrade outrages' are a major exception rather than a typical occurrence, I don't accept the hypothesis that minor instances like ' looking at a puddle, or posting a screencap of a YouTube video' is the 'norm' for when this occurs.
Publishers, and developers, create marketing material (i.e. demos, trailers) to entice funding (investors, consumers, internal buy-in). It's entirely reasonable to me that if that marketing material ends up misleading that people are rightly able to criticise what was shown.
There is no inherent requirement to show off a game or product years in advance (and no, trying to secure additional funding by demonstrating there's consumer demand through engagement with your marketing/through pre-orders is not an inherent requirement), or to demonstrate an aspirational demo rather than the game in its current state (and yes, in many cases that state will be bad years prior and yes, that might impact your sales and reception); it's a choice that's made by a marketing team.
Setting incorrect or misleading expectations, particularly when it's often to entice a purchase (from somebody, whether internal or external, often with no recourse), is absolutely reasonable to criticise; the onus is not, and should not be, on customers to actively understand why the marketing was misleading, it's on publishers not to publish misleading marketing in the first place (or address that if it happens). If I developed misleading demos for clients about an upcoming feature I was planning, took investment for it, and set live a feature that fell short in multiple aspects, I would absolutely expect either refund requests or backlash (e.g. negative NPS commentary). I think customer's do hold a level of responsibility to avoid pre-ordering and day-one purchasing if they aren't willing to accept the possibility that the final product may not reflect marketing, but ultimately this is to a far lesser extent than it is on publishers not to be misleading in the first place.
The massively inappropriate communication some in an audience use is a totally distinct issue which is pervasive across communication online; this is something best handled severely by moderators on the respective platform (e.g. death threats against developers aren't inappropriate for 'downgrade' criticisms any more than they are inappropriate in general - the issue is the communication platform not swiftly acting and preventing these in the first place regardless of the context). I don't agree it's sensible to roll that into the context of criticism regarding 'downgrades' for the purpose of suggesting that downgrades should be uncriticised (or a discourse opened) as it's a much larger problem.
Particularly when 'downgrade outrages' are a major exception rather than a typical occurrence, I don't accept the hypothesis that minor instances like ' looking at a puddle, or posting a screencap of a YouTube video' is the 'norm' for when this occurs.
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Maybe you shouldn't be showing before it's ready to be shown? Seems like good thing.
Some people act like this is an impossible thing to do for some reason.
Capcom has in recent years taken this tract, they only reveal their games when they're relatively close to being released and it has been all for the better.
Gamers are getting better at discerning some aspects of game development and what they're shown like with framerates, I agree. It just needs to keep improving so that developers can trust the audience to take their in progress reports in good faith.
I hear this and definitely agree that a rational discussion is the right approach, but to pull at that a bit...in reality, these discussions are drowned out or ignored by virtue of them existing alongside the gamer stereotypes hammering developer mentions.
I attempted to have a rational discussion about some of the more predatory elements of NBA 2k21 with the lead, specifically a lack of information about their MMO mode's player attribute builder -- there was a stat that legitimately did not impact gameplay in the way the description alluded to (Blocks in this case). There was no mention of this until a few weeks post release via tweet saying that there was a completely different stat (Interior Defense) that did what the first stat (Blocks) was supposed to. This meant that anyone spending virtual currency on that first stat was stuck with a player that did not have viable interior defense and would either need to live with being subpar or rebuild at a time/money cost. It was rough. Of course, this is happening at the same time that people are blowing his mentions up about feeling cheated -- end result was complete silence and the community manager subtweeting about it for weeks.
Backlash is a loaded term. Criticism? Sure. Backlash? Nah, never. It just lends itself to seat of the pants hot takes and overreactions versus measured criticism. Not that there's a whole lot of evidence that the majority of the gaming public is capable of that measured criticism.
So, it looks like there's 3 sides to this discussion.
1) People who understand that game development can be turbulent and things can change dramatically from day to day.
2) People who don't know shit about game development at all, but pretend they do.
3) People who understand game development, and also understand that sometimes the publisher will mislead the public.
Most of the people in this thread are 1 & 3 (mostly 3), but there are far more 2s than I'd hoped to see. I wish most of those people would get modded back to GameFaqs, because they truly turn so many otherwise productive conversations into absolute dogshit with a single post.
1) People who understand that game development can be turbulent and things can change dramatically from day to day.
2) People who don't know shit about game development at all, but pretend they do.
3) People who understand game development, and also understand that sometimes the publisher will mislead the public.
Most of the people in this thread are 1 & 3 (mostly 3), but there are far more 2s than I'd hoped to see. I wish most of those people would get modded back to GameFaqs, because they truly turn so many otherwise productive conversations into absolute dogshit with a single post.
Very well said. I appreciate your point especially about moderation being necessary for effective communication. Thank you!
OP
OP
So in the OP, the topic of vertical slices is covered. What exactly is the source for you statement?
Really the only real downgrade that is worth criticizing is dark souls 2. THAT was a blatant slap in the face.
All other "downgrades" look maybe a bit worse but also still look pretty good. Dark souls 2 looks like ass. There are some areas that appear to have 0 lighting applied making everything look super flat and un-detailed.
All other "downgrades" look maybe a bit worse but also still look pretty good. Dark souls 2 looks like ass. There are some areas that appear to have 0 lighting applied making everything look super flat and un-detailed.
OP
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That demo was not THAT level of scripted come on. Heavily scripted yes but there was some degree of control.
OP
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Again, not many IP have the clout for this to be feasible. If every IP was treated like GTA, Fallout, or Elder Scrolls then we'd have an entirely different situation. But as it stands we don't. And tbh is isn't even that big of an issue in the first place because again, tons of games have demos shown years before release and when the final game comes out that experience turned out to be representative of the final product. On top of that. Change is not inherently bad in the first place. That doesn't mean that something was falsely marketed if things changed during development. And it's funny that people only perceive that as false marketing when it's come thing negative and not say, Borderlands being advertised with entirely different art direction years before release. Halo being advertised as an RTS game, Watch Dogs being advertised as a cinematic linear shooter instead of open world splinter cell, etc.
That analogy doesn't work. The burger place is making a paid advertisement after making the burger - knowing what the real burger looks like, they purposely made a fake one that looks better. In the game industry, when they release a trailer years before the game's release, that trailer represents the game they are at that time making. They do NOT know beforehand that it won't look as polished, to my knowledge no game company has EVER made a trailer years before release that represented a game they didn't think they were going to be able to make. A vertical slice by design is a representation of what the game will look like to end users if development continues in its current state. And no, they aren't always created as advertisements, often they are internal demos that they use to show new team members or executives the direction they are going in, and they decide to use that as a trailer since it takes a lot of effort away from making the actual game to make trailers and demos.
An example of that is the first Final Fantasy XIII trailer - everyone thought there was no way combat could look as dynamic as it was in the trailer, they thought it was totally fake, but the trailer was the combat designer's vision for how combat should look, and then in the end, that's what we got (and a lot of people weren't happy with the combat system's gameplay...but visually it matched the trailer).
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I dunno man. Going back to the Dark Souls 2 example, they used the footage with the good lighting right until before release. There's no way From didn't know ahead of time they weren't gonna be able to run the game looking that good on PS360, since they were also working on Bloodborne at the time (development started right after Dark Souls 1 DLC wrapped up,) so they even knew what the next gen (at the time) consoles were going to be capable of. They should've come clean a lot sooner.
I think a lot of this comes from a strong sense of entitlement. We're told "the customer is always right", so when a genuine accident or situation arises where they have to downgrade something, either because they run out of time or because they can't get it to perform well on the console version in the end, we see it in the poorest faith, as if they are trying to lie to us, and we feel justified as if we have some kind of obligation and right to lose our minds over it. Most devs just want to make the best game they can. No one wants their name attached to a project that is known for being disappointing or not living up to what was promised. I assure you that any creative person in the industry sees that as a nightmare scenario.
There are very few times where I think it's justified to be upset. Cyberpunk is probably the biggest one in recent memory, in part because the information suggests that the game just needed more time in the oven (one year seemed to do it with the recent upgrade, but I personally would have preferred two or three to get some more of the removed content back in there). I don't think that there was ever a direct intention to lie until it became apparent that cuts were going to have to be made in the last year or so of development. At that point, yes, it becomes something worth being upset over, because they never communicated this, but prior to that, all of the promises and things they spoke of seemed like things they genuinely intended for the final product to have, and you can see this even in the game, as there are many areas where you can see content having been somewhat roughly and obviously cut out. I find it hard to call that "lying". The deception there is more in the way the marketing carried on as if this hadn't happened (I think the worst example is the use of a literal montage scene in the advertising, which made it seem like it was a bunch of in-game experiences... nope, it's literally a montage, OWNED). That's more worth being upset about than the cuts and downgrades themselves.
Typically, I just take trailers with a grain of salt at the moment. Sometimes I don't even watch them if the game is something I know I'm already going to be interested in. Unless I'm watching footage that is considered final gameplay, anything and everything is subject to change heavily even a week before release. AAA game development in particular involves a ton of moving parts, so it's not surprising that we have to rely upon some scripted footage as things come together.
Why make myself upset about what something could have been instead of just appreciating it for what it is? Life's too short to work ourselves up over feeling entitled in this way. If something doesn't seem right to you, don't buy the game, sure, but getting worked up over it? Nah.
There are very few times where I think it's justified to be upset. Cyberpunk is probably the biggest one in recent memory, in part because the information suggests that the game just needed more time in the oven (one year seemed to do it with the recent upgrade, but I personally would have preferred two or three to get some more of the removed content back in there). I don't think that there was ever a direct intention to lie until it became apparent that cuts were going to have to be made in the last year or so of development. At that point, yes, it becomes something worth being upset over, because they never communicated this, but prior to that, all of the promises and things they spoke of seemed like things they genuinely intended for the final product to have, and you can see this even in the game, as there are many areas where you can see content having been somewhat roughly and obviously cut out. I find it hard to call that "lying". The deception there is more in the way the marketing carried on as if this hadn't happened (I think the worst example is the use of a literal montage scene in the advertising, which made it seem like it was a bunch of in-game experiences... nope, it's literally a montage, OWNED). That's more worth being upset about than the cuts and downgrades themselves.
Typically, I just take trailers with a grain of salt at the moment. Sometimes I don't even watch them if the game is something I know I'm already going to be interested in. Unless I'm watching footage that is considered final gameplay, anything and everything is subject to change heavily even a week before release. AAA game development in particular involves a ton of moving parts, so it's not surprising that we have to rely upon some scripted footage as things come together.
Why make myself upset about what something could have been instead of just appreciating it for what it is? Life's too short to work ourselves up over feeling entitled in this way. If something doesn't seem right to you, don't buy the game, sure, but getting worked up over it? Nah.
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Absolutely. Downgrades are very often not done because the developer had a better looking build but had to optimize it. Theyre done in such a way that they make a trailer they know its too good to be true, all to exploit the hype and sell a game on false expectations. Not that this is always the case (and often you cant even tell) but it is something that really sours me on the topic. Oh and also we can shift blame here from the developer to the publisher.
Showing an actual WiP from the game is absolutely the way to go. Either by waiting to show gameplay until a few months before release or by showing a game that will most likely end up looking even better by release.
If they take your money ahead of time and then don't tell you about the changes, then I do believe there is a very valid sense of entitlement.
That's where the whole thing falls apart when we're talking about whether people are justified in being angry. And companies absolutely do exploit this. There's no way Hello Games didn't know people were going to be upset at everything that was missing and then you have companies like CDPR, who didn't say a word about the (admittedly not that big) graphical downgrade for Witcher 3 or the fact that they massively toned down the nudity in Cyberpunk compared to what was marketed ahead of release.
If the gaming industry wants to avoid such controversy, they need to either allow people to refund products that they feel didn't match the marketing, or they need to stop doing preorders. Neither of which will actually happem, though.
Watch Dogs I think made everyone more observant when looking at trailers compared to final release. That games downgrade was so visible.
I could list more games but I'll leave it at that.
Xbox has that model. I've had every refund approved immediately. As an example, I bought FIFA 22, played it for about 2 hours and I kept getting trash servers (not my connection because every other online game worked fine). Asked for a refund, approved immediately.
I could list more games but I'll leave it at that.
Xbox has that model. I've had every refund approved immediately. As an example, I bought FIFA 22, played it for about 2 hours and I kept getting trash servers (not my connection because every other online game worked fine). Asked for a refund, approved immediately.
E3 needs to stay gone forever. Developers being forced to have footage or a demo ready by a very specific date is just not feasible and it leads to 'downgrades' or changes because they're creating a vertical slice just for the event, or even outsource a cgi trailer. Sure there's still internal deadlines and some publishers will be overly demanding, but the E3 spectacle seems like it only created problems because there was this pressure to create hype.
Hey OP would you be willing to pay for a 4WD car and happily receive a RWD car instead?
Unless a game trailer specifically states it's not representative of the actual gameplay and has pre launch review copies sent a week in advance or accurate demo's, I believe anyone has the right to callout a studio for misleading their customers.
Unless a game trailer specifically states it's not representative of the actual gameplay and has pre launch review copies sent a week in advance or accurate demo's, I believe anyone has the right to callout a studio for misleading their customers.
As an overall rule? Fuck no.
Publishers and developers have repeatedly put shit out there that they know they can't hit. Are there cases that are stupid and overblown? Absolutely.
Publishers and developers have repeatedly put shit out there that they know they can't hit. Are there cases that are stupid and overblown? Absolutely.
I'm not sure I agree with that stance either. For example, I think the insights into the Dead Space remake have been nice. It should be a case by case basis. Generally though if you feel the footage you're showing isn't going to be representative of the final product then either slap a ton of warnings/caution stickers on it or simply just don't show gameplay until it's in a near final state.
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OP
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The remake of Dead Space is currently the poster child for why devs aren't that level of candid.
Can you do me a favor and google the definition of "false equivalence." 🤔
They don't take money, money is willingly handed to them for a product that does not exist yet...
As far as I've seen, most people have understood the DS footage isn't final. Are there going to be a contingent of people that don't understand this? Of course. It's the internet. The devs here have done a good job of repeatedly emphasizing it's not final and the way they're presenting the footage is closer to something like public tests than regular gameplay footage.
I feel like a $60 game vs. a multi-thousand dollar investment isn't really the same thing.