We’ve all been let down in life before, whether it be a present you didn’t really want, losing a sport, or even something as simple as not enjoying a movie you expected to be amazing. In regards to video game it seems more and more of us are asking the question, “Will this game let me down?” before the game is even released. This mindset that some of us get in I think is ruining our actual vision of the game once we actually get to playing it. Granted, it’s partly the advertising that contributes to this because developers do have a business obligation to promote their game as best as possible and they do this through use of cinematics as well as technology that isn’t even put into the game a lot of the time. No one likes being let down, but when more and more customers in the video game industry are being let down then that should be a sign that something’s going wrong somewhere, whether that’s just how gamers are evolving, or maybe it is indeed the developers just not delivering their game properly.
It’s hard to say where things started to go wrong and I’m not saying things are extremely bad but one does have to think of how much gaming has changed, both on the consumer side of things as well as the developing side of things. I think the fact that there are just so many games out there nowadays with similar ideas, that developers need to push their idea harder onto gamers to show that theirs is “unique”. Different ways of advertising has proven this to work quite well. When you think of when you were a younger gamer (I’m thinking 90’s), there were not many ads promoting video games and most of them appeared a lot more subtly, in magazine ads and such. Granted, a lot of that is due to technological limitations, but still, it was the game that sold itself. You bought the game, loved the game, then told your friends about the game in which they’d go out and buy it themselves. While we’re still on the topic of the good ‘ole days, the point I’m getting at is that before, most of us didn’t have any predetermined thoughts about the games we were buying. Of course being younger had a lot to do with it, but when you think about it, we had a lot more fun playing the games too (I can only speak for myself though, maybe you guys have a lot better experiences with modern games than I do). When we put our own expectations of a video game into our heads we’re just setting ourselves up for disappointment.
I’m not picking on any one group of people though because I admit I’ve been guilty of expecting certain things from video game as well. We also as gamers, tend to be followers rather than leaders. This can further fuel the fire in how we feel about video games. One of the most prominent and most recent examples of this is the Mass Effect 3 ending kerfuffle. The ending WAS a bit underpowered however, I don’t believe it deserves as much flak as it’s getting. Once one person starts the hatewagon the rest will jump on. This is is a common challenge for developers when they’re making a trilogy or a sequel. The next game coming out has to be everything the previous game was, but better. At the same time though, developers need to add new things and make it feel like a “new” game.
I think people need to stop expecting so much and just take a quick glance, decide if you want to try it, then buy/rent the game. Also you’re always risking not playing a good game when you go out and buy a game so if somehow the game isn’t to your standards? Just move on and maybe take focus on what you DID like about the game. We need to focus more on how the game made us happy rather than how it disappointed us. Only then will the love of gaming be re-ignited for a lot of us.
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