Hype, Trust and Disappointment

When you browse some big game related news websites over the world such as IGN, Game Spot, Edge Magazine or Jeuxvideo.com, you notice that players are always looking for the next big game seeking it like a miner is desperately looking for gold or diamonds. I asked myself why such behavior seems to spread and I’m sharing here some of my humble conclusions.

Too much expectations?

From a publisher point of view, the goal is to create as much hype around the game as possible targeting hardcore players 3 to 6 months before release so the buzz starts functioning supported by continuous screenshots, videos and exclusive interviews in the specialized press.

Within the last couple of years, we saw a set of web applications all based around the same concept: social networks such as Facebook. These social networks are considered great marketing tools because in theory they allow campaign messages to reach a wider audience at no additional cost through viral marketing. The sole drawback is that the message is not under control and it generally ends with players changing the original message to something even better than originally said and therefore putting high expectations and hopes in the game.

That could actually be one of the reasons why players are always looking for a new game: they keep being disappointed for games that may be good games but do not fill their expectations.

Spore illustrates it perfectly. I was one of these players in 2005 totally amazed by the presentation Will Wright gave at the Games Developer Conference. It was breathless and I placed again all my hopes in this game developed by the man and studio that brought Sim City and the Sims. After this video, you could tell me anything about any other game, Spore was the game I was looking for with a promise of a real no ending game.

To understand my feeling at the time, I added the video I’m referring to (lookout as it is a 35 minutes long video):

But once Spore was released, bought and tested, I have to admit that I was part of the players who yelled at EA and Maxis for the lack of game play. With time, I can now see that I put too many expectations on Spore because of the communication of the game… I think that if I wasn’t hooked like I was by the GDC video and the buzz around the game, I would have bought Spore and found it quite fun even if the game has some issues.

Players confidence

The world is changing and even if the game industry is a young industry, this industry has been stuck into the same issues than the movie industry. The game industry represents so much money nowadays that publishers are all very scared into taking risks and trying something new. Therefore, there are less and less professional game development studios that are asked to put some new concepts in their games because publishers prefer betting in a 2nd, 3rd, 4th… 10th sequel of their license from which they know they’ll make good sales for sure only based on the name.

But it wasn’t counting with players becoming more and more experts and not being fooled more than once. Some players now totally reject some sequels because the sequel of the game wasn’t as good as the first one or didn’t brought anything else than the first game gave them.

At this stage, publishers and some game development studios lost the trust they got with their audience. And they will have some difficulties to get it back.

Trust is the basis on any relationship between two persons. If you don’t believe someone, why would you get something from them unless they really push it for you to purchase it? I personally think that publishers and game development studios have to get in closer relation with their customers not to sale them their games even more but rather showing them they do not live in an Ivory Tower and they are just like them: game fans and players.

Bringing some humanity in the relationship is a difficult thing but it’s not something impossible to do. I’ll take the example of Open Source projects. The developers behind these projects are sometimes managing indirectly thousands of contributors and users and the way they communicate with their audience should be taken as an example. They built a close enough relationship so that anyone can share their feedback and they are committed to take it into consideration! Not like an anonymous poll but rather through a constant presence on the community forums and answering their questions even if they are hard to answer.

Never push back your communication

With CITIES XL, to take an example I currently do know very well , we are going this way and it is sometimes very difficult to answer player questions because you would like to satisfy all of them… But that’s just not possible because they all have some different tastes and do not put their attention to same features. I kept myself close to one single rule: never lie them and never leave important questions unanswered even if the answer is “We don’t know yet”. We remind them quite often that we are a small studio and we cannot wait ages for the game to be developed. At some point, we have to decide which feature will make the game release and which ones won’t. They may be disappointed by such decisions but they are clever: they can understand why and how you prioritize your choices.

I do not consider myself as an expert in the game industry but by analyzing all the recent game releases and how players reacted, I think we can all take some good lessons and try to build a better future for our industry. Just listen to them, talk to them regularly and simply respect them and we should get into a Win/Win position: players get good games and the industry wins more money to reinvest in newer concepts and ideas by, for instance, investing in some very interesting projects born in independent games but that’s another story