Civil War Man wrote:On the topic of this, I think it's rather interesting that video games are fairly unique when it comes to what happens when a major release flops. It's one of the few forms of entertainment where I regularly see people blame the fans for not liking it.
There's actually MANY factors that contribute to this and I could rant for pages, but I'll stick with what I believe is the biggest factor: The movie going public doesn't have a boogeyman on tap to dump blame off to. The only example I can think of off-hand would be the blowback against idiots for hating Ghostbusters for having women. But, at least not that I've seen, no one is blaming them for the weak showing of the movie because Hollywood has a crazy amount of tracking built into the system to show who watched a movie and why.
It's like how Mad Max might be a victory for Feminism, but it's mostly popular among older men. All it really showed is men will watch whoever if there's enough explosions and chase scenes. Video games don't have that for numerous reasons. One being the increase in digital sales. So, the only real way to track the buzz a game is actually getting is through pre-orders. So... it's not wonder those are the emphasis for everything. The other is that the publishers control all the data, unlike movie theatres selling tickets, retailers selling DVDs, and iTunes tracking your everything.
So, things go wrong. Your game tanked, people hate it. No one really knows why it tanked. You want to pass off blame, but you don't want to offend women or minorities. You could take a wide swing at white males, but they are your biggest purchasing base. So, what they fuck do you do?
Blame (for the purpose of this thread) fatnerds: those older and younger poopsocking losers everyone used to beat up in high school (because stereotypes are fine when they target people you don't like) who somehow tanked THE ENTIRE THING because they hate everything, yet they are pretty much defined by NOT buying these games.
These fatnerds DO exist and in large numbers (oh and a lot of them actually AREN'T from the US). However, they do not have anything but INTERNET RAGE as their power and, since they don't spend any real money, are effective scapegoats as there's no downside to alienating them.
Vendetta wrote:The reason is that I am not ignorant about how game development works.
I know, right? It's like how all games are developed the exact same way... even though they aren't.
The idea for Left 4 Dead started out because some doods at valve were playing a game of Counter-Strike against bots armed only with knives. They couldn't exactly cut content for such a simple concept, HOWEVER: originally, there was some hype around the ability to join
anyone's game as a special infected (I guess like Dark Souls) and fuck them up. In interview, it was stated this feature completely changed the make-up of the game and wasn't fun. So, it was cut and Versus was added. This was all before the actual release of the game because valve keeps their hyped up customers informed of all things, not just what will sell units.
Some people were all upset they couldn't troll the average player's game. No one else cared.
Further, valve and Blizzard (proper) break from the mold because they don't set budgets. They give as much money and other assets to a project as it needs to get it done right. This is a big development difference between other developers (EA, Ubi) and has caused more than a little friction between Activision/Vivendi since their merger. It doesn't always have a happy ending, such as with Titan. But they're laughing all the way to the bank making money out of garbage with Overwatch.
When those first videos of Witcher 3 came out they predicted a level of graphical detail that couldn't be sustained when they decided to make it an open world game, so it changed. CD Projekt weren't "dishonest" showing those videos, they just changed something else in the design that made them wrong.
Me a page ago wrote:CDP released insane Screenshots for Witcher 3. Said that the hardware was available to run it (it actually was, just WAY out there). Then the graphics downgrade came. They were up front about it and released more screenshots and more gameplay. Game still looked great, just not as great.
Normal people got on with their lives.
Fatnerds (and likely Beth fans) went ballistic.
Don't lump CDP in with Hello Games. Those guys ate their crow, even though they shouldn't have had to, and released the game they promoted. Had CDP instead swept everything under the rug and quietly released the game downgraded, using those original screenshots/videos up until release: yes, people would have every reason to be pissed.
You keep acting like people are saying "games in development never change!" which no one is saying. What I am saying is that NMS stands out because when shit started getting the axe, we weren't made privy to that. We got the kid's gloves of the development process. You keep saying this is standard practice when it most certainly is not. And to use CDP/Witcher 3 as an example to support your argument is disingenuous at best: those guys are way more classy than Hello Games. They wanted to keep their players in the loop: they kept them in the loop on whatever they could, even what they knew "fatnerds" would get mad about.
But they also had enough faith, rightfully, in their potential consumer base to still inform us about the downgrade. And hey look, Witcher 3 didn't turn into a shitshow.