Overhyping and other things that can kill video games

Making something look greater than it is seems to be a common human thing, we want it to be greater than what it looks like, the video game industry has gone through some very interesting PR disasters but making X, Y, Z video game look like the greatest ever (it may well be a great video game) but in the long run there is something either moving into the wrong direction or simply not working as it was promoted, this goes beyond Kickstarter Campaigns that got funded and the final item was not delivered or if it was the product is not to par (Mighty No. 9), this is about video games being killed through bad publishing just because the company wants to make a profit on it, video games can look crude and have a great story/mechanics (and possibly vice versa or mix and match any way you can imagine) that will make it work out (Hotline Miami) to the point a fanatical player base will come out of it, probably the most dangerous type of fan base available, with a fanatical player base comes the risk of high expectations and a potential disaster when what they want is not delivered. We are also not including into this matter the toxicity of a player base (thinking about the Battlefield and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare X franchises but not being reserved only to FPS).

The problem with delivering something that is not what the players want is not always related to the developers, in most cases it has nothing to do with them, there is money involved, there are people with little to no understanding on the matter that wish to capitalize, there are sales, PR, investors, management, people outside of the direct development cycle that can make some really bad decisions as there is a speculation on what is potentially “best for players” or “this is what they really want”. This line of thought can kill a games, franchises and companies.

Spore was a highly hyped game that ended up not living to expectations, it was something alright but not what we had been sold on; Fable was a game that through word of mouth I got to try out and people overexaggerated the whole thing (but thinking about it this is also the fault of Peter Molineux who is known for doing this more often than not); SimCity (the last one to come out through Maxis) pretty much crashed and burned since day one with players being unable to join the game (some time later between a couple of friends we tried the game and found it so lacking that we dropped the case in maybe a month or two at the most); Star Wars Battlefront 2 died because of micro-transactions, period, greed will not get you far when you make it too obvious; Age of Conan did not accomplish what it was set to do (kill World of Warcraft); John Romero was going to make us his bitch with Daikatana and look where that went, good night sweet prince; Duke Nukem Forever took fifteen years to finally show up in a time where it was no longer relevant after going through so many hands and losing total focus on whatever it should have delivered.

Are games entertainment, technology or art?

This is derived from a work we read in class once about History, is History Art or Science? While this is highly debatable, and we never truly reached an agreement on what exactly History in the 21st century is it inspired me to write about the current state of video games, what are they, entertainment and a time drainer, a great experiment on pushing and testing technology to the breaking point (and there are plenty of examples here) or is it art, a new field in which we can express ourselves without limit?

Games as Entertainment for Generations:

It is true that games are entertainment but they can be informative and educational while keeping us hooked, the earliest memory I have of such a game would be Super Solvers Math Adventure in which I had to learn how to do proper math in order to progress through the game, truth be told I learned and enjoyed the game, Oregon Trail is another good example but I only found it later during my adult life and I can understand why those who played have fond memories of it (also why the dysentery part). On the other hand we can find games that will suck us in for days, weeks or months, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and Commander Keen where some of the earliest examples I can think of which I would play at computer lab back in 1994, our professor was a hell of a cool guy to have those games installed but on the other hand putting us through such an experience during 2nd grade really made an impact on me, even today when I play the original Doom or Doom II back I still feel anxious when opening doors or going through dark areas, this effect has lasted for more than 24 years!

I could keep dropping names here, everything from the original NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, N64, PlayStation, XBOX and PC throughout the 90s and 2000s, some I am not as fond of and I could care less about such as most Nintendo games, my nostalgia has not driven me back that hard so that I want to play those games, I would probably enjoy them no doubt as Nintendo had some quality stuff back in the day but not enough to drive me back to either find the console and the original games or get an emulator to play them again. Entertainment, in my opinion, is something that sucks your time, gives you fond memories, makes you return for more and even years later you find yourself sitting back on your favorite chair and giving it a try, even passing it on to future generations,

Games as the Technology pusher:

Some games have really pushed technology to evolve rapidly to keep up with demand, hardware can hardly cope with the ever-growing needs of software, while this could be blamed on bad programming practices or bloated code this can also be blamed on ambition to provide a better product (and this is valid). Notable examples that come to mind would be Doom III (the specs back in the day shocked us, the video and RAM requirements demanded a monster of a machine which if curiosity strikes the mind was a single core Pentium 4 1.5GHz processor, between 256 to 512MB of RAM and a video card with 64MB of RAM). The next big jump came in the form of Crysis, even today it's still a joke between gamers to say, "but can it run Crysis?" to which most modern systems should say yes, yes I can run it, but, back in the day the question on everyone's head was "who has 2GB of RAM on their machine, a dual-core? Wow, you need a video card with 512MB of RAM, what?". These specs required you not only to upgrade your hardware but, in most cases, it was also demanding that you upgraded your operating system (when Crysis era the migration to Windows Vista had started after having Windows XP in the wild for some 6 or 7 years, this was a weird time thinking about it). Personally, I have never changed computers to play games of the current generation, I wait a couple of years to get some cheap hardware and pump it up as high as I can to get the most out of it, be it desktop or laptop, as I don't feel the need to change computers or upgrade every year, better do it every three to five years.

Games as a method of expression and possibly the ultimate type of Art:

Video games have pushed technology so that they can push something new (or at least that's what I would like to think) to us, better storytelling, quality cutscenes, from linear to multiple endings/options (which have shown great results such as Chrono Trigger and horrendous backlash such as Mass Effect 3), presenting worlds that at one point could have only been shown in a table-top environment (Dungeons and Dragons or Shadowrun), but reality also tells us that great visuals and music that brings us deep down into this world through the avatar designated by the developers will not always result in a great experience, throwing more money at it does not always fix the issue, sometimes it's a matter of taste, a strong player base and reaching expectations (which is not always the case, you can't satisfy everyone but checking the opinion/commentary of your player base through social media could, potentially, maybe, save your product from falling through the cracks and end up unnoticed).

Video games have been part of my life since my very early years, for whatever reason my dad had an Atari with a printer, I remember this because I at one point remember bringing some type of homework or piece to school when I was in elementary, this was way back in 1993 probably.