Decline "Hollywood Trailer Syndrome" and Pre-Release Sperging.

[Azazel]

Recently I've looked around the internet, and at myself, and come to realize on of the most pressing reasons that I am not enjoying many games anymore: The sheer volume of information pushed out prior to release.

We're utterly bombarded with the details of every boss, level, item and mechanic over a year before a game releases now. Marketing teams lavish us with pre-release videos featuring how every sun ray is placed, how that AI thinks, what the motivations are behind that boss, etc. Hell, it's now standard for a month-long beta period for First Person Shooters.

What has this lead to? Entitlement and a level of toxicity in communities that makes Chernobyl look clean. We've got players screaming like petulant children on official forums because the devs *gasp* decided to not reveal every secret in the game before it's even out. These brats throw a temper tantrum if a week passes without a sufficient update. (I'm looking at you, Starbound players).

But really, this shit has taken the magic out of gaming for me. Over the past year I've noticed that the games I've enjoyed the most have been the ones that I have simply ignored right up to release day, or discovered some time afterwards. Think back to over a decade ago: you got a preview in a magazine, maybe a demo, and then checked out the box in the store to see if it sounded interesting. If you were lucky you read some reviews on your 56k connection. You didn't spend 6 months arguing about the balance of a weapon in a game you'd never even fucking played.

Try it out, step away from sperging over every tiny piece of useless minutiae dribbled out of the assholes in marketing and see if enjoyment and objectivity don't increase.

 

[someone else]

Codexers still read those stuff?

 

[Gurkog]

I have never liked to read spoiler bits about setting, characters, plot, etc..., but I do enjoy reading about the methods, individuals, inspirations, etc.. involved in making it.

 

[Echo Mirage]

For me at least it seems that there is a lot of information available but none of it was very useful in making an informed choice in what games to buy.

 

[Dr Tomo]

Well this has a lot to do with studios focusing on marketing roughly 6 months in advance as the one common them I have seen as "lessons learned" in dev interviews is the last minute marketing. This reasoning makes sense when we have titles being constantly pumped out every year and on top of the main stream users having memories of a gold fish and forgetting that they got burned with the pre order of Colonial Marines the year before.