I never said an established character.
Also a lot of people have posted examples like Dark Souls 2 where the entire look of the game was gutted, it wasn't just going from ultra-high fidelity to high. Why not address those?
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Downgrade Controversies Are Toxic and We Should Take Care To Avoid Feeding Into Them In The Future
- Thread starter Crossing Eden
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I never said an established character.
Also a lot of people have posted examples like Dark Souls 2 where the entire look of the game was gutted, it wasn't just going from ultra-high fidelity to high. Why not address those?
A good post followed by a bad post
Your analogy still sucks because in this case it would definitely be a case of deceptive bait-and-switch and not "well shit, this feature/graphics is not running correctly, we gotta cut corners and/or optimize" reality of game development
What if the devs are still using those cut features to advertise their game?
Sorry I just can't agree at all with the notion that this stuff is always justified and we gotta be understanding and supportive 100% of the time because shit happens during development.
I would agree that completely cut features, that were used for marketing, is a very bad look.
But complaining about graphics downgrades is different and the whole character re-design thing is not comparable
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The difference in quality between these posts is sending me, but also perfectly indicative of why this thread exists in the first place, and why we can do so much better than using the logic taught to us by angry YouTube gamer#263636168
There was actually a very long thread at the old place breaking down how your post isn't true but ok.
You know most of the changes made to the rainbow six game were game design related since it was made with esports in mind. So things like blinding police lights and such on top of making 60fps and the destruction system a priority.
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Yes I already said it was a bad analogy.
Just answer me if you believe devs or publishers intentionally using features they're not sure whether they'll be able to deliver to advertise their game and take money in advance is ok to you.
It's a simple yes or no question. Are you ok with the practice?
As a (not video game) programmer who is also a consumer, I fully understand what it's like to have to make late design choices and backtrack. Still doesn't make it ok. When this happens, we communicate this upfront to our clients, make concessions, renegotiate terms, etc. No amount of double quotes around "lie" or what the developer's best intentions were makes it ok to produce something different from what was advertised without explicitly addressing it.
I suppose there's room for subjectivity on the severity of the change. Does puddle quality matter? What if the clouds are a bit more aliased? And that's down to each individual consumer, I suppose. There is some amount of, "just don't buy it, tbh" for the people getting up in arms for small things, but we all define small differently as well.
I suppose there's room for subjectivity on the severity of the change. Does puddle quality matter? What if the clouds are a bit more aliased? And that's down to each individual consumer, I suppose. There is some amount of, "just don't buy it, tbh" for the people getting up in arms for small things, but we all define small differently as well.
There are definitely some cases where it leads to hyperbole reaction (puddlegate), but some are deserved to be criticized, especially if it comes from AAA company. If there's a company that can afford better communication with customers, that's them. The death threat is wrong though, that is given.
Oh right, I think DS2 has a significant graphic downgrade to the point it affects gameplay, that one should be criticized a lot more since there's no indication it got changed a lot in the launch trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qByFob7-8VY&t=43s&ab_channel=GameSpot (also a really bizarre launch trailer, like wtf is this shit)
Yeah, that's not true. People absolutely criticized the shit out of CBP missing feature, they also overhype the shit out of the game, making people much more aware of the missing feature. I do think the backlash has a positive correlation with the hype. The bigger the hype, the bigger the backlash.
Oh right, I think DS2 has a significant graphic downgrade to the point it affects gameplay, that one should be criticized a lot more since there's no indication it got changed a lot in the launch trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qByFob7-8VY&t=43s&ab_channel=GameSpot (also a really bizarre launch trailer, like wtf is this shit)
Yeah, that's not true. People absolutely criticized the shit out of CBP missing feature, they also overhype the shit out of the game, making people much more aware of the missing feature. I do think the backlash has a positive correlation with the hype. The bigger the hype, the bigger the backlash.
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Whenever you're making a hugely ambitious game or even a game at all there's always some things that aren't set in stone completely years before the game is complete. And it's not entirely misleading to talk about those things while they're still in the development stage. Most games don't go through changes as drastic as your suggesting, hence, the thread being very specifically about graphical "downgrades"
Sure, a hugely ambitious game takes a lot of work and some things aren't set in stone, but its not the consumers problem for believing what's being shown is what they'll get. That's on the developer for not delivering.
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But say, early results for years are promising but then something has to give and you have to get your game running as well as possible? Or a snag makes things hard to accomplish. Or the tools being built alongside the game itself makes them way more troublesome. If the end result however, is still an ambitious game that isn't AS ambitious as promised that's like, ok, nothing to create 40 threads over a downgrade because "hey this room looks different." And at the end of the day,
The developer not delivering still means that deception wasn't the overall goal in the vast majority of cases.
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Comparing the first "gameplay trailer" and the final game when it came out, its still a graphical downgrade.
There are devs/pubs that actually do it well and say "Game still in development - Not indicative of the final product." And then there are pubs doing these trailers as marketing stunts. "Gameplay Demo". "In-Engine Trailer!" etc.
Its still all on the developer though. Sure 40 threads over an issue is probably taking it too seriously, but in the end its still not the consumers problem the the final product is not what was originally shown.
Wasn't the goal but it was the result. If you can show me a publisher that pulled those marketing schemes but didn't take pre-orders then I'd agree with you. But this isn't that kind of relationship, they're not showing off cool stuff for the heck of it, they're selling something and people are making financial decisions with consequence (70 bucks is not nothing) based on the stuff being showed.
So yeah, even without deception as the intent and even if I do feel empathy for how hard this all is, I still fail to see how this is the public's problem and not something which creates justified backlash and is on the publisher's court to solve and not on the consumer's to overlook.
It's like conspiracy theorists. Toxic people who will always complain that evil developers lied to them.
It sort of feels like a number of people conflate together different arguments. I.e. when one says "the developers 99% of the time do not intend a demo to be deceiving" the retort is "oh so it is ok when people buy expecting one thing and get another one?".
No, it's not ok.
But that's also beside the point in this particular conversation.
After all we're supposedly trying to discuss:
1. Why this happens and that the people are in their rights to criticize developers/publishers for not receiving what was advertised
2. How with that in mind there's a difference between that kind of criticism and the toxic way people express themselves regarding the devs ("LIARS, DOWNGRADE", etc.) which is what's being pointed out as unhealthy
3. The complex matter of why such situations appear in the first place
4. Not to mention how difficult it is for devs to be transparent because proper transparency is often being misconstrued as poor game quality (even though it's FINE at that stage of development) which loops back to point #1.
I should reword--not an established character as in from an existing franchise, but an established character as in one that has been repeatedly shown off in trailers with a specific design.
I'm not sure if "Why not address those?" is aimed at me or OP, but your post wasn't about Dark Souls 2 or graphical downgrades. Your post was about radically changing a character's design after repeatedly showing off. (Looking at your posts a little after this response, it seems you've taken back the comparison, which I think is a good thing lol. I wrote this bit before you posted them but got sidetracked, just fyi.)
That being said, the OP specifically did address Dark Souls 2, too, on the very first page of this topic. And the second. In a specific response to you, no less. They also addressed that there's a difference between generalized downgrades and blatant lying about the content of a game.
Additionally, from what I'm reading, people aren't saying "this stuff is always justified and we gotta be understanding and supportive 100% of the time." They're saying that maybe it's unhealthy that when we criticize something we dislike, a lot of the times, our instinct is immediate max-level fury.
If everything is at anger level 10 out of 10, if we resort to death threats over puddles or lighting or AI being tweaked, what are we supposed to do about actual major problems, firebomb a dev's office? (Dear god, nobody do that. That's an exaggerated statement to illustrate what I mean. JFC.)
They're saying that it's not as simple as "this is always justified, support the devs no matter what"; there are a million different elements that are involved in game dev, and oftentimes gamers try to boil it down to simple arguments like "the game devs lied" when there's way more to it than that.
I appreciate this response, however some of those are really non responses that don't really answer the questions rather than deflect them, hence my asking some more.
But yeah I'll drop it altogether.
The well of discourse has been poisoned over decades of corporate/executive strategies that deliberately fed into and encouraged exactly this kind of consumer behavior and interaction; everyone was stoking the fire hoping to create a rabidly loyal fanbase that would attack competitors and protect themselves. I don't begrudge developers for the incredibly awkward position they find themselves in as a result, shit sucks.
B2B marketing for tech/software products in development can be hard enough as is with shifting production schedules and variable levels of project management quality. And that's your rational, personal relationship based marketing strategy; you still have these same issues crop up even though everyone is being paid to understand and solve them on both sides.
Now imagine doing the same thing B2C where the entire strategy is fundamentally about encouraging an emotional, irrational purchasing decision from the general public. You cannot expect to simultaneously be able to sell your future product and educate the consumer base about the realities of tech/software product development, especially when the C-Suite strategy the last 20/30 years has been to pretend those issues don't exist and it's all magic.
There's a reason most industries (and most software companies), don't market to consumers this way because it normally causes more problems than it solves.
B2B marketing for tech/software products in development can be hard enough as is with shifting production schedules and variable levels of project management quality. And that's your rational, personal relationship based marketing strategy; you still have these same issues crop up even though everyone is being paid to understand and solve them on both sides.
Now imagine doing the same thing B2C where the entire strategy is fundamentally about encouraging an emotional, irrational purchasing decision from the general public. You cannot expect to simultaneously be able to sell your future product and educate the consumer base about the realities of tech/software product development, especially when the C-Suite strategy the last 20/30 years has been to pretend those issues don't exist and it's all magic.
There's a reason most industries (and most software companies), don't market to consumers this way because it normally causes more problems than it solves.
Idk why people decry people's "entitlement" when it comes to video games. Like, no shit, people bought a thing based on marketing that turned out to be false. If the customer has no recourse other than to complain, how is it wrong for them to complain?
I don't think it matters, in the end, what the intent was behind the misleading marketing materials. If someone purchased the game (or preordered it) based on not-final-content that was later altered or removed, it's fair game to complain about it. Should people be smarter with their cash? Sure. Maybe the same way the other side of the equation should be smarter when communicating their incomplete product before people buy it.
Toxicity and death threats always suck ass and should never happen, but their existence does not, to me, mean anyone with legitimate complaints should hesitate to voice them. Legitimate complaints do not equate to toxicity, even when the volume of them is high.
I don't think it matters, in the end, what the intent was behind the misleading marketing materials. If someone purchased the game (or preordered it) based on not-final-content that was later altered or removed, it's fair game to complain about it. Should people be smarter with their cash? Sure. Maybe the same way the other side of the equation should be smarter when communicating their incomplete product before people buy it.
Toxicity and death threats always suck ass and should never happen, but their existence does not, to me, mean anyone with legitimate complaints should hesitate to voice them. Legitimate complaints do not equate to toxicity, even when the volume of them is high.
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What is originally shown may change overtime as what's already shown is already the result of iteration.
Pre-orders go up the second a game is announced these days so even if nothing is shown at all beyond a CG trailer more often than not you can still just straight up pre-order the game regardless.
And that's part of the problem. Preorder culture is a tumor on the gaming industry.
If the AAA industry wants to reserve the right to change their products from what is marketed without being honest and transparent about it and not being criticised for it, they're welcome to do so - if they stop taking preorders.
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The gaming community should really come to terms with the idea that game development isn't that level of easy and that there's way more nuance than "we'll just be transparent." One such nuance being that the community historically, especially as game visuals got better, don't respond well to WIP. If we say, got footage of Horizon Forbidden West during the stage it looked like the very original debut demo of the first game, and not a curated demo, people would've flipped their shit and after that you'd have "wait doesn't this game look worse than the first one?" In every thread up to release.
Idk why it's so crazy to suggest that maybe the industry has created this problem for itself because of its practices. Maybe the gaming industry and people in it need to come to terms with customers criticizing what they see as false advertising because of how the industry works rather than expect customers to stop acting in their own interest. (Disclaimer: no one should ever accept actual toxic behavior or threats.)
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It really feels like you're arguing a catch-22 here.
"Companies can't be more honest about their product, because community behavior is too toxic about WIP"
therefore
"Community behavior must be less toxic about perceived downgrades from demo to release"
There's kind of an obvious circular logic in what you're trying to ask for.
I dunno man, if you show an intentional lie (e.g. footage that you know isn't going to be reflective of the final product), promise a bunch of features that aren't going to be in the game and then take preorders well in advance and then piss about with very very late review embargoes, you kind of deserve the negative response you might get if people feel you misadvertised a product.
The biggest problem is definitely how precious and weird pubs are about talking about and showing the process. There's not really a true video game equivalent of like, set coverage for movies and we are not yet at the point where everyone makes or knows someone who made a game in high school like they do ppl in a band. There are documentaries and stuff of course but the ugly stuff is almost never on the record and the reaction showings like this get from people who do not know shit are the one reason why pubs are somewhat right to be so secretive.
A world without preorders, as a blanket policy, would absolutely destroy the last shreds of interesting things about big budget games
idk, I think it's less circular logic and more that it's a difficult situation that needs changes on both sides. The industry needs to be more transparent once a product is revealed, but also, the community could rely less on exaggerated anger. That's not really circular logic imo
I agree that the spiderman puddle gate controversy was bullshit. The game still looked great. A great example of graphics downgrade was when watchdogs was unveiled and the game looked so next gen. Then the actual game came out and it looked nothing like the trailer.
Although I don't necessary agree with some points of your original topic, I do agree on the point of the community not responding well to WIP. I want to give another example that was shown which was God of War Ragnorak. For some people, they think the game looks too much like the first one and not even that much improved even though it was still very much being developed.
Also a lot of people complain about cross-gen development like Horizon, God of War or Gran Turismo 7 and how it is limiting their potential by not using the full ps5. When in reality, they barely scratch the surface on what exactly they can improve on the original consoles because it takes years to develop all those assets and if they threw those away every time a new generation starts, we are going to wait fking forever for those games.
I never really cared too much about that controversy but looking at the comparisons, the puddle being gone was the more obvious change from the original demo as the puddles had more lighting bouncing off of it. The one I didn't original notice was how flat Spidey looks in that new picture in comparison to the original demo. IT doesn't matter because the game is out and it looks great especially with the next gen upgrade but still, I do understand the complaints. I don't think it really need the response it got.
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So we just got another DS remake thread where people were calling unfinished animations shit and uh...that tells you everything you need to know. Read various threads on the internet about WIP slices of games and that tells you so much you need to know about how showing how the sausage is made, outside of dev diaries, GDC, etc. can do more harm than good. There's nothing weird about it because the gaming community in particular, compared to other mainstream mediums, is particularly hostile to seeing how the sausage is made. Hell I remember a thread on twitter where game devs revealed some of their design tricks and some of them got harassed enough to literally be motivated to lock their accounts. It honestly makes zero fucking sense in particular. Or it wouldn't, if you didn't ignore that a large chunk of people were raised on a diet of angry gamer youtubers and to put it into perspective this is quite literally the only gaming community that forbids the casual use of lazy dev rhetoric. There is at the very least a slight perception from a large chunk of the gaming community that developers are the literal enemy. Which has overlap with the mindset that game journalists are the enemy.
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Biggest may not have been the word. "Root" probably works better - there was so little appreciation for the artifice for so long from both publishers and media that folks still want to see games as something that Consumer Reports would review. Angry gamer influencers with giant clickbait headlines across posed faces are, in hindsight, of course where that road would lead.
A staggering amount of games sales, for like $60-$70 USD games, are front-loaded. Preorders are solid data for how your title is going the perform for a while. Without data to make those bets, those budgets are going to go to like another team to churn out content for a F2P game or smaller projects.
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And you'd bet your ass that someone with the name "Angry" in their name literally has zero interest in learning anything about how games are made, let alone encouraging their audience to learn or get more informed even on a surface level. That doesn't drive clicks. Now calling the people working on video games lazy, that drives clicks.
I think that's ridiculous, but let's entertain the idea for a second- then the industry needs to give people proper consumer protection. I buy TES IV Oblivion based on the really advanced AI that was shown off during E3, I should be able to get a refund on the game if I preorder it (or buy it on release day) and it turns out that the AI got toned down a lot, even if the developers had good reasons for it.
But we know that the AAA industry doesn't want that either, because god forbid their game doesn't live up to what was promised or is buggy on release, and then people are going to refund it in droves. The AAA industry wants to have its cake and eat it too.
If the answer to proposed solutions for honest marketing or consumer protection, like we have in any other market, is "the industry isn't able to operate like that", then the logical conclusion is that the way the industry operates is fundamentally broken and needs to be changed.
If a publisher doesn't have faith in their own products, that's not really a consumer problem.
And if it isn't clear from my post, I'm all for disrupting the mainstream gaming industry, forcing them to operate like most other product industries and finding ways to make successful games under stricter regulations. I'd even say that it's long overdue.
I don't agree with the OP. Of course threats and this stuff should go away. But there's plenty of reasons to be concerned for a downgrade.
I understand that some people don't care about graphics, well, some of us do. And to me that's exactly false advertising. They (publishers, not developers) sell you a game that sometimes is not what you get in the end.
I don't know whose fault is that, but in the end that's simply wrong
That's simply not true. There's reason to be angry for the crossgen stuff. What's the reason of owning a PS5 if they keep doing the same games as their ps4 versions in the first place?
The only reason they do it is because publishers still see more money on last gen versions + a quick up-port to next gen that a full next gen developed version.
TL;DR: what's important is the way the complain is done. There's no space for angry rants and stupid threats to developers, but we should be able to complain if we see things are not like promised imo.
I understand that some people don't care about graphics, well, some of us do. And to me that's exactly false advertising. They (publishers, not developers) sell you a game that sometimes is not what you get in the end.
I don't know whose fault is that, but in the end that's simply wrong
That's simply not true. There's reason to be angry for the crossgen stuff. What's the reason of owning a PS5 if they keep doing the same games as their ps4 versions in the first place?
The only reason they do it is because publishers still see more money on last gen versions + a quick up-port to next gen that a full next gen developed version.
TL;DR: what's important is the way the complain is done. There's no space for angry rants and stupid threats to developers, but we should be able to complain if we see things are not like promised imo.
Well as you said in your first point, you do care about graphics and that's what cross gen PS5 games can offer with better resolutions, frame rates and graphical effects.
Regarding your second point, developers still want to make use of assets that they made during the ps4 generation because they still haven't use them to their fullest potential.Thing is with every new generation, they are more limited by time than they are by power. To make a full next gen game, it will prob going to take prob more than 5 years to make a game to take advantage on ps5. By using what assets they made during the ps4 generation, they can speed up development and make it available to a wide group of people.
Well, that's exactly my point. Yeah, they look better of course, but that's what a crossgen title does: being developed for last gent and it runs better on new consoles without much hussle or changes. With that mentality we would be running super nes games at better resolution and effects an call it a day.
About the assets.. it's been years since developers first do a very highpoly asset and then reduce it to fit their needs. Do you really thing Kratos in the new GOW has been redone from zero?? To make it fit in ps4 and not in ps5 only is a comercial decision not a technical one.