Crafty marketing and how to see through it

[W8taminute]

Have you ever had buyers remorse after buying a video game you thought you really really wanted only to find out you were had?

You were deceived into thinking the game was going to be such and such an experience but it turned out to be something else?

This has happened to me quite a few times recently as well as over the years.  I've been buying video games since the late 1980's.  During all of those years I can honestly say that I can count on one hand the number of games that disappointed me because I was fooled.  That only applies up until the past 2 or 3 years however.  There have been more than 10 games I've bought recently that have been disappointments. 

I'm trying to figure out why the failure rate has increased in my gaming purchases given my stellar performance up until about 2019.  I pride myself on being able to discern whether I'll like a game or not but even with all my years of experience I've been hoodwinked quite too much recently.

I have my theories based on a case by case study of my failures but I don't want to share my findings yet until I have seen what others have to say.  If no one replies after 72 hours I'll go ahead and elaborate.   ;)

Curious to see if anyone else here has had similar experiences?

[SirAndrewD]

An oldie...

1944 Across the Rhine. 

Marketed as M1 Tank Platoon in WW2.....EXTENSIVELY marketed that way.

It was....not.  Not even in the same genre. 

One of the most disappointing purchases of a game I've ever made and still leaves a sour taste.

Back then there wasn't really a way to see through it except to wait for reviews, and I didn't.

[Gusington]

Great question! I suppose as I get older I get more disappointed more often...I'll have to think and come up with the worst disappointments.

[bobarossa]

Not disappointed in very many games I've purchased.  It's more disappointment in myself for buying a game I knew I wouldn't have time to play. 

However, two games in recent memory that have stood out as massive disappointments were Art of War 4 and Distant Worlds 2.  In both cases the time between releases somehow made me think there would be significant upgrades to the games in spite of what I was reading about the game.  It's like my brain refused to accept the data. 

AOW4 was more of an update to UI with minor improvements.  My brain simply couldn't accept that there were almost no new scenarios (at least they all looked familiar) and the UI simply didn't click with me. 

DW2 was a much bigger disappointment.  I'm not a graphics whore and the updated graphics was completely wasted on me.  I found the UI changes to be very annoying (popup messages that sometimes pause the game and sometimes don't).  I didn't see any significant changes to game play.  It was like "I played this game 10 years ago, why did I pay full price for this?"  Perhaps the length of time between game versions caused me to not appreciate the upgrades because I couldn't recall the old game very well.

In my case I think it was NOT paying attention to the marketing led me to expect significant changes that weren't there.

[jamus34]

There was a team based shooter on Steam that touted its parkour elements. Forget the name but I preordered it and it because the game that pretty much swore me off preorders. Not a terrible game but the single player was almost non existant and it was overhyped. Yeah it had parkour but the maps severely limited the usablility of this mechanic.

[steve58]

Not disappointed in very many games I've purchased.  It's more disappointment in myself for buying a game I knew I wouldn't have time to play. 

Same, I was going to post something similar earlier.  I've been trying to wait and buy them anyway...on the cheap.

There was a team based shooter on Steam that touted its parkour elements. Forget the name but I preordered it and it because the game that pretty much swore me off preorders. Not a terrible game but the single player was almost non existant and it was overhyped. Yeah it had parkour but the maps severely limited the usablility of this mechanic.

OK, had to look up "parkour"  :-[

[GDS_Starfury]

m1 tank platoon was shit but we all played the cd that came with pc gamer and bought it.

[al_infierno]

There was a team based shooter on Steam that touted its parkour elements. Forget the name but I preordered it and it because the game that pretty much swore me off preorders. Not a terrible game but the single player was almost non existant and it was overhyped. Yeah it had parkour but the maps severely limited the usablility of this mechanic.

Are you talking about Brink?  Or a more recent title?

[SirAndrewD]

Who can forget the original great deceptive marketing campaign?

I mean, it's not like you could market a crash to DOS screen and sell it...

[jamus34]

There was a team based shooter on Steam that touted its parkour elements. Forget the name but I preordered it and it because the game that pretty much swore me off preorders. Not a terrible game but the single player was almost non existant and it was overhyped. Yeah it had parkour but the maps severely limited the usablility of this mechanic.

Are you talking about Brink?  Or a more recent title?

That's the one. Probably the only game I've paid full preorder price for and got maybe an hour or two of playtime out of it.

[steve58]

Who can forget the original great deceptive marketing campaign?

I mean, it's not like you could market a crash to DOS screen and sell it...

Glad I passed on that one.  His name, who shall not be mentioned, lives on forever in the internet-sphere.

[Sigwolf]

The guy had some really great ideas... he was just really crap at implementing them.  If his ego would have allowed him to partner with some quality QC programmers, he could have released some amazing games. 

[SirAndrewD]

Glad I passed on that one.  His name, who shall not be mentioned, lives on forever in the internet-sphere.

I had the honor of being personally insulted several times by the not so good "Doctor" in the Great Flame War.

[W8taminute]

Lot's of good input there guys.

Back in the early days of gaming all you had was the gameplay description on the back of the box to go by.  Maybe, if you were lucky there would be a short magazine article around the same time a game would come out.  That's all you had to go by, unless you had a friend who bought the game and let you try it out.

Also back then because video gaming was new a good majority of games that came out were actually fun to play.  It was the novelty of playing games on screen that kind of reminded you of the board games you played.

Today however all the ideas have been beat to death so it's hard to come up with something new but not so alien that it's a turn off.  Although there are tons of YouTube gameplay and review videos for just about any game that comes out many of those reviewers are bought and paid for.  Motivated by getting views and boosting their channel.  Even guys that are trusted and genuine get bought out here and there in order to push a crap game. 

Take for example the recent release of Strategic Command ACW.  From what I'm hearing it's a good game.  But the vacant civil war games that have come out in the past few years that were really hyped up but turned out to be major disappointments put a bad taste in my mouth.  As a result an actual good game that gets newly released today may be automatically rejected by gamers because of the hoodwinking of previous titles. 

[CptHowdy]

i havent felt this personally but i think a lot people felt that way about No Mans Sky when it was first released