Video Games are Better Without the Hype

Sometimes you can appreciate games more the less you know about it.

[GeofferyPeterson]

Yeah, what ever happened to letting the gamers drum up the hype of a good game after it has been released?

[3-4-5]

Back in the 90's, for the most part, you heard about a game or saw a commercial & within 2-3 weeks you coul;d play that game.

You didn't get overhyped because you didn't even know it existed until there was an ad on tv or your friend had the game.

* You got to be like " omg I want this now!"
- But you COULD ACTUALLY have it almost "now".

All the waiting leaves room for talking yourself out of liking something or nitpicking and finding things "wrong" with a game that aren't really there.

* If I KNOW I'm going to like a game, then I get the minimal amount of info as possible and just wait until release day.

EX: When I bought my 3DS in 2012, I hadn't even known of Dragon Quest 9's existence.

I read about it, saw some screenshots, and bought it the next day and LOVED that game.

There wasn't time to pick it apart and second guess.

* With Dragon Quest 7 3DS, all this waiting might ending making the game seem not as good because I wanted to play it for so long.

You don't want hype to wear out it's welcome.

[Breakline]

Totally agreed. This approach can leave you in the dark on a few things, especially in online games, but it restores the wonder and thrill of seeing/feeling/playing that new game for the first time. It's a great feeling.

[christian hour]

Totally agree'd, games would come out a few weeks after youve heard about em sometimes,(though when you're a kid in the 90's, those weeks can seem like months when you have no true concept of time or age) ESPECIALLY if you weren't picking up monthly gaming magazines or trying to find what tidbits you could on fan sites in the crazy wild world that was the internet in the late 90's.

I remember spending 4 hours on dial up trying to view a horrible 320p video for Final Fantasy 8, only got to buffer 10 seconds of it but to me that was amazing. To my parents and the phone bill they had to pay... noooot so much :)

I used to get myself into hesterics waiting for games. Especially in the late 90's early 00's when it could be months to a year before you'd hear anything about a game.

I'm pretty sure I went through 3-4 years of secondary level education while waiting for Snake Eater, nearly tore my hair out. And those 18 minute long E3 trailers theyd show off every year (I'd get them in game magazine discs cos internet sucked back then, 56k was the standard in europe :P) killed me.

Or the previous months issue teasing that next month you'd get a trailer for a game you hadnt seen anythign of in 2 years, and then waiting in suspense every day, checking your local newsagents, just in case it came in early. HELL!

I think after Final Fantasy XII I officially stopped getting on the hype train for games and just decided to stick to watching a trailer once then occupying myself with life until it releases, these days I focus my time more on happenings in the industry and the development side of things.

Oh, actually I lied, I was off the hype train for games until I seen No Mans Sky. It brought it all back, the giddy kid inside me just couldnt shut up once it got wind of that game. I literally watch No Mans Sky trailers almost every day.

*edit*

I just remembered the wait for halo 2 as well. God damn. That e3 reveal trailer (that was nothing liek the finished product) is still fresh in my mind, I can remember the first time I heard the audience cheer when he took out that second bullet hose, or when he started sprinting (a feature that never made it in to the series until halo 4).

[theshredded]

yeah,bought Dark Souls and Far Cry 3 blindly and they ended up being some of my favorite games

[kewlkat007]

Question: So who really creates the HYPE?

-Devs talking about thier games very early..

-Game site say this is the next coming...

-Fanboys saying ooohhh..ahhhh at every article with the slightest soundbite, till the game is out...

It's all a cycle..

[christian hour]

Yup it's a bit of everything, after a while you kind of notice the patterns and learn how to sift through the bullshit to find the credible stuff, and then come release day should be mature and independant enough to make your own impression of the game seperate from all the hype and build up you've witnessed in the upcoming months.

Halo 2 is the first game I can remember really having a massively huge ad campaign and hype train, cumulating with the ILB ARG.

And for 10 years since, every Tom, Dick and Haribo has been trying to emulate the marketing campaign, to the point where you can get presently surprised when a studio like Rocksteady decides to wait at least a year before their games release until showing off their new game (arkham knight for the uninformed)

That was so refreshing for me, and I commend Rocksteady for being so careful and passionate about their game, its a much better tactic than the usual 2 years build up for 1 weeks worth of on off gaming come release, and hopefully we start to see this trend becoming more popular.

[Macdaddy71]

Oh no they can't let a game sell it self, they can't claim a game cost 3 million to make if they don't spend 1.5 million on ads!!!! So they can make the game cost more then it really did

[christian hour]

Yeah it's kinda scary when you see the budget of the physical game next to the budget of the marketing campaign. Didn't they know people advertise your stuff for free on the internet now? :P

[SteamPowered]

Social media pretty much took the fun out of everything nowadays. We are just learning the price of instant knowledge.
Its like knowing what your going to get for Christmas in July.

[christian hour]

Nice and concise and right on point, and really hammers home what everyone is trying to say in here. Bubbles to you, good sir!

[cfc78]

Totally agree by the time Watchdogs was about to release i'd seen so much of the game i cancelled my pre order,the days of checking games out in a mag were much better in my opinion these days you've seen half the game before you buy it.

[ColonelRex]

Its the internet. The internet is the thing that keep pushing hype. Without it, we would be relying on word of mouth, magazines, tv ads and box art. Those things would be the determining factors about which game we buy. Remember the 1980s?

[LAWSON72]

I have not got hyped for a game since Halo 4 and Borderlands 2. One of things that made GTAV, DkS2 and Ni No Kuni great was going in blind without any knowledge other than knowing I am in for an awesome ride. It also one of the reasons I like indies they get far less press so it is much easier to avoid details.

[HeavenlySnipes]

If your game is as good as its advertised there is nothing to worry about

Arkham City lived up to the hype
Bioshock Infinite lived up to the hype
Skyrim lived up to the hype
The Last of Use lived up to the hype
GTAV (for the most part) lived up to the hype

[christian hour]

Bioshock 1*

I didn't buy in to the Infinite hype (because Bioshock 2 was a shambles) and I was still unimpressed. A good game with a great story but if I hadn't played Bioshock 1 before it, maybe my opinion would be a little different on it. Sorry I don't mean to slam my opinion down like that, I just love saying how much I loved bioshock 1, I'm dumb like that sometimes so pay me no mind.

But you are absolutely right, if your game is as good as advertised, there is nothing to worry about. Every game you listed above are great modern examples of that, I even still play skyrim now and again to this day :)

[PaleMoonDeath]

Very, very true, quite a few very good games were somehwat spoiled for me due to people ranting about them, then again the internet doesn't do itself any favours either.

Probably why we appreciated games more back in the late 90's/early 00's, once a month OPM or Nintendo mag would keep you interested.

Man I sound like an old git.

[christian hour]

Better an old git than a young whipper snapper, with their grunge pop and air macs and their internet trolling, where do they get off!?

[kantenkopf]

Video games are better without gaming consoles!

[PaleMoonDeath]

Gaming was given life by consoles kiddo.

[kantenkopf]

I feel the peasantry rise. Actually, gaming was given life by universities.

The first games ever created were created on the computer and it was checkers, but it were more tries than real games. The first real game was Tennis for Two in 1958 by William Higinbotham and guess what it was programmed on? On an analog computer connected to an oscilloscope. The first "console" or better arcade games were invented in the 1970s and the game you consider as "first game ever" called "Pong" is nothing more than a Tennis for Two rip-off.

Do your research first before posting. You call me kiddo but you don't know nothing about video games at all.

May our lord GabeN have mercy on your soul.