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Publishers need to stop announcing games that are still years away from launch, gamers agree
(www.gamingbible.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2023
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It mostly already has. Tons of big games this year were announced only several months before they released or intended to release, which is a huge bucking of the normal trends.
Which is why this article is kind of pointless.
Personally, I'd prefer it if the game industry was similarly as open as the movie industry, where you can easily find what they're making every step of the way, even if it gets cancelled.
Agreed and I think this greatly highlights what the actual issue is. Publishers will often announce these games years in advance, provide very little insight into what's actually being worked on, then deliver a product that may or (often) may not meet the expectations they've set for the game.
I really like the idea of transparency similar to the film industry where there's often interviews on site with relations to the film's production. I know some developers and publishers will have a blog dedicated to game updates, but that's just not as engaging to me as an actual interview with developer or individual(s) actively working on the game. At least then we could form our own opinion of a game's development state instead of taking the publishers word at face value and being let down in 5 years when the expectations set aren't met once again.
PR in a AAA company will always limit who can be interviewed. So you would still get a heavily filtered interview.
But if I was working on something and had a detailed vision of what the final product was going to be. I'd kind of resent and hate having to share that vision once a month and have fans complain about each idea and demand other options, features, redesigns of gameplay.
It would be even worse it a producer read those comments and required those changes. It would be disruptive and chaotic.
A good example of how fans of Marvel and DC Comics react to the decisions made behind the camera.
It would feel like most people hate my vision and don't want to play it. There are already hard designs decisions happening behind the scenes with the team and even that small group won't agree on everything.
You may want it but it would make the developers miserable and the game suffer.
The same is true for the film industry and production companies. In addition, it's very common for such production companies or PR teams to have a set of topics that staff aren't permitted to discuss. Yet despite this, we still get plenty of good interviews related to the actual production and progress of the media.
I understand this is just your opinion, but film directors encounter this all the time. Revealing information about any sort of media with a large fanbase or hype around it is always going to invite fan opinions about the content and direction. This isn't a new thing and yet we still get plenty of well-received films that very much so live up to the director or author's vision (See Dune, Parasite, Jo Jo Rabbit, Nomadland, etc.). Somehow all these directors are able to stick to their vision and produce a well-received work without redesigning pieces of their media to appease fans.
I think sources would help provide context for this claim, but just going off what you've stated here I don't see how this would make interviews with developers worse. Unless it's a fan Q&A, fans are not involved in the interview process and actors/developers/producers are never required to ingest feedback related to an interview in the first place.
Overall it seems like your gripe with this idea is that introducing interviews like this would seemingly force developers or companies to pivot their direction and start producing games that strictly appease fans. That's been proven multiple times to be untrue, but to each his own.
Agree to disagree agree I guess.
Movie interviews from crew are typically only good and interesting several years after the movie is released. The few I've seen during or right at the release are just constantly praising the actors or directors. It gets old fast.