They Can Say This With A Straight Face??!

[EvoG]

<a href="http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php ... ad&order=0" target=_blank>Absolutely ridiculous blitherings.</a>

My Favorite :

The top notch in-house developed engine of THE FALL displays an unbelievable realistic 3D world as well as highly detailed characters.

Wait...huh? Jeez if this is top-notch what the hell kind of superlatives can we POSSIBLY give the Doom3 Engine or HalfLife2 Source Engine or the Warfare Engine!?

Cliche Marketing Speak :

Carsten Strehse CEO of Silver Style comments: “THE FALL will inspire very RPG fan. The unique features, the very deep story and our very strong in-house engine are perfect qualifications for a stunning gameplay experience.

"Unique Features"? Where were we when they showed off these?

"Very Deep Story"? Wait is this the same backstory we all read?

"Very Strong in-house engine"? Um, did we not see the same screenshots?

Is it a marketing MANDATE to use the word "stunning" to define every new product? I mean how many times has something been described to us as stunning and when we finally had a chance to experience said product, it was SO not stunning and in fact just terrible?

Hell, The Fall could be fun, but come on now...lets keep it realistic eh? Its not like we never played any other videogame before. I bring this up really because I read this marketing crap so often...who BELIEVES stuff like this anymore? Who's this naive? Its like trying to sell me a minivan, telling of its incredible handling and stunning acceleration, all the while I already own a Corvette. Um, mkay...sure :confused2: Don't 'sell' me a fucking game...MAKE a really good game and the rest will come.

Agreed?

<img src="http://www.duckandcover.net/forums/imag ... on_joy.gif">

Cheers

[Radoteur]

Hmmm, have there ever been good games that didn't sell well because they weren't well marketed?
Have there been really crappy products that sold well because they were well marketed?

What do you expect them to tell you?
The truth? What kind of salesperson tells you their product sucks?

[Bleusilences]

Well I think the game will be quite good, but not over the top. Graphic wise they are avrage, now I got to see the gameplay in action to evaluate.

[LlamaGod]

It'll probably be about as "great" as their last RPG project, Gorusul.

But nah, Stalker's engine is where it's at, y0. HL2 and the rest are too plastic-y.

[Thor Kaufman]

Carsten Strehse, that name sounds familiar

Isn't he supposed to be one of the people who made kind of an inofficial successor to JA2, but in 3D ? Something with Strike in the name, I believe.

[Phias]

They've done it since the beginning, and they'll do it until the end.

Marketing is a vicious and lying machine, it stretches the truth to it's limit and beyond, it is a sad machine, but a necesary one.

Lack of hype can hurt the sales for a product, they're just hyping it up as much as possible. I tend to have no opinion on such things until I try the game.

[LlamaGod]

MobyGames says he's only credited for lead design on Soldiers of Anarchy and Gorasul, and he did Commodore64-version graphics on another shitty game here: http://www.mobygames.com/game/sheet/rate/gameId,4858/

He defends SOA (even if it sucks) I imagine since he worked on it, wonder if he defends that huge pile of turds that Gorasul was..

[Thor Kaufman]

Guess, I'll look it up, then.

Ah, "Projekt P" was the name of the game or rather the game project name to be more exact, lol

Maybe The Fall is what it turns out to be ? Couldn't be bothered too much, anyway, when he mentioned it, since my computer wouldn't be able to handle it

[Anthony]

I won't bother talking about graphics, it's quite appparent I don't know enough about them.

Cliche Marketing Speak :
Carsten Strehse CEO of Silver Style comments: “THE FALL will inspire very RPG fan. The unique features, the very deep story and our very strong in-house engine are perfect qualifications for a stunning gameplay experience.
1."Unique Features"? Where were we when they showed off these?

2."Very Deep Story"? Wait is this the same backstory we all read?

3."Very Strong in-house engine"? Um, did we not see the same screenshots?

4.Is it a marketing MANDATE to use the word "stunning" to define every new product? I mean how many times has something been described to us as stunning and when we finally had a chance to experience said product, it was SO not stunning and in fact just terrible?

1. I've been following this for a while now, reviewed everything they've displayed that I could find, and I'm not sure unique features HAVE been shown yet. Perhaps they're actually saving something for the game for us to be surprized by? Seems logical enought to me.
2. I would have to argue that the backstory is not the ONLY part of the story. Although the backstory isn't half bad, I wouldn't title it with the greats. All things considered, however, I've not FOUND any greats, perhaps someone may point me in their direction. Once I play, however, I can get taken in by an environment, as Fallout took me(We may relate there). This could easily deepen the cut into your heart.
3. I'm ignorant, leave me alone.
4. Yes, I think stunning is one of the required words in marketting.. maybe when they started it actually had an impact.. now it's just a little overused, but hey, there are only so many words in the English language one can use.

Adios.

[Hatchen]

wow you said it all!!! so true from what someone menchened before, they have to make there product sound good. if you have the best game in the world, but market it wrong, it will not sell as much as the worst game in the world marketed very good. its the same with movies, for horrible movies they only show the good parts.

[atoga]

Yeah, yeah, whatever. After being exposed to FOBOS marketing and severely numbed by it, I could care less.

Why don't people ever say "innovative" when advertising games though? I've never heard that. Is being innovative such a bad thing? Excuse my preaching.

[Hertston]

MAKE a really good game and the rest will come.

Agreed?

No. I've seen too many "great games that nobody bought" over the last ten years. Money, marketing, publicity (and ideally a franchise "name") will sell any old crap but without that developers and publishers have to do everything they can to get a little exposure, however good their game is. Especially if it's developed outside the US, as some recent posts here have demonstrated.

It would be nice to think some sort of modest undersell would generate a positive reaction and result in increased sales. Unfortunately, as I live in the real world, I don't think that.

[EvoG]

Alright, but let me ask you this :

When have you EVER bought a game where you were 'told' the graphics were 'stunning' without seeing them for yourself.

When have you EVER bought a game AFTER seeing the graphics, thinking "meh", but then reading about how 'stunning' they are and then going "oh well, if they're stunning, I'll go and buy it now!"

When have you EVER bought a game where you were 'told' the story was deep without reading anything about it.

I never said don't market. Marketing absolutely works...but like bad graphics, there's bad marketing, which makes the product look worse or the people behind the product seem like fools.

Its one thing to say that you have nice graphics or a decent engine, but don't say its top-notch when we ALL know what top notch looks like. Hell, don't say anything at all and JUST show the graphics!

We all RARELY come across a 'deep story' in our games. Lots of the greatest games I hold dear do not have deep stories. FALLOUT doesn't have a deep story. I think the most compelling written work to date is from PS:T, where I was actually surprised and excited by unfolding events. So in an industry known for quite shallow stories, what are the odds that these guys 'got it right'??!! Hell, the backstory IS representative of the *cough*quality*cough* of the writing. You can't say otherwise because if there was better written material, they'd be fools to leave what they have now exposed for all to read as their first impression of this games story?

Lastly I doubt there's anything more 'unique' behind all we saw. You can pretty much get an idea of the gameplay from whats been released. Meh. There has yet to be a game that has kept something secret that ended up being interesting let alone 'unique'. In this day and age, the odds of having something 'unique' that no one has seen before are slim to none.

Its not about 'marketing' per se as it is about OVER marketing, making claims that are just not true to sell a product. Marketing is an absolutely necessary evil no doubt, but sheesh, I was almost embarrassed for them while reading that.

Cheers

[Kashluk]

I haven't really bought a game based on marketing to this day. I buy games based on how two of my favorite computer magazines rate them & what my friends have liked about them. Big commercials / ads, whatever, usually don't have any effect on me. If everyone's talking about some new game that's real good and I've seen screenshots from one of those two magazines, I might check it out. Propably borrow it from someone first and then get it. It doesn't really matter *to me* if it has a big marketing budget or not, I'm more into the small-scale information network, getting new "reviews" from my pals.

[Myrrdin]

Marketing is always bullshit, that is nothing more than a fact. The quirk is that sometimes a game comes out that actually is pretty close to the braindead slogans the stupid gits in the marketing divison have concieved. And even if games don't live up to their marketing, they can indeed be pretty decent.

And I *never* buy a game from marketing, that would be like buying stuff from tv shopping or something. I am one of those people anti-piracy crusaders say don't exist. I download games from "other channels". If it's good I buy it, if it's bad it's gone from my computer.

[LlamaGod]

MAKE a really good game and the rest will come.

Agreed?

No. I've seen too many "great games that nobody bought" over the last ten years. Money, marketing, publicity (and ideally a franchise "name") will sell any old crap but without that developers and publishers have to do everything they can to get a little exposure, however good their game is. Especially if it's developed outside the US, as some recent posts here have demonstrated.

It would be nice to think some sort of modest undersell would generate a positive reaction and result in increased sales. Unfortunately, as I live in the real world, I don't think that.

Name some games, sirrah.

[Anthony]

When have you EVER bought a game where you were 'told' the graphics were 'stunning' without seeing them for yourself.

When have you EVER bought a game AFTER seeing the graphics, thinking "meh", but then reading about how 'stunning' they are and then going "oh well, if they're stunning, I'll go and buy it now!"

I've never done that, myself. I've bought it when I had either played the demo and realized that shiny pictures pale in comparison to gameplay over all, or when I was told by someone who had actually played the game that it might interest me.. so far, no one is avalible to do either for me, 'cause I don't know the people in the magazines that review these new toys.

Why don't people ever say "innovative" when advertising games though? I've never heard that. Is being innovative such a bad thing? Excuse my preaching.

haha, I think I'll ask Carsten that

[Phias]

It's common sense.

You should never believe the hype until you personally experience the game yourself. If they said that their game was a "Monotonous waste of time and cash", would anyone buy it? I doubt reverse psychology works in the realm of game marketing.

Play it first, then make your own mind after that.

[Killzig]

You should never believe the hype until you personally experience the game yourself. If they said that their game was a "Monotonous waste of time and cash", would anyone buy it? I doubt reverse psychology works in the realm of game marketing.

I agree with you on the first part, but on this second line you're kind of jumping from one spectrum to another. It's perfectly all right for a game developer to be upfront about what he's doing. Take Tim Cain in relation to ToEE, he was pretty much up front in telling us he was looking to make a classic d&d module, a straight up dungeon crawl with a few touches of troika and a somewhat deep turn based combat system. That's pretty much what he delivered. I think these developers/media outlets have a tendency of touting some features as BRAND-SPANKING-NEW-NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN, which might work for a console game where the average consumer is a neophyte but for folks like us its a bit of a turn off. Better to say something along the lines of "We don't really bring anything new to the genre but what we have done is taken everything we liked about it and tried to improve upon it, in essence fine tuning and maybe creating a stepping stone for future developers." Or something along those lines would be infinitely more palatable than some of the things we've seen from a lot of recent previews. just my .02