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The Game Effect Editorial
Dear Irrational: Please Shut the Hell Up!
An open letter to the developer of Bioshock: Infinite
Dear Ken Levine and the crew at Irrational Games,
I love Bioshock. It's one of my favorite games of this generation, and indeed one of my favorite of all time. I am extremely excited to play Bioshock: Infinite and to see the beautiful new scarred world you have created in Columbia. It is for that reason that I write you and plead with you to respectfully shut the hell up! Ever since E3 2011, gamers have been shown far more information about this game than we need. We already know the game will be amazing. We don't need you to keep trying to convince us.
Part of what makes your games so incredible is discovering the world and solving the mystery of the story. The mystery of the story remains intact, but the discovery of the world seems to be getting stripped out of the experience and plastered into the marketing campaign instead. We have seen so much of the game that would have been better experienced in the context of the final product. It feels akin to a scenario where Valve revealed potato-GladoS or evil Wheatley before the release of Portal 2.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the behind-the-scenes access that you grant to your fans. Irrational provides more glances behind the curtain than any other developer in the world, with the voice acting recording session videos, the awesome Irrational Behavior podcasts and the developer blogs. These extra goodies are welcome because they don't spoil anything, they simply give fans a better look behind the curtain of your games.
I love Bioshock. It's one of my favorite games of this generation, and indeed one of my favorite of all time. I am extremely excited to play Bioshock: Infinite and to see the beautiful new scarred world you have created in Columbia. It is for that reason that I write you and plead with you to respectfully shut the hell up! Ever since E3 2011, gamers have been shown far more information about this game than we need. We already know the game will be amazing. We don't need you to keep trying to convince us.
Part of what makes your games so incredible is discovering the world and solving the mystery of the story. The mystery of the story remains intact, but the discovery of the world seems to be getting stripped out of the experience and plastered into the marketing campaign instead. We have seen so much of the game that would have been better experienced in the context of the final product. It feels akin to a scenario where Valve revealed potato-GladoS or evil Wheatley before the release of Portal 2.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of the behind-the-scenes access that you grant to your fans. Irrational provides more glances behind the curtain than any other developer in the world, with the voice acting recording session videos, the awesome Irrational Behavior podcasts and the developer blogs. These extra goodies are welcome because they don't spoil anything, they simply give fans a better look behind the curtain of your games.
So not everything you're doing is bad, but just stop giving us more information than we need. Take Microsoft and 343 Industries for example. The PR campaign for Halo 4 has consisted of: "Halo 4 is happening, Master Chief is alive, Cortana is going crazy, the end." There has been no single player gameplay displayed. The multiplayer has not been fully revealed and the hype for the game is still sky high. Bioshock is a brand name that has very high recognition and Irrational has a huge fan base within the games industry. It doesn't need a Big Daddy sized marketing push.
Of course the easy answer to this question is that if fans don't want to know more about the game, they can simply go into a media black-out mode and not watch the videos. However, is that really what you want as a developer and marketer of a product? Would it not be beneficial to show small snippets every once in a while rather than large chunks of information all at once? That way you would be whetting fan's appetite without filling them up until they're too full for the main course.
As a member of the media, I have an obligation to stay current on all the pertinent information about one of the year's most anticipated releases and provide up-to-date information for our readers. When I attend PAX East, I will spend time at Irrational's booth and hopefully get to speak with some of you further about the game. However, if I didn't have an obligation to do that, I would avoid your booth at all costs simply to preserve the purity of my first Infinite play-through. I wouldn't be surprised if other fans feel the same way.
I could very well be barking up the wrong tree here. This campaign may simply be the work of an overly excited PR company and a very eager publisher. Given the amazing stature of previous Bioshock games, it's likely that Columbia is so jam packed full of mystery and wonder that even the large amount of the world that we've seen already is only a mere fraction of what you have in store for the final game. Still, I have to wonder why you feel the need to take such lengths to convince us that your game is going to rock? We already know it will. We have faith in you Irrational.
Sincerely,
Your adoring fans
Of course the easy answer to this question is that if fans don't want to know more about the game, they can simply go into a media black-out mode and not watch the videos. However, is that really what you want as a developer and marketer of a product? Would it not be beneficial to show small snippets every once in a while rather than large chunks of information all at once? That way you would be whetting fan's appetite without filling them up until they're too full for the main course.
As a member of the media, I have an obligation to stay current on all the pertinent information about one of the year's most anticipated releases and provide up-to-date information for our readers. When I attend PAX East, I will spend time at Irrational's booth and hopefully get to speak with some of you further about the game. However, if I didn't have an obligation to do that, I would avoid your booth at all costs simply to preserve the purity of my first Infinite play-through. I wouldn't be surprised if other fans feel the same way.
I could very well be barking up the wrong tree here. This campaign may simply be the work of an overly excited PR company and a very eager publisher. Given the amazing stature of previous Bioshock games, it's likely that Columbia is so jam packed full of mystery and wonder that even the large amount of the world that we've seen already is only a mere fraction of what you have in store for the final game. Still, I have to wonder why you feel the need to take such lengths to convince us that your game is going to rock? We already know it will. We have faith in you Irrational.
Sincerely,
Your adoring fans
The Game Effect
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1. Those who want to see all this preview content.2. Those who only want to see a little preview content or none at all.
By showing a lot of content, the publisher covers both these groups. The first gets what they want and the second can just not click on that link that has 'New look at X game' in the title.
But by limiting the preview content, only the second group is appeased. This approach only works for massive massive games like Halo where the name alone could carry the hype. For smaller games (though still big) like Bioshock they need to continuously release preview content to maintain the hype and attract those who have never tried Bioshock, while at the same time not giving it all away. span style="background-color: initial; "
/spanspan style="background-color: initial; "It's a fine line, lets hope they can continue to walk it until the release. /span