Why Hype is Ruining Games

Hype can get people excited for a game, get people to buy it, and give people an idea of what they should be playing. On the other hand, it can set expectations too high and cause disappointment. As a marketing graduate, I can understand the difficulty of publishers wanting to undersell and over deliver, but at the same time needing to give people the idea that this is the best game ever that they NEED to buy. Games media often contributes to this hype as well, giving high praise and setting up expectations, talking for months and months about how excited they are for specific games, leading us to feel that same excitement. Hype has personally ruined games for me, and has turned me on to some of my favorite games. So what is the solution? Simply put, there is none, but here’s my thoughts on how to set realistic expectations for games so that I’m less likely to be disappointed, while keeping an ear open for new games that I might not have otherwise heard of.

As I mentioned before, games have been ruined for me by hype, and I think the best example for me is that of Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor. I am a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings films (and I’m planning to read them soon too, I was just never much of a reader growing up). When I heard they were making a middle earth game, I was in. At this point I kept hearing praise from all over the games media industry, and kept seeing these cool trailers on TV. I played the game for a couple hours and honestly stopped and haven’t picked it up since. I hated it. It wasn’t at all what I had hoped and dreamed for, and even if it is a great game, it wasn’t as good as what I needed it to be after all the hype. On the other hand, I would have never played Journey or Flower if it weren’t for hype. When I found out the games were being ported to the PS4, and heard all of the praise for them and the developer (thatgamecompany) I knew I had to give it a try. This time I was so surprised by the joy I got from them. Maybe it was just how I was feeling at that time, but both felt profound and meaningful for such simplistic games. Since these times, though I’ve learned ways to set realistic expectations and get an idea of whether or not I would like a game before getting too into the rabbit hole on them.

The first thing you need to do is reflect on what you do and do not like in games. If you like huge open world RPGs and the idea of spending hundreds of hours in a game is exciting, then maybe stay away from something like the 3 hour experience of Journey. On the other hand if you like bite sized games because you don’t have the time to spend, then you should stay away from Monster Hunter World. If you generally love sports and competitive games, or if you like puzzles and platforming, there are always games being developed that will speak to you.

The next part of this is finding games media journalists who have similar interests to you. For independent artsy games like Journey I look to the advice of Marty Sliva from IGN for example. And for fun party games that I can play with friends, I look to games that the Achievement Hunter group plays together. In general, though, the more you follow certain people the more you can tell whether or not you play games that they would enjoy. From here, you can tell from the pros whether or not you’ll like a game.

Finally I would say that if you’re excited for a game and know that you’re going to buy it, just don’t read or watch anymore about it. When I saw Horizon Zero Dawn’s announcement I thought it looked extremely cool. I went to my media journalist that I feel I relate to most, Greg Miller of Kinda Funny, and he was excited too. He had played at preview events where he also said it was worth playing, and that’s all I needed to know until after I played the game. I was excited, sure, but not overly so, thinking that this would be the greatest thing since The Last of Us.

It’s easy to get lost in hype and excitement around games. When someone says something is cool, you want to know more right away. From everything I’ve experienced, though, I would say waiting can make it that much better in the end.