:Rex Saw:
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- Nov 5, 2004
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It seems to me that there is a little confusion about this. For those of you who can't write enough about what a dissapointment HL2 is, consider this...
Dissapointment, as most of us know, is a unit of measurement. It is the measure to which expectations have been met. If you expect something to be great and it is not, then being "very dissapointed" would be a clear and fairly accurate measure of how a product has or has not lived up to the property of a product that we commonly call its "hype."
The most important aspect of this process, however, is a clear definition of who set the expectations, how they were set, and ultimately where the "hype" came from.
Now, the bottom line, and a rhetorical question. Have we as consumers of computer and video games STILL not learned how to prepare for upcoming "major" releases and how to set fair expectations of them? If Valve says HL3 is going to be the greatest game EVER made, EVER, how many people will use that to form an expectation that it will, in fact, be the greatest game ever made? Anyone that does, of course, is probably a little demented.
Wise up. If you can't factor in constants related to the market, one part of which says that games will almost never be released as originally intended, and that game companies have people working for them in a department called MARKETING and ADVERTISING who's primary purpose is to attract you to a product, then you need to take some economy classes.
As is true in any other segment of the market for common goods, these people are paid to exagerate, inflate, and HYPE. That is their JOB. If you keep falling for it over and over again with the result of disliking or hating the finished product because of an expectation that YOU set by scoffing down everything some guy told you, you need to start exercising some common f'in sense.
Maybe it should be the responsibility of a company to live up to all it's promises, but that's never going to happen. Learn how to construct expectations based on reality, and how to discriminate between promises that are based on FACT (e.g., HL2 will use a certain engine which has these capabilities to create this effect) rather than opinion and subjectively-based hype (e.g., the water effects in this game will be the most amazing you've ever seen).
Dislike the game or hate it or love it, just keep all of it in perspective and realize that some parts of the game didn't live up to Valve's hype, while some other parts didn't live up to YOUR hype, and there really is no-one else to blame for that.
Dissapointment, as most of us know, is a unit of measurement. It is the measure to which expectations have been met. If you expect something to be great and it is not, then being "very dissapointed" would be a clear and fairly accurate measure of how a product has or has not lived up to the property of a product that we commonly call its "hype."
The most important aspect of this process, however, is a clear definition of who set the expectations, how they were set, and ultimately where the "hype" came from.
Now, the bottom line, and a rhetorical question. Have we as consumers of computer and video games STILL not learned how to prepare for upcoming "major" releases and how to set fair expectations of them? If Valve says HL3 is going to be the greatest game EVER made, EVER, how many people will use that to form an expectation that it will, in fact, be the greatest game ever made? Anyone that does, of course, is probably a little demented.
Wise up. If you can't factor in constants related to the market, one part of which says that games will almost never be released as originally intended, and that game companies have people working for them in a department called MARKETING and ADVERTISING who's primary purpose is to attract you to a product, then you need to take some economy classes.
As is true in any other segment of the market for common goods, these people are paid to exagerate, inflate, and HYPE. That is their JOB. If you keep falling for it over and over again with the result of disliking or hating the finished product because of an expectation that YOU set by scoffing down everything some guy told you, you need to start exercising some common f'in sense.
Maybe it should be the responsibility of a company to live up to all it's promises, but that's never going to happen. Learn how to construct expectations based on reality, and how to discriminate between promises that are based on FACT (e.g., HL2 will use a certain engine which has these capabilities to create this effect) rather than opinion and subjectively-based hype (e.g., the water effects in this game will be the most amazing you've ever seen).
Dislike the game or hate it or love it, just keep all of it in perspective and realize that some parts of the game didn't live up to Valve's hype, while some other parts didn't live up to YOUR hype, and there really is no-one else to blame for that.
