Halotosis

"Expect nothing. Live frugaly on surprise"
-- Alice Walker

"Halo 3: The moment is upon us" reads the breathless e-mail from Xbox Flash. Followed by the tag lines:

A Hero Must Rise
BELIEVE
9.25.07

It's just marketing. It's not even particularly brilliant marketing. It's hype for hype's sake. But the irony is that the slogan, "BELIEVE," is the problem with all marketing towards the hardcore gamer. We (and I mean me) read everything. We watch everything. We drool over the plate-scraps of developers. We BELIEVE in capital letters. We want to believe. Our belief that what is coming tomorrow is better than today is unshakable.

Boy are we stupid.

On September 25th, nerdmerica, and I imagine many other continents, will get a mysterious flu, and there will be much rejoicing. There will be trash talking all day and night as people Master-Chief themselves into nothing more than 200 pounds of flesh-colored pudding with thumbs. And I'm willing to bet, nearly half the people playing will be disappointed.

Not because the game won't be any good. Even I, a comparatively tepid fan of the Halo series, know from the demo that the game will be rock solid and there's no doubt in my mind whatsoever that it will take up permanent residence on the Ikea DVD rack next to my desk. No, people will be disappointed because things rarely live up to Halo levels of hype. If you've played through the first two chapters in the Halo novella, you're in a frenzy. The three years since the release of Halo 2 has been intensely stressful for you, the incurable sufferer of Halotosis. An entire generation of consoles has emerged, with blockbuster titles like Gears of War and BioShock receiving all the glory while you've had to deal with (shudder) backward compatibility. But now your time has come. And you already know it's going to be the best. thing. ever.

But here's the thing. You're probably wrong. I know, because I always say this, and I'm almost always wrong. Here's my list of best games ever that left me disappointed, and their kindred surprises that made me quiver like lime Jello (tm).

Flight Sim X: Possibly the most outrageous screen shot porn ever made. The experience? Eh.
Flight Sim 9: Paid little attention to it during development. Crapped my pants upon firing it up.

Doom 3: As the full resolution gameplay footage trickled across my net connection, i was sure this was the game to end all games. And it was, for about 3 minutes.
Doom: Showed up on my computer one day and I had no idea what the hell had happened, but I knew it was GOOD.

World of Warcraft: By 2004, already jaded on MMOs, WoW seemed to be 2 years of waiting for a cartoon. I'm not suggesting I'm any arbiter of commercial success here, just that it didn't come close to living up to my personal dream of what an MMO could be.
Neocron: To this day I can't tell you why I started playing it. But in 2002, the real first person shooter qualities of it combined with a thriving (if short lived) competitive clan system made it Geektastic.

The pattern has repeated in almost every generation, in every genre. The less I know about a game ahead of time, the more impressed I am by its virtues, the more forgiving I am of its flaws. There have been very, very few games I have waited for with rapt attention, eagerly pouring over screen shots, whining my way into beta, salivating through release and playing for hours, overlooking gaping holes and green puss-laden warts because I had the rare experience of expectations met and exceeded.

Yes, BioShock is one such game. I won't write a review of it. I don't really do reviews. I don't do reviews because context is too important. I'm happy to tell you if I think a game sucks, or is brilliant, but if I do, it will have the word "I" in it, and that's not how commercial press works. If it's got a "we" I won't slap a 93 on it and ship it out. I wouldn't even know how to review BioShock, except to say "I wanted to love it, I bought the hype, and I was still impressed." Because I knew exactly what I wanted out of it and I got it, warts and all.

Part of this was because BioShock landed in a vacuum. Yes, Ken Levine had made System Shock 2, but BioShock was new in all ways that mattered. These expectations problems are far worse when it comes to beloved franchises. In the case of a game like Fallout 3, there's no way that expectations can possibly be met. "Our expectations are higher than anyone else's," said Todd Howard, Executive Producer at Bethesda, while I was grilling him about the post-E3 fan-craptacular hubub. He's charged with ferrying the Fallout franchise into the next generation. People will hate his game. No matter how brilliant it is, there will be a cadre of fans who simply will not be satisfied. So how much should he tell you? He's going to make the game his way, but he can't tell you everything, because he's go a job to do. And anything he says is just going to steer you in the wrong direction. "We're making the stuff we really want to play, but If you've waited ten years for something, your expectations are pretty high. It's fair to get online and say 'I don't get it.'"

So what's the solution? What's a hardcore, net-surfing, midnight-madness uber-geek to do with your new Chapter 3 baby coming online?

Relax.

If I look back on the past few years, there are games that gave me nearly as much joy as BioShock, in no small part because I expected nothing whatsoever out of them. When my friend Rob raced over with his copy of Guitar Hero, I looked at him with ridicule. "You have to be kidding, DDR without the excercise?" But I knew within moments I'd tapped into a vein of high quality ore, one which I would spend the next year refining. Guitar Hero 2 for the 360 was better in nearly every measurable way, and while it's consumed more hours than the old, long since gifted PS2 version did, it's been much less satisfying, if only because its excellence is expected.

Don't buy it on day one. Convince yourself you don't care. Stop looking at the release schedule. Pre-order nothing. Sure, you might miss the day-1 spoiler threads, but you know what? You'll enjoy the games more. This is a good season we have coming. I say this not just as a dad who shipped both kids off to school this morning, but as a gamer. It's Season 2 for the new consoles. It's prime time for the 360. The PC, DS and PSP calendars are all full of joy. If your an equal opportunity gamer, you have far more games to play than you will have hours to play them, even if you decide to forgo bathroom trips and simply sit naked in the bathtub for 3 months.

Let a little serendipity enter your life. Let whimsy guide your pre-holiday purchases. Play something you've never heard of that a friend says is great. Put off Halo 3 for a week or so, and play Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass or Hooked! Real Motion Fishing instead. Because who knows, maybe one of them will rock your world.

---------------------------------
Expect Nothing by Alice Walker

Expect nothing. Live frugally
on surprise.
Become a stranger
to need of pity
or, if compassion be freely
given out
take only enough
stop short of urge to plead
then purge away the need.

Wish for nothing larger
than your own small heart
or greater than a star,
tame wild disappointment
with caress unmoved and cold
make of it a parka
for your soul.

Discover the reason why
so tiny human midget
exists at all
so scared unwise
but expect nothing. Live frugally
on surprise.

Comments

Rabbit wrote:

Don't buy it on day one. Convince yourself you don't care. Stop looking at the release schedule. Pre-order nothing. Sure, you might miss the day-1 spoiler threads, but you know what? You'll enjoy the games more.

IMAGE(http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/5774/hereticxo4.jpg)

Don't listen to this one's apostasy. The perceived value of software depreciates geometrically as time marches forward from it's release date. Every second played by hands not your own devalues your experience, and likewise your abstinance increases his! It's all a ploy by an old man to steal your fun. Wake up, people!

Awesome, Rabbit. I've learned to mellow about upcoming releases.

Bioshock, Oblivion, Dead Rising, Guitar Hero 2, Metroid Prime 3

All games came to me this year or so while I let the hype flow past me without paying any attention. All are fantastic and I suffered no stress from delays, worshiped no screenshots, hung on no promises from producers.

The hype machine that so skillfully guarantees the commercial success of a game before its release is pouring it on for GTA4, Fable 2, Spore. I won't hear a word of it.

Eat my Zen, hypemasters.

I actually learned a long time ago to stop scraping up tidbits of info if I'm really interested in a game. The more I'm interested, the less I pay attention. I'm extremely excited about the prospect of playing Halo 3 and I didn't even realize it's coming out in a couple of weeks. Other than the beta and an occasional tidbit about a new feature, I'm content to show up on midnight of release day and start playing. All hype is ultimately self defeating, you end up enjoying the game less than you would have if you'd never heard of it.

polypusher wrote:

Eat my Zen, hypemasters.

Sig.

The truly great games turn their hype to dust. Bioshock, Oblivion, Morrowind, Chaos Theory. Your zen stuff only applies to the ones that aren't that great.

Also, there's two kinds of hype: you've got the 100% tripe like, "A Hero Must Rise" and then you've got the flecks of information that are carefully sprinkled into our bowl. I don't even know how to interpret the propaganda pieces, but the facts are a good sign. Lots of information implies a solid game. It's when the devs are holding the cards close that they're trying to hide something. An astute gamer can carefully sift through the facts to decipher exactly how much anticipation is warranted.

Or you could not do that. No big loss, but you're less informed.

All my games come from Gamefly, so Im neither emotionally, nor financially invested in any product until I've tried it

PyromanFO wrote:

I actually learned a long time ago to stop scraping up tidbits of info if I'm really interested in a game. The more I'm interested, the less I pay attention. I'm extremely excited about the prospect of playing Halo 3 and I didn't even realize it's coming out in a couple of weeks. Other than the beta and an occasional tidbit about a new feature, I'm content to show up on midnight of release day and start playing. All hype is ultimately self defeating, you end up enjoying the game less than you would have if you'd never heard of it.

I can agree with this. Metroid Prime 3 snuck up on me like Halo did with you; I'm finding it to be pretty outstanding when I can shoehorn in some time to spend with it.

As an adult I rarely get that Christmas Eve excitement feeling from my youth. In some ways the hype is part of the fun, bringing back that excitement. While it might detract from the Halo 3 experience it sure makes the wait exciting.

Xbox Live: WILL3R

This is the only gaming related website I visit. I don't seek out reviews or trailers or pay attention to releases. I don't care and I don't have time. Besides, zero does all that for me. He tells me what's coming out that's good, I go buy it and we have fun playing it.

SPARTANS!!! PREPARE FOR GLORY!!!

I sometimes buy games on day 1 but never open the packaging until day 6. It's more about wanting the game than wanting to play the game for me. I'll get home and find something more interesting to do or not be in the mood to play the thing I just bought. I just did this with Metroid 3 and only started playing last weekend. That happens very often now that I think about it.

Regarding Halo 3, I'm not sure if we're getting it on release day. Chances are it'll be sold out. Even if I did get a copy on day 1, I have no interest in spending all of the AM hours on my 360. And hubby can't call out. The U.S. military won't stand for such nonsense like "the flu."

I'm not a fan of Halo anyway. This will be the first Halo game I play. So yeah, I want me some Phantom Hourglass more. Oh! Phoenix Wright comes out. Damn. I need to set my priorities straight! Supa Hawt Lawyer Action comes first! EDIT: AND Dracula X Chronicles. Eternal Sonata. This entire Fall is just WRONG.

Time spent reading previews and hype is time that could be playing games.

I do follow multiplayer-focused titles pretty closely - the community will move on if I discover them too late, and I find them more enjoyable when I have time to fully explore their depth - but for the most part, the (mental) stack of AAA stop-the-world games I want to play is too goddamn big to worry about stuff I can't play. If I miss it on release day, I'll grab it used a few months later for half the price.

Beside, you guys will sort it out what's good anyway.

I really liked Halo... less so Halo 2 though the story was okay... but i'll only play on PC. I'll wait until Halo 3 comes out on PC in 3-4 years.... hopefully that port will be better than Halo 2's.... which barely ran on low settings (looking about 100 times worse than Bioshock on low) on my rig...

I myself, having written about the dangers of giving into hype in the past, am bound by previous statements to agree with you.

But, not about Halo. Sorry, man, but I gotta go with Danjo on this one.

IMAGE(http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f182/sfailey/branded.jpg)
Heretic!!

Good read. Words to live by.

Rabbit wrote:

The PC, DS and PSP calendars are all full of joy. If your an equal opportunity gamer, you have far more games to play than you will have hours to play them, even if you decide to forgo bathroom trips and simply sit naked in the bathtub for 3 months.

Sigged. Sans typo.

Thanks!

Sorry Rabbit, I've got to disagree with you here and say that Danjo and Chiggie is absolutely correct (I know, big surprise for anyone who is familiar with my views). Your path is not the only way to avoid disappointment. It is quite possible to get excited about a game and consume information about it without blowing your expectations up to a point where they can't possibly be met. More over, it is actually quite easy when you are talking about a game where everything you have seen, heard, read, and in the case of Halo 3, played has indicated that the game will be more or less what you are hoping for. Sure, I don't suceed in this regard everytime, but I do have a pretty good track record recently (with games like Bioshock and Oblivion).

Also, there's this:

W1LL3R wrote:

As an adult I rarely get that Christmas Eve excitement feeling from my youth. In some ways the hype is part of the fun, bringing back that excitement. While it might detract from the Halo 3 experience it sure makes the wait exciting.

This is a strong part of my philosophy about pre-release interest in games. I don't do it often, and even when I do jump on the hype wagon I still limit my exposure to story related spoilers. However, when I do, I get to feel a kind of wonderful joy and anticipation that really only occurs in one or two other situations in adult life. And after all, what is the point in investing your time and energy in a hobby if you aren't going to partake of one of the biggest thrills it offers?

Staats wrote:

Time spent reading previews and hype is time that could be playing games.

Not when you are at work.

Staats did bring up something else that is a big factor for me, though, which is the difference between consuming information about a single player experience and doing the same about a multiplayer one. For a multiplayer game, the more I know and understand about the game before I play it, the more fun I have (most of the time). As such, (as Danjo will attest) I have been rabidly consuming any information Bungie lets out regarding Halo 3 multiplayer, but I have been equally persistent about avoiding information about the single player campaign.

And on the same note, for games without multiplayer that I allow myself to get hyped about (such as Bioshock, Oblivion, and the upcoming Mass Effect) I generally only consume information about the most basic details of the game; what is the setting, what is the general gameplay concept, what does the game do that is new. After that, I avoid learning anything else about a game, but I don't try to convince myself that I don't want it. To the contrary, I find that active avoidance of information about a game only serves to help build the anticipation of what it offers, and I like it that way.

I picked up Bioshock this past weekend on a Labor Day sale. I haven't put it in yet. I did play some Star Wars Legos with the girlfriend, though. And some CoD2. *shrug*

ETA: Iwata thinks there's too much pre-realease information given out about games, too.

Sorry, can't reply in depth. Someone dropped a new Guitar Hero III video on the 'Net and I gotta get it downloaded.

I'm in the exact opposite boat. I believe that the only way to combat this sort of thing is more information, not less. The trick is WHICH information.

It is possible to separate fact from marketroid crap. I don't BELIEVE. I want the end of the go ram story. The hype on Halo 3 is irrelevent to my behavior - they sold me this one at the closing credits of the first one. Yes, the Beta rawk'd my boxxors. But even if it had sucked so bad it unbalanced the air conditioning I would buying this.

It's that way for a lot of the games I play. In cases like that I make my final decisions as much as 2 years in advance. Then once it's made, the only thing I have to do is try to keep in step with the Release Date Mambo.

And if it's not a case like Halo where it's predecessor made the sale, watching the summary release reports at my local gamestore lets me see far enough in advance of even new shiny/odd stuff can be worked in. Even things that would never have made anyone else's list like "Drawn to Life" or "Biker Mice from Mars" slip in.

Great writing Rabbit. I agree . In this age of massive hype and sequelitis, there is no way that a game like Halo 3/Fall out 3/The Sims: OMGWTFBBQ expansion will be able to live up to the all the hype. It's the old adage, expectation of death is worse than death itself.

That being said, Bioshock is good, very good, obscenely good. oh yes!

The less I know about a game ahead of time, the more impressed I am by its virtues, the more forgiving I am of its flaws.

Back in 2000, when the big 3 MMO's were UO, EQ, and AC, there were three other MMO's that were getting the majority of the hype as being the next generation: Anarchy Online, Shadowbane, and Dark Age of Camelot. I couldn't decide if I was more interested in a sci-fi MMO with a massive world or what appeared to be the deep lore of Shadowbane as interpreted by the damned vulpine. All I knew was that I hate the Arthurian legend (except for T.H. White's take) and so there was no way DAoC was even on the radar. Of course, AO turned out to be a buggy mess, Shadowbane would take 3 more years to come to market, and when DAoC finally came around in October of 2001, I got hooked like I've rarely been hooked on a game. I totally agree with you on this- fortunately as I grow older and busier I have less time to follow hype.

I generally agree with Rabbit on the effect of hype on expectations. Playing Bioshock was a little bit of let down after reading all the superlatives. On the other hand, I didn't have any interest in Oblivion until I saw all the people on this site going nuts over it, and from the opening hour of playing it I was just hooked into it. So I agree with Danjo, too, about it just depending on the game itself whether you end up thinking it's worth the hype.

With HALO specifically, the hype is hard to deal with because I don't have a 360 and so can't play it. I don't actually want to play it, but I have this nagging feeling that I should want to play it. That's the power of hype working its magic on me.

One of these days I need to throw a big, unexpected barbeque and call it an OMGWTFBBQ.

SHUTUP RABBIT YOU ARE AN F'ING IDIOT! This going to be the best game ever!!! .... .... calm... .. . ... down.... ... ... deep breath. Sorry, fanboyism got ahold of me for a sec. Well said, sounds like you are describing me as well.

zeroKFE wrote:
Staats wrote:

Time spent reading previews and hype is time that could be playing games.

Not when you are at work.

Touché, fruit f*cker.

Funkenpants wrote:

I don't actually want to play it, but I have this nagging feeling that I should want to play it. That's the power of hype working its magic on me.

I think you nailed it right there.

Funkenpants wrote:

I don't actually want to play it, but I have this nagging feeling that I should want to play it. That's the power of hype working its magic on me.

I find myself in this boat more and more often lately. Halo 3, Bioshock, even games like HL2 that have been out for a while are like this to me. There have been a few here and there that I've picked up, but those are few and far between. More often than not, I wind up grabbing a demo if there's one available(Bioshock), or just ignoring it entirely in other cases(Halo3, HL2).

Overall, I think the giant hype machines need to settle themselves down some. There really isn't much of a reason to build them up to the levels people are, when 90% of the time they're just a letdown waiting to happen.

Funkenpants wrote:

With HALO specifically, the hype is hard to deal with because I don't have a 360 and so can't play it. I don't actually want to play it, but I have this nagging feeling that I should want to play it. That's the power of hype working its magic on me.

Hit the nail on the head right there for me. During my younger years I'd feel almost obligated to buy and play it, since I was worried if I could even call myself a gamer if I didn't. That damn hype machine making me question my identity *shakes fist*. Thankfully now I have a more independent mind and am able to make my own decisions.

On the topic of disappointing games, the one that really comes to mind for me is Jade Empire. Wasn't a horrible game by any means, but I felt very disappointed with Bioware after their previous games. Much too easy and soooo short for a rpg.

I'm trying to avoid all Fallout 3 stuff right now. Considering it's still at least a year away any rumors or "info" would most likely be outdated by the time the game releases. Plus, I don't want to get myself all worked up on a game that I won't even be able to play for a good while. Personally, I had written off hopes for a Fallout sequel, so any decent iteration of that franchise will make me happy.

I've already played Halo 3, I know it's good!