How to announce new video games – Reading folder

A reader looks at how publishers reveal new video games and who does it best, from Bethesda to Nintendo …

Before starting this semi-talk, I would like to say that I am aware that nothing to do with video games is important. They are, by their very nature, an insignificant form of entertainment, and that concerns me a lot when it seems to be the most important concern in people's lives. Although I think it's only the Internet that amplifies everything, you can see exactly the same attitudes in discussions about movies, comics and music. And heck, probably gardening and hooking for everything I know.

That said, there are two things that really bother me about video games and two of them have appeared in GC 's recent interview with Bethesda spokesperson, Pete Hines. I found it interesting on many levels, not least because publishers rarely discuss these issues. The problems are the publication dates and the overviews.

We all know how crazy the release dates are, with many major games being played on the same day or week, and the majority of all major games are released every three months at the end of the year. Not only is this madness in terms of money spent and time needed, but it also ensures that smaller and less traditional games are blocked – which has happened many times with Bethesda games such as Dishonored 2 and Wolfenstein II.

Unfortunately, Pete Hines refused to acknowledge this as a problem, although he reluctantly admitted that Wolfenstein II did not sell as well as he could have done. His only defense of the practice was, oddly, that things have always been like that, which seems like a ridiculous excuse to continue anyway. So, if the society most affected by the practice does not have a hint of change, I do not think anyone will.

The other problem concerns the insights and the timing of revealing a game. Again, Bethesda is the ideal person to comment on this because it inspired the recent fashion of the announcement of a game just six months before its release. They never really explained why, but the assumption is a mix of not wanting people to get tired of a game before the release and … wanting to hide something that did not seem so great. (Fallout 4 was the first game treated this way and, although the game went well, the graphics were very disappointing, which I think they were trying to hide).

But at E3, Bethesda has completely changed tactics and announced Starfield and The Elder Scrolls VI by implying that they would not be out for years, and probably not until the next generation. Again, they did not really explain (and this is not an inconsistency of Pete Hines, talk about this topic without really giving an answer is much better than most publishers) beyond the idea that they are tired of people asking about the games.

I heard some people say that they did not want spoilers and that it was "obvious" that a new Elder Scrolls was coming, but I think this little game of mind at E3 was worth it. Nothing has been revealed by the revelation, the implication is that we will no longer hear about it for at least a year (so no constant flow of information), but we now know exactly what Bethesda Game Studios is working on .

I think the argument against this idea is that people like surprises but I do not think that Fallout 4 was really a surprise, that I felt a bit of a shadow and I ended up m '# 39; worry about its quality.

You could see Microsoft struggling with these issues at E3, where they announced a few games in half, but they did not want to admit that none of them were coming out on Xbox One. If all things were equal then I would have preferred that they had announced Fable IV and all that they are working on, because if they do not, it makes you fear that they're working on nothing – which for Microsoft has certainly been C is true for several years.

Surprisingly, it's Nintendo that seems to have found the right balance lately, since they have announced long-term projects (Metroid Prime 4 and Bayonetta 3), like Bethesda, and that they have not got them restarted. This week, they also announced medium-term projects (Luigi's Mansion 3 and Animal Crossing) that will come out next year with a preview of what they will look like. And they have smaller projects, like the portage of New Super Mario Bros. U, that they announced a few months before their release.

For me, it's the perfect way to do things and I hope other companies will follow them. And yes, you read correctly: I congratulate Nintendo for their marketing and say that other companies should follow them. Really we live in strange times …

By the Sanza reader

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