Press Pass: How Hype Helps (and Hurts) High-Profile Hits

Can pure hype prop up a clunker in the reviews? Do overhyped games get punished by critics? Press Pass investigates.
10/23/2008 6:27 PM | 2 Comments | Page 1 of 2

Sometimes it seems like the game industry is drowning in pre-release hype. Before a major game hits store shelves these days, potential players can look forward to months, sometimes years, of slowly leaked information, screenshots, trailers, interviews, gameplay videos, demos, developer diaries, blogs, events, flashy print and TV ads and more. It's all designed to breed familiarity among gamers so that, by the time they're able to actually buy the long-hyped game, they're already intimately comfortable with its look, its feel and, most importantly, with the idea of owning it.

But while the end-consumer is the main target of all this promotion, the critics are definitely an important secondary audience for promotionally minded game publishers. Even the most secluded reviewer can't help but be exposed to the deafening roar of pre-release hype for the biggest releases. But does this hype have an effect on the final critical reception of a game? And if so, is the net result good or bad?

The press-influencing power of pre-release hype is far from new. "I still remember Earthworm Jim from 1994," said game journalism veteran and game historian Steven Kent. "When other journalists are buying into the hype and calling a title 'The best game of the decade,' it takes guts to give a game a C or a D. Look, two years after Earthworm Jim, Nintendo released Super Mario 64. I think 1994 may have been a bit early for best-of-decade accolades."

And it seems hype hasn't lost its effectiveness as a press-swaying tool in the new millennium, either. "There are definitely [recent] cases where pre-release hype has helped games score somewhat unrealistically high scores," said freelancer Tim Stevens. "Halo 3 comes to mind; great game, but I think the prevalence of 10/10 reviews was at least somewhat driven by a bunch of reviewers getting a little too excited about getting early access to that holiday's hot release."

Halo 3 wasn't the only recent game that some journalists feel received a hype-inflated score. "I think Grand Theft Auto IV was generally given a higher score than it deserved even on my own publication, Gamer 2.0," said Executive Editor Anthony Perez. "The franchise carries so much clout in both the industry and amongst gamers that there is an initial 'wow' factor that comes from its presentation." Another game journalist, who asked to remain anonymous to protect his relationship with Rockstar, called the company's crime simulator the "one shameless, ultimate example of hype influencing review scores ... Virtually every publication -- print and online -- rubber-stamped GTA IV with a perfect score, and once the dust settled, it became increasingly clear that GTA IV was actually fairly disappointing."

And even without a big marketing push, some franchises get hyped in the press based on name recognition alone. "Trying to review a game when it's [part] of a revered series is something where hype dodging becomes a real problem," said freelancer Kris Rosado. "You want the game to be good because of its pedigree, but sometimes you're faced with something that just doesn't live up to it." And critics often aren't too eager to burst the hype bubble that develops among fans of some high-profile games and series. "Nobody wants to get the Nintendites mad by criticizing a Mario or a Zelda," Kent said. "Nobody is going to feel comfortable dousing LittleBigPlanet, Heavy Rain or Halo. That is the lonely part of the job. It's also the most important part of the job."