CD Projekt Red took almost a decade to build the big one Ciberpunk 2077 mythos. Game reviewers only had a couple of days to evaluate it and were ambushed on how to represent it. Players who had dropped $ 60 at this palace of cyberpunk pleasure in 2019 collapsed; all the hot air came out squeaking. A professional reviewer, Kallie Plagge, gave Ciberpunk 2077 a 7/10 on GameSpot“Not even a frying pan,” criticizing him for building a one-dimensional world, disconnected side missions, and large-scale technical problems. The mass harassment attended the review. The reactionary YouTubers, who had no access to the game, devoted long videos to dismantling their critique, dissecting their playing time and playing style. But a few days later, once the players had finally played Ciberpunk 2077 themselves, many made a 180. “Everyone talked shit about her, but I’m starting to agree with Kelly [sp] Plagge “, read a popular post on / r / cyberpunkgame.
CD Projekt Red is not the first or only gaming company that does psy-ops marketing. In 2016, No Man’s Sky he literally promised the world and infinite others; it was predicted to be the most expansive, the most immersive, the most the majority game so far. But since the studio behind it, Hello Games, didn’t offer it to reviewers before the release, gamers discovered the hardest way to implement basics like multiplayer connectivity. This year alone, WIRED received more than a dozen bids to review the big games that came with NDA attached. It’s not always to hide flaws; sometimes it’s to avoid spoilers, or the result of an overly jealous public relations team. But putting such handcuffs on reviewers ultimately hurts people who buy games.
As the size of the gaming industry market totals $ 60.4 billion, the pressure to micromanage the review system is growing. As an example, Bloomberg has reported that CD Projekt Red developer bonuses depended on 90+ on Metacritic. (That changed after the release.) The company had amassed the equivalent of a video game to a goblin in a bottle. So he did what everyone else does when he gets a minimum of power: control the narrative. CD Projekt Red rejected WIRED’s request for comment.
The same incentives also pit the system against developers, who take out six-day workweeks and sacrifice work-life balance to manifest slogans such as “a city that is bigger than life,” setting new standards in terms of visuals, complexity and depth “. These are modern expectations for a 60-hour game with AAA open world, an increasingly inflated and increasingly unsustainable genre. In June, former PlayStation executive Sean Layden lamented the huge financial and workload involved in developing such games on GamesIndustry.biz. “I think the industry in general needs to sit down and say,‘ Okay, what are we building? What is the public’s expectation? What is the best way to convey our story and say what we have to say? “
Eight million pre-orders, however, claim that all this stage management benefits someone. Video games are particularly susceptible to exchange. Games are identities and hobbies: a place to be yourself and explore who you are, and something you do and own. Better customization, bigger worlds, bigger graphics (more, more, more) is unsustainable. But a system that feeds on hope will only grow as great as the trust placed in it.
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