How Video Game Trailers Mislead Audiences
How Video Game Trailers Mislead Audiences
Top 10 Best Video Game Trailers of 2020 So Far
Welcome to MojoPlays! Today, we’re looking at how video game trailers mislead audiences. Just what constitutes false advertising? For this video, we’re looking at the ways trailers can lie to, trick, or just confuse would-be players, and whether this is okay. In the last two decades, graphics technology in video games has improved by leaps and bounds; we’ve gone from the blocky polygons of the PlayStation 1 era to photorealism on every platform. Because of this, fully CGI, pre-rendered trailers and cutscenes have fallen by the wayside; there’s simply no reason to choose CGI nowadays over in-game rendering for the most part. Certain games like “World of Warcraft” or “League of Legends” may still have exciting, pre-rendered trailers, but many games that pride themselves on graphics like those from Naughty Dog, Rockstar or CD Projekt Red all use in-game rendering. But while fans of “WoW” and “League” are fine with flashy CGI scenes, many other games have been slammed and called “unrepresentative” for the same thing. “Killzone 2” is one infamous example; its 2005 E3 trailer was aspirational, showing graphics that were far better than what could be achieved. Luckily when the game finally released four years later, it did boast some of the best graphics ever seen on the PS3, so it’s still fondly remembered. More games yet have used pre-rendered graphics in bad faith, however; the famously bad “Aliens: Colonial Marines” had pre-rendered trailers because the actual gameplay was so full of technical issues it couldn’t be shown to players. But people aren’t always upset by trailers being unrepresentative. As said, many bombastic cinematics are well-received; “Overwatch’s” story-centric FMVs are animated at an incredibly high quality and help us get to know the game’s characters and world, while “Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood’s” premiere trailer was dramatic and set the game’s tone and conveyed the story. “The Witcher 3”, despite having outstanding in-game graphics, also used high-quality cinematics in its marketing to great effect. But no matter how good and memorable a cinematic is, or how outstanding the finished game is, they’re still always going to be unrepresentative of the actual gameplay. This is especially true for mobile games: “Clash of Clans” has CGI trailers that are absolutely nothing like the actual game. The reason developers get away with it is that gamers know when they’re watching a pre-rendered cinematic vs actual gameplay footage; if you know what you’re seeing is not the finished game, then it legally isn’t false advertising in the United States. But what about when companies outright deceive their audiences? Ubisoft infamously did this with the E3 demo for “Watch Dogs”, which was running on a high-end PC rather than a next-gen console. When the game released and players perceived it had gone through a graphical “downgrade”, it was immensely controversial. Even on PC, mods were necessary to create the high-quality graphics seen at E3. The memory of this is so persistent that in 2020 when Epic released a demo of Unreal Engine 5, they had to state repeatedly and emphatically that it was running on a developer-build PS5 . But “Watch Dogs” wasn’t investigated for misleading players; instead both, “Aliens: Colonial Marines” and, in 2016, “No Man’s Sky” were. “No Man’s Sky” was panned upon release for not living up to the pre-release material, giving players a vast, empty universe to explore with almost nothing to do and no story whatsoever. Though “No Man’s Sky” has been enormously improved since release, and the real culprit behind the disappointment was Sony’s overzealous advertising campaign, plenty of players have been unable to forgive the developers. “The Last of Us: Part II” might be the worst offender in this regard; fake cutscenes were generated and put into the trailers to imply to players that certain characters would play a much larger role in the anticipated sequel than they did in the end, all for the sake of avoiding spoilers. Harsh review restrictions preventing outlets from discussing any major story beats contributed to the intense backlash against the game – but it’s hard to understate the impact that outright tricking fans had. Trailers don’t have to be malicious to be misleading, however. Sometimes, they’re just confusing, plain and simple, leaving players not knowing what to expect from the finished product. “Dead Island’s” famous cinematic is an example of this. The trailer told players they’d be fighting zombies on a tropical island, but had a serious and sincere tone that the finished game – which was zany – never struck. “Fallout 76” had similarly unrepresentative trailers; there was the popular “Country Roads” trailer that showed all the best parts of West Virginia with none of the empty brokenness that the final game was known for. But it also had a bizarre live-action trailer, combining live-action actors with sleek CGI animation. Neither properly conveyed that at launch, you’d be spending your time in “Fallout 76” talking to boring robots and fighting game-breaking bugs more than deathclaws. But even when trailers are investigated for bad business practices, like in the case of “Colonial Marines” and “No Man’s Sky”, they’re rarely – if ever – disciplined. This is because FTC guidelines say that as long as the “average consumer” can tell the difference between an ad and the finished product, it’s not false advertising. These regulations weren’t made with video games in mind, which is why they don’t really fit in the case of unrepresentative trailers. Even when trailers are investigated by regulatory bodies, like when “Call of Duty 2” was examined by the UK’s Advertising Standards Agency for its pre-rendered, gameplay-esque trailer, all that happened was the ad was eventually pulled from TV - and only in the UK for that matter. There’s no industry-wide regulation that prevents misleading trailers from existing, which is why they continue to flourish. Whether on purpose or not, bad intentions or otherwise, many end-users have been disappointed with video games after their release over the years. It’s often impossible to tell what a finished game will actually be like, and an industry built on pre-ordering games still in development based on unfinished material certainly doesn’t help. The best way to avoid being duped by a shady trailer is to wait until reviews roll in and see the gameplay for yourself. But just because it can be avoided doesn’t mean these business practices on the part of giant publishers are okay, or that they’re ever going to stop.