I have a very strange love for the Fable series. I didn’t own an Xbox when Fable 1 was released, I had never read any of the hype, and I had never seen anything on the game besides a single tiny thumbnail in an Electronics gaming monthly. So, when I came home from school, and received a phone call from a friend, who told me that Fable was here, my only response was, so what?

I should probably explain that my friend is like one of those dogs that when you say it’s name too many times, it shits itself. So, when I showed a complete lack of interest in a game I had never heard of, I was then treated, in a shrieking pre-pubescent voice, why I was wrong.
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A big can for a big factor

I was looking through some of my older games from these past years, just thinking about how much I enjoyed the game and how it was treated by the general public. This lead me to think about one of the most crippling factor of a game nowadays: hype.

Hype falls into two categories: lack of hype, and too much hype. Confused? Let me explain. Hype is the marketing around a game and how it is advertised before it’s release, basically it’s the attention surrounding the game. Hype has many forms, whether this be commercials, promises from developers (I’m looking at you Fable and SPORE), trailers, or even forums and general speculation from others. All of these forms of attention add to the hype behind the game, and as the hype increases, the general consumer starts to care more about the game until release day comes.

Now here is where many titles failed, the hype exceeds the game itself and becomes a let down for those who expected the best from the game. Let’s take an example (oh there are so many to choose from). Let’s take SPORE, created by Will Wright. He made so many claims about the sheer awe that this game would bring and all of the possibilities within SPORE. One of the promises was an expansive online component where you would be able to travel to other people’s planets and chill with them or wage war against them. Sounds great right? Yes, and the public loved the idea. So what was the turn out? Single player with other people’s planets added to an encyclopedia, so in essence, yes they do exist in the game but they act the same as every other damn A.I. in the game.

Hype works in two ways though, some games get over-hyped and some games get  under-hyped and are left to an unknown release. These under-hyped games can sometimes turn out to be amazing and very entertaining. Something I’ve observed with under-hyped games are that no one forms any premature opinions on the games because no one knows what to expect, and without those opinions you enjoy the game for what it is, instead of what you expected from it.

Want to enjoy a game? Wait ’till it comes out to judge it. Want to hate a game? Keep raising your expectations of off marketing ploys. It’s as simple as that.