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Publishers Should Stop Bullshitting Us With Target Renders: #StopFalseAdvertisment

M

Mlatador

Banned


In the light of the recent Watch Dogs and Darks Souls II "downgradeatons", it occured to me (again) how fed up Video Gamers have gotten with Publishers being deliberately dishonest about their upcoming products.

Since decades they've been deceiving (us) Video-Gamers in the form of "Target Renders", Bullshots and False Promises, in order to build up hype and postive press for their games and tested how far they can go with this extremely dubious practise(s).

Some Examples:

  • I think everyone remembers the infamous Killzone 2 E3 2005 Trailer (which was a pure CGI) and what Jack Treton had to say about it:
  • http://youtu.be/nI15BGscFac?t=3m46s

    That is real gameplay
    Click to expand...
  • Here is a more recent example (2013) with the Director of Watch Dogs, Jonathan Morin, who, when asked about the Watch Dogs downgraded visuals said this:

    Jonathan Morin said:
    "There's no scale down in quality, especially the next-gen versions," Morin said, discussing some of the negative reaction to recent trailers with us at Eurogamer Expo this afternoon. "It's pretty much the opposite. What we showed at E3 2012 in a lot of respects was less good. I think it's in the details. So no, there's no scale down."
    Click to expand...
  • Here another one, regarding Darks Sould II: Dark Souls II Downgrade NeoGAF Thread
  • And this is just the Tip of the iceberg. Check the biggest downgrades from initial reveal thread for other examples.

How should Gamers feel about that?

I say NO MORE! It's time for Publishers to STOP IT! We don't want to be lied to anymore!

This shitty practise of "Target Renders", in other words, "fabricated visuals to trick your customers into believing your game looks a certain way that's not representative of the final product" is pretty outrageous. EVEN MORE SO if companies have the nerve to sell those target renders as actual gameplay. This is deception at its finest!

Target Renders should be banned from previews/the E3 stage once and for all.

OR they need to be labeled as such: "This is not real gameplay footage", "These are not the final graphics", "This is not running on target hardware" etc. Publishers should stop demoing those fake "target renders" with real console controllers, only to make it look like they are playing the game on target hardware. This is some borderline deceptive bullshit!

Do they think gamers are stupid and will never find out or be ok with it? Ubisoft deserve all the flak they get and hopefully serve as an example for other publishers, which clearly are to blame as well.

#SayNoToTargetRenders
#StopFalseAdvertisement

So if you are as fed up as I am/many other's are then tweet this hashtag to the twitter of every game Publishers who you feel deceived you, the E3 and especially your favorite (or least favorite) gaming press sites, IN ORDER TO MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!

Example:
Nathan_Drake said:
tweet them all

@E3 @Ubisoft @IGN @gameinformer #SayNoToTargetRenders #StopFalseAdvertisement

Nice Post
Click to expand...

UPDATE:

Jim Sterlings excellent commentary on the matter: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/8876-A-Vertical-Slice-Of-Steaming-Bullshots

UPDATE 2:

Twitter Campain Site is live: https://twitter.com/SayNoToTargetRe Follow and spread the word!!! Let the Publishers know!
 
I'm actually getting sick and tired of it too, honestly. Lying to your own consumers for the sake of profit... that's pretty low.
 
The Dark Souls one doesn't make any sense either considering it was running like the demos during its public beta. The entire debacle just makes me go wat.
 
Mlatador said:
Click to expand...


  • That was misleading for another reason on Tretton's part. You have to keep listening to that comment to realize that he wasn't referring to Killzone, even though that's what Geoff was asking him about. He says "And that's one thing Ted wanted to make sure everyone understood, that is real gameplay". Ted is Ted Price, so he was referring to that Resistance footage that was shown at the same E3.
 
OR they need to be labeled as such: "This is not real gameplay footage", "These are not the final graphics", "This is not running on target hardware"
Click to expand...

Most of what you're railing against does feature a disclaimer like that at some point. They could probably stand to be more obvious, yes, but it is there in a lot of cases.

I agree that there's a slimy side to this, but OP is too quick to attribute malice and deception to something that's an unavoidable part of game development. (Changes, which may or may not take the form of downgrades.)
 
Naw...target renders are good for development, a good way to visualize the game for the dev and publiser before everything is finished...probably should keep them internal though
 
I'm fed up with it as all, but it goes far beyond target renders, from broken products to dishonesty when it comes to the amount of content.

Think about any other industry, lets use film. If consumers were sold on The Amazing Spiderman 2 from trailers, told the movie was to be 2 hours long and an all around great film, but instead the CG ended up looking nothing like the trailers, the movie was only 90 minutes and because of poor editing 15 of those minutes were muted or out of sync because they wanted to rush it out the door. There is absolutely no way in hell that they would get away with it, yet in gaming, they do. Continuously.
 
Mlatador said:
OR they need to be labeled as such: "These are not the final graphics", "This is not running on target hardware" etc.
Click to expand...

I've seen some disclaimers like that in the past. Problem is that some presentations may be actual gameplay, but just run on more powerful hardware for a demo.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong on anything but I don't see any problem with target renders. Sure it sucks to see these games yet downgraded but its not like they purposefully downgrade their game. Target renders are what they want their game to be like when it releases in however many years or months. Unfortunately games just don't always pan out as the developers hope (see: every Molyneux game).
 
I vote with my wallet.
Sadly there are TOO many that this happens to and they are games that people really want to play.
I wish this movement well though. Good luck.
 
FuriousDark said:
Yeah, that'll show em.

#stopkony
Click to expand...

See this guy right here. I don't like it when people shoot down an idea just to get that quirky first response. I wish we could move past shit like that.

But OP, this is how movements like that start. Keep on keepin' on homie.
 
I think target renders are fine so long as they are explicitly presented as such. You have to remember that - at the time companies show these renders, the game usually isn't in a presentable state yet. They'd like to show actual gameplay but they can't because it's not ready to be shown. Now, yes, you could say that they should wait showing it until it's ready but I don't think this is enough of an issue to completely change entire marketing campaign schedules over. However, yes, misleading presentations (such as saying "this is all running in realtime" without mentioning that it's running in realtime on a 3000$ supercomputer) should definitely be banned from events such as E3.
 
There's usually a disclaimer. In addition to that, it's obvious that's not gameplay footage in most cases.

I'm all for it because it builds hype. Besides, it's obvious that this is early in the dev cycle in excess of 14+ months away from shipping date. Take into differences in platforms as well.
 
96401_1215719578531_full1.jpg
 
they've been doing this shit since forever

qTLah3o.png


It's not going to stop. Just use your brain. I always assume that if an initial reveal looks too good to be true... it's because it is too good to be true. I did it with Watch Dogs at E3 2012, too, so this whole controversy hasn't really affected me all that much...
 
Does this mean you're fine with poor performance or are you firm in the belief that it's a deliberate deceptive tactic?
 
Target Renders or Sizzle Reels are typical, though they should be labeled appropriately.

However graphics while a game is in development changes sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. I don't think developers downgrade graphics on purpose, but decisions made when rubber hits the road and you need another 6ms and something has to change. Either it be textures, polys, animation, or whatever.
 
I don't think there is much of a solution just by nature of how game development works. Sometimes a snag is hit and something has to give.

That said, it is definitely disheartening to see stuff like the Dark Souls massive lighting changes considering how much they talked about it. Though I personally had a much bigger issue with that Bioshock Infinite gameplay that is so much more impressive and beyond the scope of the game we got, it was pretty clear the game had development snags so I suppose it was writing on the wall.
 
Bullshots and target renders are really powerful, so I doubt a twitter campaign will make publishers drop them. People see "amazing graphics" at E3 and start to get hyped for the release, they make an emotional investment in the game's future, and when the inevitable graphical downgrade hits, they're already committed to the game.
 
element said:
Target Renders or Sizzle Reels are typical, though they should be labeled appropriately.

However graphics while a game is in development changes sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. I don't think developers downgrade graphics on purpose, but decisions made when rubber hits the road and you need another 6ms and something has to change. Either it be textures, polys, animation, or whatever.
Click to expand...

I know you probably get this a lot but it seems your tag is more of the opposite of what this thread is talking about. Those old screens of MGS4 were awful.
 
I definitely don't think that publishers should lie, but it's a lot more complicated than "target renders"--optimization passes are the last thing done for the game. It's not possible to show a game early in a way that looks like the final product and runs like the final product in a lot of cases.

In the mean time, I also think a healthy critical perspective on games is a good thing for prospective consumers. Like, I'm not sure upset about the Watch_Dogs or Dark Souls II (or Alien: CM or Killzone 2 or any other game) failures to hit the target renders, in part because when I'm interested in a game I still maintain an air of skepticism and detachment. Obsessing about something, reading every last kernel of news, really buying in to everything you see... it doesn't really give you any value. And once a game does come out, not buying it on release day, giving it a few days and waiting on reviews, impressions... it can really help dodge land-mines.

Yes, the same thing does apply to trailers for films as well. Getting strongly invested in marketing rather than the real product is a bad idea.

RE: "Put a tagline saying it's not final", they often do -- these images/videos represent a product under development. It doesn't say "Hey the final product might not look as good" because no one would ever say that, that's crazy.
 
I honestly don't think there's much in the way of trying to be purposely deceitful when it comes to Watch Dogs at least, it's just the current state of things.


We all know the stories with E3 and companies making games or vids to show what it's "going" to look like, and the game is no where near a finished/final build to allow this. You either have E3's where you get new, exciting trailers you can freak out over, or title screens with voice overs like the Uncharted 4 reveal. Some companies do one, some the other.


Now in the case of Watch Dogs, I can easily see a situation where "the eyes are too big for the stomach". In other words, you have all these things you want to do, all these moving parts at once, and then only when you throw everything together in your actual game build do you realize "Holy shit this isn't going to work! The game doesn't run/has FPS that jumps all over the place!"



So basically, yeah, pick one: Onstage "demos" or trailers of games a year or two away from release, or just title screens and people just talking about how awesome their game is going to be.
 
This doesn't seem particularly nefarious unless there is a case where someone shows a nice target render, and then don't show anything else until the game is on shelves. In almost all cases consumers will have ample opportunity to see what the actual game looks like before they buy it.

I guess it sounds like the Dark Souls one might be pretty close to this, since it was really close to release that the changes came to light.
 
Infamous is probably the only one with Killzone Shadow Fall that I can think of that pretty much looks like how it was revealed in the past year.
 
I agree 100 percent stop showing fake pre rendered stuff and pass it off as in game. In the uk cod makers got sued because they where showing fake tv commericals
 
I have to say this is kinda dumb. No target renders for E3? What about vertical slices that will get moved around or replaced (in cases like bioshock infinite)? In this definition, it'd fall in the same category.

And you know what you have created? Congratulations, you've cancelled out E3.

Until a game ships, everything is in development and everything changes: how much light source can be budgeted, how much memory, how things will look. If you can't rough in and show off, then you have nothing to work with until a game goes gold.
 
gwiz210 said:
See this guy right here. I don't like it when people shoot down an idea just to get that quirky first response. I wish we could move past shit like that.

But OP, this is how movements like that start. Keep on keepin' on homie.
Click to expand...

Heh, what? I'm not camping the forum trying to respond to every new post first.

These social media protests/"revolutions" are the laziest ways to try and enact change. It's putting in the bare minimum. It's a D+ paper. A lot of the organizers (not particularly this post) just want to feel like William Wallace thinking they're fighting some big bad entity. At worst they just add something to their CV.

The only way to change the way something works in this instance is by not buying the game. They couldn't give two shits what you think if you're just going to pony up the cash when the game drops.
 
Metalingus5150 said:
I vote with my wallet.
Click to expand...

I agree with this in general principal, but if I never gave money to companies that used CG trailers or touched-up screenshots I wouldn't be playing anything at all. The real issue isn't that companies use CG or bullshots to represent their games, it's that they never tell us it's bullshit to begin with. Some general rules I'd like to see:

- If a game is being shown running on a PC, full specs must be given.
- If a game trailer shows in-game footage that clearly isn't being run on any of the systems it's being released for (like the GTA V commercials), it should clearly state "footage not representative of any version to be released" or something like that.
- If actual, real in-game footage is being shown for a multi-platform release, that platform needs to be identified.

And that's just to start.
 
The nature of game development means these things will happen unfortunately.

The only solution would be for them only show the game once its finished. Is that what people would prefer?

Now im very much against bullshots, but target renders is a grey area. Consumers and the media need to learn to see them for what they are.
 
Here's the problem. The gaming media isn't going to turn down bullshots and target renders when they have the chance to publish a scoop or exclusive on a new game reveal. It's unrealistic to expect them to, especially when we're all chomping at the bit to see those reveals. The onus is entirely on the game publishers, so don't bother tweeting to IGN, Game Informer, or any other outlet.

Publishers should just do what Nintendo does, they rarely scam in this way since the Gamecube Zelda "reveal" which backfired. These days they don't show much of a game until it is ready to be shown, and other devs / pubs should follow suit.
 
Stop pre-ordering. That's all that is needed to end this problem. If you don't pre-order a game then you won't have to rely on prerelease coverage.

Please stop pre-ordering games.
 
Kuro said:
I know you probably get this a lot but it seems your tag is more of the opposite of what this thread is talking about. Those old screens of MGS4 were awful.
Click to expand...
My comments in my tag are related to technology.MGS4 was built on old technology/tools. What I expected with MGS4 is was what we are seeing now with Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, totally built from the ground up Fox Engine not a port of their old PS2 tech and tools.
 
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