Every year, we gamers are bombarded from every direction by Studios, Cons, Game Report Sites, Fan sites and our fellow gamers. We are given a screen shot and our imagination runs wild, subconsciously creating a game with all the things that we want, and none of the stuff we don’t. Every game is sold by rumors, gossip, hype and most importantly BADASS CINEMATIC TRAILERS! We see detailed articles, reviews, discussions written in such great detail, that one would think that these Holy Tomes were more than just required minimum word count posting for the writer to make a quick buck.
What are we actually reading though? 15-minute impressions of specifically selected material for review? Maybe we are lucky that they played for a couple of days, in a controlled environment surrounded by 20 random strangers, one of which is in general chat spamming a gold-buying website, 19 of which submit violation reports and then wait as the spammer is investigated and subsequently banned. Then, the moment these strangers see normalcy return to general chat, the spammer returns. These demos, press releases, game report sites, gameplay teasers at cons, are nothing more than a limited, controlled view. We read an article about a controlled environment and experience, written by people who if they do not like something, will still spin it in a good light, or just not write about it, to ensure that they are asked back for the next installment of “Let’s sell shit and half-assed reviews to the playerbase”. We as the player base, then claw and kick our way over each other as we jump into Beta Testing, which most of the time, really isn’t testing anymore. It is either a free or purchased preview of the game in most cases. In reality, most studios will not implement or do not have the time and resources to make major changes and overhauls to their game during Beta.
Maybe my view is skewed.
Maybe there is nothing wrong with the system.
Maybe it is me.