False Advertising - Scott The Woz

hey y'all scott here please for the love of god don't mind me i'm just doing some touch-ups to my high school yearbook photo you think they'd let me do retakes nine years later there's got to be a grace period i've been having trouble going to sleep thinking about what people thought of me back then so hopefully this will change their minds okay and we're done i actually turned it down i didn't want to get too late telling the truth what are you a [ __ ] i'll be honest about how your video game looks when you can just lie and deal with it when it's already bought false advertising is how many companies roll we've all seen those fast food comparison shots this is what's advertised and this is what i got what the hell was the time for marketing they'll use something that represents the final product but you do some color correction adjust the lighting tweak a few angles here and there boom good enough for air and when it comes to video games they are no stranger to catfishing why show actual gameplay in your ad when you can choose something that's neither a game nor being played that's way easier to disappoint players than to entice them with the truth no matter what false advertising is always going to stick with gaming it's been there since the very start and it'll be there till the very end in four months advertisers know they could just show you what the actual game is going to be like or they could visualize what it will feel like garbage sometimes advertisements don't necessarily lie but with the way they're set up you come in with certain expectations with the mario galaxy commercials in box art i thought you could fly through space just like this to each of the galaxies instead they just play a cut scene of mario flying and when you would fly in game it would mostly just be an automated thing going from one place to another you did get a power up late in the game the red star and that let you freely fly for a decent amount of time but it was only in one level and the hub world i wanted to cream through space to all these levels like how this looked and super mario galaxy just ended up being my favorite game of all time i'll take the single tier this is kind of the mentality of a lot of old school box are boxer in general is supposed to be an artistic representation of the game you're buying of course it shouldn't lie but if you're waiting for an exact moment in the game to look just like the box art well that's a toughy i don't think this ever happened in title legends obviously these taken hyperbolized the best and most defining moments of the game to make for a great appealing piece of art that also wasn't misleading which is a difficult thing to balance atari thought we were idiots this isn't misleading because under the right mindset the game will make you feel like this soul eating soap you thought we were past this level of deception oh no no no see many have noticed how box art has become more in line with what we expect out of our games these days but the angst behind the atari boxer lives on in the form of trailers we could show the product and get people excited or we could not show the product and get people excited and pissed eventually hey sometimes you just have to show something and that something isn't enough america's biggest fear becomes a reality the gamers will revolt so it's obviously enticing to make your game look as appealing as possible in your big reveal trailer it's okay to use a few scenes not actually in the game maybe put some cgi there for the sake of cinema maybe put that in it's not in the game but we can make it happen in the game right this is how legends are born that island is one of my go-to picks for deceiving trailers and it's one of the best ones of all time this incredible emotional three-minute long cinematic masterpiece showing a family being attacked and losing their lives to a zombie outbreak all played in reverse there's so much you can analyze with this trailer it put dead island on the map for so many players this trailer was the first time i had even heard of the game it really set the title up to be a gripping emotional story of a zombie apocalypse and the emotional turmoil that ensues because of it here's the first thing you see putting the disc in shrunken head broken legs body parts on the concrete not saying dead island is a bad game at all but the trailer and the game are two completely different beasts the tone in the game is still fairly serious but not as serious or emotionally gripping as the trailer would lead you to believe these characters have nothing to do with the game other than showing remnants of the outbreak as it first occurred on the island the developer techland even went into the game after the trailer came out to try to adjust the tone as much as possible to be more in line with it but these still feel like two different things it just shows how powerful marketing can be making what's something you have no prior interest in but this was a case of false advertising just because we let somebody talented make our trailer oops sometimes false advertising is very much deliberate as it sets you up for a massive shock while playing the game metal gear solid 2 is a prime example as you think you'll just play a snake the whole game nah you're playing the rest of the game as this new character ryden final fantasy 7 remake well with the title literally involving the word remake it sets you up to expect the story to basically follow the same steps as the original also the entirety of the original on reality this was a [ __ ] lie the last was part two on top of balloon the same metal gear solid joke of you thought you were playing as this character laugh they also altered certain cutscenes for its trailers to make the character drill look older in them so that way with viewers knowing he's aged they were led to believe he was in more of the game than he really was when in reality they altered flashback scenes made him look older and put them in the trailer see i don't really consider that to be false advertising at least in the more negative sense rather it's leading players in another direction or just not showing things to avoid spoilers so it's just being an ass but then we have just the flat out lies some of the most despicable loathsome moments in the video game industry the simpsons game this game had the audacity to say in its e3 2007 trailer was releasing on every platform ever made coming this fall to every platform ever made wow even the psp see most people would assume that's a joke but you forget to take into consideration most people some people genuinely thought this game was coming to all these platforms so we had to re-release the trailer the voiceover was the same but the platform showcased were ah true well i said it was ridiculous for anybody to assume the original trailer wasn't a joke i think some of the platform choices were incredibly misleading the gameboy advance and gamecube were still being supported at this time so out of all platforms to put there as a joke those are really odd choices considering i don't think it was too far fetched to expect the game boy advance or gamecube version in 2007 or the vic 20. the box itself can be pretty deceitful sometimes the legend of zelda breath of the wild on wii u says it supports the wii remote and nunchuck and classic controller and lying this was just a misprint but there was speculation in the early days of breath of the wild's development that it would allow players to use motion controls like discovered sword on the wii now supporting one weird remote by itself i think only the bravest speculated that dumont sega saturn says on the box that it's the original doom in all of its glory when it's missing content but then we have the flat out disappointments where you watch a fruit gushers commercial as a kid and in those whenever somebody ate one their entire head would turn into a giant fruit so you never ate one for years out of fear and one day you decided life is all anyways [Music] son of a [ __ ] marvel vs capcom infinite oh this collector's edition comes with stones i swear to god if they're just eggs not again these have all been somewhat tolerable lies though i mean if she's cheating on you at least she's only doing it a little aliens colonial marines was such a massive cluster of garbage like what the hell happened here gameplay demos shown were severely different from the final product making the game look so much more sophisticated with good lighting ai animations a severe attention to detail but upon release we only have a few options here see this was a massive downgrade some areas of the game more so than others but in the end this was pure deceptive marketing at e3 2012 the game was running on very specific work machines this wasn't going to work on the consoles at the time but they made it still not work while it's not unplayable colonial marines was a huge disappointment and showcases how companies will pretty up a game for major gameplay demos to end up releasing something not nearly as groundbreaking it's crazy how far these studios will go to mask the title's true identity which to be fair i'm sure they wanted aliens to end up looking like this the intention definitely wasn't to win everybody over at e3 and then release these gameplay demos are supposed to represent what they want the game to be and if it actually turns out that way well let's pray god's a fan i mean this demo looks like a fine-tuned ps4 xbox one game not a 360 title but even then the graphical downgrade isn't merely due to the consoles it affected the pc version as well and overall everything was just of lower quality it tricked millions into buying the game thinking would be this when in reality it was nothing but a shell of that watchdog suffered a similar though not a severe fate where it do look light years better via the gameblade demo than in its final state this was definitely because it was revealed quite early in the project's life they didn't have to take hardware limitations into account nearly as much at this time compared to when you're finalizing everything about the game and when it got to that point i mean the game still looks fine but that e3 gameplay demo was beyond impressive watchdogs at release was a somewhat buggy generic modern ubisoft game and not much more than that no man's sky was a huge letdown for many with the promise of basically having an infinite amount of worlds to travel to in space of course the ones that decided to showcase at e3 were the only ones of note the game was supposed to feature procedurally generated worlds and when you would land on one it was truly you discovering it but in reality the game launched as a boring experience where there was nothing to do and the worlds weren't impressive they didn't look as graphically decent as they did during the marketing push and they all just felt like variations of each other nothing of note now watchdogs wasn't the biggest downgrade it was still a decent game and no man's sky got a ton of updates and at this point it's pretty okay and does a better job living up to what was initially promised aliens was one of the worst cases of this liberally making a better looking gameplay demo before releasing gameplay demos are supposed to be more trustworthy than trailers that's the point of them the trailers use cg cutscenes and cuts between them and gameplay all the time the gameplay demo is supposed to show you what you're gonna get because trailers can be incredibly misleading the killzone 2 trailer infamously was all cgi even though it was animated in a way to make the viewers think it was all gameplay see this was right before the playstation 3 was coming out and that was a time when we thought anything was possible on these consoles if anybody could resurrect christ it would be the ps3 so many assumed they weren't lying this was gameplay now killzone 2 still looked quite good when it released but the people who made this trailer they're still going to hell tiger woods pga tour 2009 on wii the commercial used xbox 360 footage of the game with a wii remote pointer how did they think that would fly he explained the wii footage wouldn't look good on a tv so they used the hd footage from the 360 version and put the weirmo pointer in there and bam that's a sin but one game decided to do something innovative be the biggest example of false advertising of all time yeah i'm not really saying anything that has already been said here smallpox they [ __ ] stink but when talking about false advertising and gaming we can't avoid the piss stain on my xbox collection cyberpunk 2077 was developed by cd projekt red a developer highly regarded for their work on the witcher series and their commitment to consumer friendly practices i mean the witcher 3 was a huge hit but even before that release they announced they'd be working on a game based on the cyberpunk series of tabletop rpgs this was in 1964. announced in 2012 then getting its first trailer in 2013 and then its next trailer five years later in reality the game was nowhere near starting full-on development and it took until the witcher 3's final expansion released in 2016 for the team to actually start work and when this gameplay demo was fully revealed in 2018 jaws were dropped this was such a detailed world with people walking around who have legitimate lives to live if you would follow just one around you would see them go about their day go to their job go home and every single decision of yours would come back to bite you in the ass and this is all without saying the game looked stunning just absolutely beautiful models and settings the animations were amazing it looked like the most advanced video game of all time and guess what after being delayed numerous times cyberpunk launched in a state that well the main issues stem from the console versions the pc version looked ran and worked the best but it still was a far cry from that initial gameplay reveal most of the issues boiled down to how glitchy and unpolished the game could be at times but at its core i'll stand by the fact it's a good game the world is really what sells it it's so detailed and feels like a genuine lived-in place and being in a dystopian future it's truly a world worth exploring and looking at every little minute thing but everything around it just doesn't feel all too special the gameplay isn't anything groundbreaking it's a first-person open-world rpg involving shooting and driving segments and none of this is bad but it just isn't anything i haven't seen before anything that they talked about in the gameplay demo like how advanced the non-playable characters are you just see seeing walking in a circle going up to them and hitting the talk button they say one of like three repeated phrases to you the same goes for the characters more integral to the story they'll repeat some voice lines which is fine that's understandable but this isn't the genre-defining game they made it out to be it's a brilliantly designed world inside a game that feels like it's from 2013. glitches were abundant and we're just talking about the pc version here on xbox one and playstation 4 not only were glitches even more all over the place but the game ran like piss and that doesn't run well choppy frame rates low resolution the game would freeze and crash constantly and this was the product of a giant marketing campaign pushed by investors and higher-ups who didn't understand how game development worked they wanted a 2020 release date which by the time cd projekt red started development would have given them less time to finish than the witcher 3. and this project was so much more advanced with elements they've never worked with before it just felt like a lot of choices they made didn't add up like why do we have all this customization for our character but the game is almost exclusively played in the first person and you barely ever see your character why push all this money into marketing and showing a demo of a game that frankly didn't exist yet much like other examples given this demo was basically what the developers were told to shoot for not what the game was and no matter how much the developers said they needed more time or this wasn't possible the marketing pushed cyberpunk that much more like did they really have to announce hey the game is finished when the developer said [ __ ] it is cyberpunk 2077 is a good game it may not be for everybody but to act like at its core this isn't a well-crafted experience i think it's a bit much but you can't blame people for thinking that after such a disastrous launch and being lied to constantly this was a case of a developer who was known for their goodwill and how players adored them and higher-ups taking advantage of that it's crazy to me how much these companies feel the need to lie when they know that it'll just come back to bite them in the ass they take first impressions more seriously than launch impressions sometimes but is it really worth all the headaches to go through lawsuits and refunds and to lose consumer trust all to impress people at e3 with something you know damn well can't be accomplished well for some people it is that's why lying is so popular fix a problem now deal with the repercussions later instead of telling the truth and causing some potential disappointment but then you don't have to deal with bigger problems a year from now it's just sometimes marketing takes over projects and a lot of marketers don't care their job is to get people interested and even if it turns out to be over lies well that's more publicity for the project i guarantee you more people have talked about cyberpunk and aliens colonial marines and no man's sky because they were disastrous compared to if they were as good as they were made out to be and if regardless of if discussion is positive or negative it's still getting the name out there which means false advertising for games will never go away game studios are constantly pressured into pushing boundaries and i feel like they look at what they're currently capable of no matter how advanced and think it's not good enough so they pretty things up for reveals and just assume they'll get it working later but as we can see that's not the greatest risk to take i think the lesson to be learned here is it's okay to be excited it's also okay to be skeptical but maybe way to make a full decision until something's out in the world and actual people are playing the game rather than snake people because liars are everywhere they might even be staring you in the face and this is when i lost credibility [Music] you

Channel: Scott The Woz

Views: 2,331,735

Keywords: Nintendo, Xbox, PlayStation, Sony, Microsoft, Wii, Wii U, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo DS, 3DS, PS5, PS4, Cyberpunk 2077, Cyberpunk, Watch Dogs, No Man's Sky, Video Game Lie, Gaming Scam, Misleading Video Game

Id: v9sheGfrFWs

Length: 15min 48sec (948 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I’ve voiced my concerns a couple weeks back about how the videos post Borderline I didn’t think were as great and almost sounded like Scott was fatigued

I’m 2 and a half minutes into this one and can already tell the difference, Scott’s totally back in the swing of things and I couldn’t be happier

[u/TheePurpleToaster]

"False Advertising... it's been there since the very start and it will be there till the very end in four months"

Sounds like a good Halloween episode, maybe about Mario Kart 8 again, haha.

[u/AL2009man]

Regarding Killzone 2's: on NoClip's "The Making of Horizon Zero Dawn" documentary, it's been revealed that this specific KZ2 trailer wasn't even meant to be shown to the public, it was intended to be a "Concept/Vision Video" for internal uses only.

But somehow, it made it to the E3 2005 stage. It's also appears that someone on the marketing group that was like "yeah, this is running on PS3 in real time" and has caused the "KZ2 Graphics downgrade" stage.

edit: typos and grammar fixes

[u/rthunderbird1997]

Oh hey look, a reasonable take on Cyberpunk 2077, that's nice. Don't get me wrong, I get it, if you were disappointed and think Cyberpunk is this irredeemable mess then fine. But, to me and a fair few people I know, past all the NUMEROUS issues, there is genuinely quite a good experience there.

[u/chubbyurma]

Man put an Xbox One S in the toilet for a 1 second gag

[u/leothesilent]

He censored shit in one of the subtitles in one of the game trailers

[u/Da-pacybits-noob]

The Simpsons game is a masterpiece

[u/TheDerpThatDerps]

I like him talking about topics but I wish he’d review games more that he hasn’t played before like his “tales from the backlog” videos.

[u/ProfesorTrash]

My biggest surprise about this was the fact he didn't mention anything about moble game ads, which are infamous for false advertising