Less lies, more interface.

It's been going on for too long now - video game marketing has been on a steady march down the tubes since 1996. I've gotta say, I'm awful disappointed by an industry created by the more recent generation, but not surprised.

The particular offense in question today is the common practice of posting "screenshots" of games with no interface or actual gameplay, usually featuring in-game cut scenes and cinemas instead. Similarly, posting trailers or whatever the hell marketing wants to call them with no actual footage of gameplay.

Take for example, the World of Warcraft site. Besides other offenses (giant JPEG backgrounds), it's a well known example of this crime against good taste. During normal gameplay, you can press ALT-Z to hide the interface, but you can't actually play the game like this, and I would estimate that 97% of the time, most players don't use the feature during a session.

Their website has approximately 170 screenshots, only 4 (2.35%) of which actually feature images containing the interface that you'll be staring at 97% of the time. That makes that portion of the site about 97.65% filthy fucking lies. Furthermore, it features 29 movie trailers/demos with a total of 16 (55.17%) scenes of actual gameplay. Not as much of a lie, but not too far from one either.

To put that in perspective, it's like those children's toys ads where 80% of the commercial is the 'theme' of the toy and 20% is actual play with music to make it sound like more fun. I can tolerate that, because kids are stupid. However, the majority of MMORPG players are not between the ages of 8-12, now are they (or are they)?

Final Fantasy XI is possibly an even worse offender. In order to take a screen shot you HAVE to turn off the interface. No exceptions unless you use an external utility to do it for you. There's no explanation for it, so it's probably safe to presume they don't want the game's extremely obtuse interface (amusingly absent from the Wikipedia page) to show up in screen shots.

Even more disappointing is when a game's "Screenshot" section cops out entirely. Take this example from the Age of Conan's (upcoming MMORPG) website.


See that? See the angle? Do you think the camera tilts at that angle during normal gameplay? I hope to hell it doesnt. That means it's a cutscene. But more importantly, the game has titties yet they're censored in the screenshot. Well, which is it; am I gonna see me some titties, or not?

Sadly, it takes a childrens game to get it right. For shame, marketing departments, for shame.