I chuckle as I write this because I almost think that it will be more troll bait that will bring us more comments about feminazis and all of the awful things that should happen to them (yes, we don’t share those with you folks), but I have to write it. I’m a rhetor at heart. I feel that ethics is important. And a big ethical question directly affect gamers like us has come to the fore.
What about post-release review embargoes? At NYMG we rarely get pre-release copies of AAA titles. Sometimes, but rarely so I was as shocked by this new phenomenon as most other folks. But it kind of makes sense. In the last couple of years we have seen more and more of our favorite titles being released in what would have previously been considered a beta stage and then patched post-release to bring it up to snuff (or nearly there). This is something that honestly pisses me off to no end. If I pay 60 or 70 dollars for a game at launch I really do expect to have a fully playable experience. I want to be able to seen things without jagged edges and screen tearing, voices shouldn’t cut out, my avatar shouldn’t fall through the floor and only be releasable if I kill myself, my game shouldn’t freeze at the same point every time…none of the things that have actually happened to me in the last year or so. Which is why I have gone more with digital downloads and grabbing things at the local game store on launch day rather than my old route of Amazon pre-orders. That way I have the chance to read reviews and make my decisions and in the end save myself some cash and some heartache.
But now…post-release review embargoes? Reviewers not being able to release their reviews of the game until 12 hours after release? Wow! That just tells me that the company is so unsure of their product (or sure that it sucks) that they want to score as many sales from pre-orders and midnight sales as they can before people find out how awful the game actually is. Case in point, this week’s release of Assassin’s Creed: Unity. I can’t tell you the last time I didn’t pre-order an AC game, even though I wasn’t terribly impressed with the last two. But that experience with the last two made me decide to wait on reviews for Unity because there were so many other games coming out this month that I wanted to buy. So I waited, and waited, and waited. Finger hovering over the pre-load button on my Xbox One more times than I care to admit. People on Facebook taunted me early on release morning because I wasn’t playing AC yet and they had really expected that I would be. It got ugly. I was playing Civilization: Beyond Earth with Alex and her mom after midnight instead of slipping hidden blades between some dude’s ribs because I was sticking to my guns.
And I’m glad that I did because AC: Unity is broken. Horribly broken and no one found out before noon (12 hours after the game went on actual sale) unless they had spent their 50 or 60 bucks to find out the hard way. And that begs the question, “Did Ubisoft realize that AC:Unity was going to get dinged in reviews? Was this their way of getting all of the sales that they could before people found out how bad the game was?” Or is this just going to become the new normal?
One thing that these new embargoes have done is to make me a much more careful consumer. I did go ahead and opt to pre-load Dragon Age: Inquisition, but only because the reviews that I have read thus far have been glowing. And this is odd for me, because I am not usually one to put much stock in other folks’ reviews of a game, but these days I am beginning to feel like I need some additional insight if game companies are possibly attempting to hide the brokeness of their games at the expense of the consumer.
Chime in and tell me your take on this whole mess.
4 thoughts on “Ethics in Games: Can You Ever Trust an Assassin?”
What about this article is anti-feminism troll bait? Assassins shouldn’t be trusted. Not if you can’t pay up.
Simply using the word ethics is bait enough for some. If you had seen some of the comments I trashed this week you’d understand why I (only semi-jokingly) said that. And I make sure I pay my assassins up front, just to be safe (in the game).
I learned the hard way that there is no layaway plan with assassins. By learn I mean the dream I had one time. By dream I mean I’m kinda making that up whatever.
The pre-order option unfortunately is based on so much hype and carefully edited previews that fans of a given franchise can easily be persuaded to pledge payment months in advance. As you wrote, games are a big investment on our (consumers) part; it’s one thing to say vote with your wallet, but the suits will only really be convinced that change is necessary when they see pre-order sales are outnumbered by retail sales. In this new cycle of consoles, reviewers like you are more important than ever.