It's been said and I will say it anyways. They are only "twisting the truth" so they gain more customers/players. They tell you what you want you to hear or tell you what you want to expect in a game.
Its the only way to scam the marketing buisness and in the end, if people find out they are lying, they hope they have something good enough, they'll stay anyways.
Let me tell you an example:
So lets say I created this great new storage system, it can hold upto 100 things, big or small. Its almost like a garden shed. The floors are uncrackable and the walls have this new technology where your storage will be dust and age free.
But the trick is, it's just a plan old storage garage, I don't know how many items it can hold. Also, there is no special walls and the floors are made from cheap cement.
People come to my company and store their stuff, thinking, wow, these antiques will never be effected by my cool new storage shed. But...they are wrong.
You know my example may me dumb or out of question. But in deep thought, its like a game developers concept. They make promises with no intent to fulfill them or when it's too late.
Once you have yourself grabbed, you can't get out of the grasp.
1) To convince stock holders and investors that they are doing well.
2) To convince potential buyers that the game will continue to do well so they won't regret paying for the game.
In other words: Money.
The thread could have stopped with this post.
No one is ever going to come out and tell you (potential buyer) negative things about their product unless they feel that their "display of honesty" will impress you. And really, this is how almost any person works.
Imagine that you wrote a report and your teacher asks you to tell her about it. Would you tell her that you fudged some of your research? Decreased the margin and font size to make it fit? No, I don't think so. You would try to "sell" her your report by telling her positive things about it (if your smart).
I haven't seen any false statements coming from game companies.
AOC said 'how many units were sold', Rift has said 'how many are accounts were created'.
Unless the numbers quoted were wrong, the statements themselves can not be a lie.
One can lie without ever saying anything false. There is little doubt that companies are deliberately selective in their presentation of numbers and it's nails-on-chalkboard annoying to listen to some of the spin that comes out. But unfortunately, that's just the way business works and unless someday MMOs are run as public trusts rather than private enterprises, it isn't likely to change.
Do you read what you write? You can lie without saying anything false? The entire definition of a lie is knowingly making a false statement. People stupidly forget that if a company were to lie about sales, or subscriber numbers, it wouldn't be just the ire of the community they would be drawing. The sales presented to stock holders and tax collectors would not match the numbers, so not only would the company be paying taxes on income they do not receive, but the stock holders would be crushing the CEO's spine in court as to why the company illegally inflated their numbers.
The biggest lies I've seen come from companies are simply due to miscommunication within the company, and as someone who has worked for an MMO, getting bad information even from a very high up source is not all too uncommon.
As for the spin ("The game is healthy," or "we have ___ registered accounts") well that's just faith service for the stockholders and potential customers.
Methinks that Maple was confusing "lie" with "deception." You cannot lie without saying something false (by definition) but you sure can deceive people .
I won't get into companies talking about sub numbers and sales.
I'll just briefly get into how some will blatantly lie to their customers in terms of updating and fixing the game. Some will lie on how they will fix this and that, just give them more time. They'll go into threads, news updates, post up plans for an important update that will fix a number of issues and bring balance and empowerment to where its needed. They just need more time.
Months go by. Just hold on, they need more time.
A few more months go by. Just keep holding on. Patience is a virtue!
Over a year later, the fixes still haven't come. Just hold on some more!
Catch my drift? Anything to keep you playing and spending. It's called "Stringing You Along." Like dangling that carrot in front of you and tugging it away every time you get close to it.
Like others have said, anything it takes to squeeze money out of you.
If you leave because you got wise to their shenanigans and buffoonery, then they don't give a sh*t. Because they expect some hapless newbie to drop in completely unawares to what they've been up to, and they can grab their money instead.
Money, money, money. Whatever it takes to keep you chasing the carrot with money falling out of your pockets for them to pick up.
Oh, SOE, nice of you to show up...
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Over the past several years I see many failures happen. Most of the companies spin their failures as success by boasting their "account" number and "box sales" numbers but avoid talking about actual active player counts. Age of Conan was a good example of this as they boasted about selling over a million copies but only had 100k subscribers. Rift is following the same path with the amount of accounts they are boasting about. Makes you wonder what other companies are giving out false information about subscribers vs accounts.
To give an example: your comment already says that you didn't listen what was actually being said back then. AoC was said to have shipped 1 million boxes, which isn't the same as 'box sales'. The actual sales were around 500-700k, with something like 400k subs at the 2-3 months mark. Same for Rift, Trion talks about 2 million accounts made which doesn't say much. However they also talk about accumulative sales 'nearing 1 million' which tells more (but is still vague).
Music companies do the same thing. They'll offer huge discounts to the big retailers if they'll buy in the hundreds of thousands, or millions, and they'll set up a reasonable return policy. This is so they can claim their artist went platinum right away, despite the tons of cd's that could potentially be returned to be buried next to the Atari 2600 ET game. In the end, you don't really get a realistic number until years later, when the artist is on the outs and nobody cares.
I am pretty sure both AoC and WAR did actually sell more than a million copies, they 'sold in' far more than that (something like two million for AoC I recall, which is why you see loads of boxes of shelves still in bargain bins ) They both sold over a million actual copies, but fell off quickly with less than half staying past the free month, then kept falling. You only had to look at their XFire numbers to see they did have that many and lost them.
Rift on the other hand appears to be just below the million sales mark (said at E3 last week) and was also falling at the same rate. I say was, because the smart thing Rift have done, different to those games, is start free trials and buddy schemes before the first month is out. That saved them from the same fall. Judging by XFire, raptr and the like Rift is alonsgide Aion right now (with its free players counting) so I would guess we could presume it is floating aorund 300-400K subs having sold 900k units
To say that companies lie, is to totally over-simplfy the issue. Most of these companies do not lie in terms of black and white, right and wrong, good or bad.
What these companies do is tell half-truths or use information from a certain point of view.
Its all about maximum profit of box sales and the hope that many of these players will get hooked, subscribe and forget about the lies and misrepresentations...
To say that companies lie, is to totally over-simplfy the issue. Most of these companies do not lie in terms of black and white, right and wrong, good or bad.
What these companies do is tell half-truths or use information from a certain point of view.
Thanks for the link. A funny little read on how companies think how dumb people are. And it works.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Over the past several years I see many failures happen. Most of the companies spin their failures as success by boasting their "account" number and "box sales" numbers but avoid talking about actual active player counts. Age of Conan was a good example of this as they boasted about selling over a million copies but only had 100k subscribers. Rift is following the same path with the amount of accounts they are boasting about. Makes you wonder what other companies are giving out false information about subscribers vs accounts.
They distort the truth so they can make money. Obviously. And I don't find box number sales bad to report at all....Conan legitimately did sell that many boxes, and they never claimed a million subscribers at any point in time. Account number reports are a sleazier thing to do for an MMO company because many people don't know the difference, and a large majority of them are inactive or trials.
Edit: None of it is really "lying" as much as using facts in a way that makes you look good. Tell me the organization, government, business, or person who doesn't do this on occassion. It's the exact same thing.
I think many devs actually believe themselves. They think that the next patch actually will fix the game up and so on...
The publishers don't lie, they use something called marketting, it is kinda like lying but worse. Anyone working at the sales department of any big company know this.
I can just read your thread and see its your reading comprehension not them lying to you that is the issue.
Its the PR person job to highlight all the good about their product, it is your job to figure out what else si there, Yeah 1million people bought the game, not everyone of them stayed, would you like them to go, a lot of people tried oru game and didnt like it? Why the hell would they do that.
And no MMO is a failure unless it completely shuts down, like Armed assualt, tabula rasa archlord. APB, Hellgate london. Otherwise the game is doing just fine.
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson
I love the people who assume a game is a "failure" because they arent playing it.
It's a failure to me after I try it and it feels awful. Most especially so if there were lots of people at the beginning and then within a few months, the majority have left. This has happened quite a bit in the last couple years to a number of "Contendahs" in the MMORPG genre. Or, before playing the game, if I see the features, catch up on actual player comments, and deem it "not worth my time," then... it's just not worth it. A sort of a "failure," at least to me, but a failure nonetheless, right?
Some of the games people throw into the "failure" category are quite sucessfull.
I know, right? Like AoC & WAR
In other news...the world doesnt revolve around you.
Yes it does. What you do or fail to do everyday at work, school, home, and leisure has an impact on what happens later on. Maybe not now, but it will down the road. If you think yourself insignificant enough that YOU don't matter at all, then fine by me.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
And no MMO is a failure unless it completely shuts down, like Armed assualt, tabula rasa archlord. APB, Hellgate london. Otherwise the game is doing just fine.
That's not true. Any MMO that earns a single dollar at the time it closed down when you taken away everything it costed to make and run is a success.
Some games just loose more and more money, or keeps on running and get in a few bucks but will never get in what the development costed. They are not doing fine.
Of course some games looks like a failure at launch but later becomes success stories (even if that is rare), like Eve. It had very few players at launch but were able to turn the tables.
Then there are a few games that are failures because the devs thinks they will be the next big thing. If you expect to beat Wow and then barely survives it is a failure as well, even though few MMO devs are that stupid. WAR is a good example, MJ and Barnett predicted that it would be bigger than Wow but stated they had huge marginals since they only needed 250K players to go even... Now they don't have half that and most of the company is fired. I wouldn't call that a success either.
Most of the MMOs we know the names of is not failures, they will at the end of their lifetime have pulled in at least a small sum money for their developers while giving jobs to people and fun for their fans. But some fails even if they don't close down after a fewmonths.
Not all shut down games are failures either, UO is still running but they can close it down anytime, but it still wouldn't be a failure. Heck, if Blizzard for some reason would close down Wow tomorrow it still would be the most successful MMO ever.
My issue with game developers is that they often talk about content that will more than likely not make it into the final product. This is a big thing for MMO developers, but it can be found in other game companies as well; a good example being the guy behind the fable series >_>
It wouldnt be so bad to hear their thoughts on what they would like to put in the game, but it feels like too often their word choice tells the fanbase its happening and causes them to over hype the game for features that will probubly never appear in the first place.
This is why I really appreciate some developers in the indie scene as well as companies like Anet, who use wording like "If we have time we would like to add..." or "after release we will try to put..." or just dont talk about content they have yet to successfully implament and polish within the game.
This thread is great and the responses are even better. So Rift drops their NDA 3 months before the game is released. There are COUNTLESS full reviews from every single mmo site from this one to even blogs.
Every single review basicallyyyy list the exact same 3 negatives. Trion did not try and hide this and also did podcast explaining why things and decisions were made the way they were. From day 1 Rift has had a extreme group of people who never believed the game was supposed to exist in a world where only ToR and GW2 were supposed to exist.
The hilarious part is these same people would prefer you play WoW up until ToR comes out, then once they have milked the hyped long enough they will turn on that game and tell you to goto GW2, then they will tell you to go back to WoW. People in this mmo community are tools.
WoW playerbase is the biggest myth in the world going right now. NA/Eu playerbase is MAYBE 4mil subs if that and falling. WoW has a ungodly amount of low pop servers compared to every other game. Instead of doing the responsible thing and getting rid of them they tell you to pay 25$ to get off those servers.
I have a prediction. Any game that releases in China will see 5million more subs. China is a country of 2billion people seriously come on if you can even get 0.01% of those people to touch your game in a sub model made of hours and not monthly you already win and can boast huge sub numbers.
But every time I see a person complain about the "lying" it always seem that they have:
A, not paid any attention to what was actually being said;
B, listened to some "friend" who told them X and then I start seeing "I heard that X was happening" and pretty soon everyone believes X is happening and there is no actual evidence of it.
You see A) quite often.
Some developer mentions in 2001 that "we might want to do <feature> some day, definitely not right away."
Six years pass. Gamers discuss the possibilities of <feature> on the boards from time to time.
"You promised <feature>, where the hell is it? You LIED to us!"
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
1) To convince stock holders and investors that they are doing well.
2) To convince potential buyers that the game will continue to do well so they won't regret paying for the game.
In other words: Money.
Uh-hu.
Sorry, but if companies would actually LIE to their stockholders, that would constitute a crime. It happends, but not often.
And of course companies, well, bent the truth to show their game in the most positive light. AoC very likely indeed sold 1 mio copies etc. Doesnt mean that 1 mio people are playing the game. A huge chunk of those initial buyers stopped playing the game very soon, obviously.
For example, I estimate many people who bought Guild Wars havent played it for long, either.
Comments
It's been said and I will say it anyways. They are only "twisting the truth" so they gain more customers/players. They tell you what you want you to hear or tell you what you want to expect in a game.
Its the only way to scam the marketing buisness and in the end, if people find out they are lying, they hope they have something good enough, they'll stay anyways.
Let me tell you an example:
So lets say I created this great new storage system, it can hold upto 100 things, big or small. Its almost like a garden shed. The floors are uncrackable and the walls have this new technology where your storage will be dust and age free.
But the trick is, it's just a plan old storage garage, I don't know how many items it can hold. Also, there is no special walls and the floors are made from cheap cement.
People come to my company and store their stuff, thinking, wow, these antiques will never be effected by my cool new storage shed. But...they are wrong.
You know my example may me dumb or out of question. But in deep thought, its like a game developers concept. They make promises with no intent to fulfill them or when it's too late.
Once you have yourself grabbed, you can't get out of the grasp.
The thread could have stopped with this post.
No one is ever going to come out and tell you (potential buyer) negative things about their product unless they feel that their "display of honesty" will impress you. And really, this is how almost any person works.
Imagine that you wrote a report and your teacher asks you to tell her about it. Would you tell her that you fudged some of your research? Decreased the margin and font size to make it fit? No, I don't think so. You would try to "sell" her your report by telling her positive things about it (if your smart).
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
Methinks that Maple was confusing "lie" with "deception." You cannot lie without saying something false (by definition) but you sure can deceive people
.
Are you team Azeroth, team Tyria, or team Jacob?
I'd also like to point out that judging the merit of a game by how many accounts it has is pretty stupid in the first place.
So ultimately, true or not, it shouldn't matter for anything other than picking which server to play on.
"Id rather work on something with great potential than on fulfilling a promise of mediocrity."
- Raph Koster
Tried: AO,EQ,EQ2,DAoC,SWG,AA,SB,HZ,CoX,PS,GA,TR,IV,GnH,EVE, PP,DnL,WAR,MxO,SWG,FE,VG,AoC,DDO,LoTRO,Rift,TOR,Aion,Tera,TSW,GW2,DCUO,CO,STO
Favourites: AO,SWG,EVE,TR,LoTRO,TSW,EQ2, Firefall
Currently Playing: ESO
I won't get into companies talking about sub numbers and sales.
I'll just briefly get into how some will blatantly lie to their customers in terms of updating and fixing the game. Some will lie on how they will fix this and that, just give them more time. They'll go into threads, news updates, post up plans for an important update that will fix a number of issues and bring balance and empowerment to where its needed. They just need more time.
Months go by. Just hold on, they need more time.
A few more months go by. Just keep holding on. Patience is a virtue!
Over a year later, the fixes still haven't come. Just hold on some more!
Catch my drift? Anything to keep you playing and spending. It's called "Stringing You Along." Like dangling that carrot in front of you and tugging it away every time you get close to it.
Like others have said, anything it takes to squeeze money out of you.
If you leave because you got wise to their shenanigans and buffoonery, then they don't give a sh*t. Because they expect some hapless newbie to drop in completely unawares to what they've been up to, and they can grab their money instead.
Money, money, money. Whatever it takes to keep you chasing the carrot with money falling out of your pockets for them to pick up.
Oh, SOE, nice of you to show up...
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Music companies do the same thing. They'll offer huge discounts to the big retailers if they'll buy in the hundreds of thousands, or millions, and they'll set up a reasonable return policy. This is so they can claim their artist went platinum right away, despite the tons of cd's that could potentially be returned to be buried next to the Atari 2600 ET game. In the end, you don't really get a realistic number until years later, when the artist is on the outs and nobody cares.
I am pretty sure both AoC and WAR did actually sell more than a million copies, they 'sold in' far more than that (something like two million for AoC I recall, which is why you see loads of boxes of shelves still in bargain bins
) They both sold over a million actual copies, but fell off quickly with less than half staying past the free month, then kept falling. You only had to look at their XFire numbers to see they did have that many and lost them.
Rift on the other hand appears to be just below the million sales mark (said at E3 last week) and was also falling at the same rate. I say was, because the smart thing Rift have done, different to those games, is start free trials and buddy schemes before the first month is out. That saved them from the same fall. Judging by XFire, raptr and the like Rift is alonsgide Aion right now (with its free players counting) so I would guess we could presume it is floating aorund 300-400K subs having sold 900k units
The difference between a lie and marketing is the success of the product sales
I find this article both funny and invaluable:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-ways-marketers-think-were-retarded/
Its all about maximum profit of box sales and the hope that many of these players will get hooked, subscribe and forget about the lies and misrepresentations...
Playing GW2..
agree - I havent see any companies lie about subs
what I have seen is .. game sites/blogs misquote the original source
EQ2 fan sites
Riiiight, because then there would surely be no lying.
Interestingly, your reply could be taken as an example of a lie of ommission if you actually looked up the definition before posting
lie –noun
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
2. something intended or serving to convey a false impression; imposture: His car was a lie that deceived no one.
Thanks for the link. A funny little read on how companies think how dumb people are. And it works.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
They distort the truth so they can make money. Obviously. And I don't find box number sales bad to report at all....Conan legitimately did sell that many boxes, and they never claimed a million subscribers at any point in time. Account number reports are a sleazier thing to do for an MMO company because many people don't know the difference, and a large majority of them are inactive or trials.
Edit: None of it is really "lying" as much as using facts in a way that makes you look good. Tell me the organization, government, business, or person who doesn't do this on occassion. It's the exact same thing.
I love the people who assume a game is a "failure" because they arent playing it.
Some of the games people throw into the "failure" category are quite sucessfull.
In other news...the world doesnt revolve around you.
I think many devs actually believe themselves. They think that the next patch actually will fix the game up and so on...
The publishers don't lie, they use something called marketting, it is kinda like lying but worse. Anyone working at the sales department of any big company know this.
I can just read your thread and see its your reading comprehension not them lying to you that is the issue.
Its the PR person job to highlight all the good about their product, it is your job to figure out what else si there, Yeah 1million people bought the game, not everyone of them stayed, would you like them to go, a lot of people tried oru game and didnt like it? Why the hell would they do that.
And no MMO is a failure unless it completely shuts down, like Armed assualt, tabula rasa archlord. APB, Hellgate london. Otherwise the game is doing just fine.
Quotations Those Who make peaceful resolutions impossible, make violent resolutions inevitable. John F. Kennedy
Life... is the shit that happens while you wait for moments that never come - Lester Freeman
Lie to no one. If there 's somebody close to you, you'll ruin it with a lie. If they're a stranger, who the fuck are they you gotta lie to them? - Willy Nelson
I'm so angry at devs and game companies for lying. Thank God politicians are honest.
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
That's not true. Any MMO that earns a single dollar at the time it closed down when you taken away everything it costed to make and run is a success.
Some games just loose more and more money, or keeps on running and get in a few bucks but will never get in what the development costed. They are not doing fine.
Of course some games looks like a failure at launch but later becomes success stories (even if that is rare), like Eve. It had very few players at launch but were able to turn the tables.
Then there are a few games that are failures because the devs thinks they will be the next big thing. If you expect to beat Wow and then barely survives it is a failure as well, even though few MMO devs are that stupid. WAR is a good example, MJ and Barnett predicted that it would be bigger than Wow but stated they had huge marginals since they only needed 250K players to go even... Now they don't have half that and most of the company is fired. I wouldn't call that a success either.
Most of the MMOs we know the names of is not failures, they will at the end of their lifetime have pulled in at least a small sum money for their developers while giving jobs to people and fun for their fans. But some fails even if they don't close down after a fewmonths.
Not all shut down games are failures either, UO is still running but they can close it down anytime, but it still wouldn't be a failure. Heck, if Blizzard for some reason would close down Wow tomorrow it still would be the most successful MMO ever.
My issue with game developers is that they often talk about content that will more than likely not make it into the final product. This is a big thing for MMO developers, but it can be found in other game companies as well; a good example being the guy behind the fable series >_>
It wouldnt be so bad to hear their thoughts on what they would like to put in the game, but it feels like too often their word choice tells the fanbase its happening and causes them to over hype the game for features that will probubly never appear in the first place.
This is why I really appreciate some developers in the indie scene as well as companies like Anet, who use wording like "If we have time we would like to add..." or "after release we will try to put..." or just dont talk about content they have yet to successfully implament and polish within the game.
This thread is great and the responses are even better. So Rift drops their NDA 3 months before the game is released. There are COUNTLESS full reviews from every single mmo site from this one to even blogs.
Every single review basicallyyyy list the exact same 3 negatives. Trion did not try and hide this and also did podcast explaining why things and decisions were made the way they were. From day 1 Rift has had a extreme group of people who never believed the game was supposed to exist in a world where only ToR and GW2 were supposed to exist.
The hilarious part is these same people would prefer you play WoW up until ToR comes out, then once they have milked the hyped long enough they will turn on that game and tell you to goto GW2, then they will tell you to go back to WoW. People in this mmo community are tools.
WoW playerbase is the biggest myth in the world going right now. NA/Eu playerbase is MAYBE 4mil subs if that and falling. WoW has a ungodly amount of low pop servers compared to every other game. Instead of doing the responsible thing and getting rid of them they tell you to pay 25$ to get off those servers.
I have a prediction. Any game that releases in China will see 5million more subs. China is a country of 2billion people seriously come on if you can even get 0.01% of those people to touch your game in a sub model made of hours and not monthly you already win and can boast huge sub numbers.
[Mod Edit]
You see A) quite often.
Some developer mentions in 2001 that "we might want to do <feature> some day, definitely not right away."
Six years pass. Gamers discuss the possibilities of <feature> on the boards from time to time.
"You promised <feature>, where the hell is it? You LIED to us!"
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Uh-hu.
Sorry, but if companies would actually LIE to their stockholders, that would constitute a crime. It happends, but not often.
And of course companies, well, bent the truth to show their game in the most positive light. AoC very likely indeed sold 1 mio copies etc. Doesnt mean that 1 mio people are playing the game. A huge chunk of those initial buyers stopped playing the game very soon, obviously.
For example, I estimate many people who bought Guild Wars havent played it for long, either.