Surprise and Delight

I watched the Video Game Awards last night. Well, mostly watched. I had it on my phone while I also had a hockey game on, and was flipping between the Habs game and the Thursday night football game. Still, I was watching it. The reason for my interest was not because I like award shows – I hate awards shows. I think they often are just self serving fluff pieces for already privileged and wealthy people. Every time an actor cries for being the best at pretending to be somebody else (notwithstanding appreciating it is an art form) I want to throw things at my TV. At least the red carpet is interesting – it’s when we get to judge everybody ruthlessly. But I’m not bitter.

That’s a nice explanation of why I was watching – if you watched 30 minutes of the Twitch stream of the video game awards you got a free Syandana (cape, but don’t call it that around Tennos) for Warframe. Since Fashionframe is a thing I thought why not. I could use a new, beautiful flow-ey cape. I’ll post pictures so you can ruthlessly judge me.

Since I love video games, and I had it on anyway, I ended up muting my TV and listening in. There were some not so interesting world premieres of new games coming up, but also, amazingly, this surprise.

I don’t own a Switch and I haven’t played Breath of The Wild (although I have heard great things about it) – but the comments section was BUZZING. Did they really just launch a trailer at an awards show – and then say “ITS AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW?” Yep, that was the twist. Watch this trailer and go get the game. I loved it. It’s not very often the video game industry surprises us – well, not in a good way at least. Lots of greedy ‘surprises not surprised’, few ‘surprise and delights’!

A long time ago in 2008 I wrote about how marketing and hype are failing games. I think it is even worse today. Here is an excerpt:

…Make a game. All of the money you would spend hyping it two/three years before release goes towards making the best game possible. That’s right, zero market penetration. When the game is a couple months from release start marketing the hell out of it. At that point to release you actually know the content of your own game and can convey semi-realistic expectations. I say ‘semi-realistic’ because we all know Marketing is still going to make it out to more than it is. The problem with the current Hype Machine is that years before a gamer will get his hands on a game they already have formed an opinion on what that game is, how it will play, and how it would be better if the programmers would make the game the way they would want it. And that is where new games fail.

I know that BoTW is an existing property but it was completely refreshing to see a company try something different outside of our insanely long hype, early access, pre-pre alpha announcement trailers, and general promising the moon but delivering the park down the street. So thank you, Nintendo. Heck, Star Citizen is a permanent fund raising to advertise organization. They may or may not be making a video game in there somewhere as well.

I am still not buying a Switch though. Someone go buy that expansion to reward them for trying something different.

Turns out Epic Games, of Fortnite, also launched an “available RIGHT NOW” trailer for a new game mode:

Maybe this is a “new thing!” I definitely hope so!

Here is my new Syandana, which is icing on the cape with the surprise and delight.