Watch_Dogs downgradeaton confirmed

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Admiral Woofington said:
Then by all that is holy, godspeed man. Do so. You could casually mention it and the raging hormones of this thread would probably praise you for doing what is right and getting the information out there.
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Honestly, the rage might be the more interesting story here. It's fascinating to see how mad people are getting over this - part of me can sympathize because of how many games have just been total disasters recently, but part of me sees this as GAF making a mountain out of a molehill two months before a game is out.

Anyway, it's the weekend, and I've got a big feature to focus on, but maybe I'll look into this a bit on Monday. (No promises.)
 
FiggyCal said:
Jason does have a point. Being negative before we actually see what the final product looks like does make publishers more hesitant to release footage of their games before release. And while that may be true, it isn't our fault that we were lead to believe a game looked much better than the footage we have now. I find it hard to believe that at some point between the initial reveal and the delay-- the development of this game took a giant step backwards. The game doesn't look bad by any stretch, and had they been up front about what the game actually looked like, then nobody would be complaining.

I don't see why it's wrong for the people on forms though, to voice their concern that the game that they were promised was bullshot? It would be Ubisoft's fault by lying in the first place.
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Then again, how cynical is it of publishers to sell their game and hype it on crocodile tears?

Maybe they should think twice about releasing a bull demo if they can not execute on what they showed; let alone won awards for at a trade show.

Maybe that's the point. If they decided the lesson from this is to take their ball and go home, they're learning the wrong lessons. They need to learn to build excitement and hype more organically, that is grounded in reality of their product. Took Sony a while, but their Devs seem to get that finally (GG, Evo, SP all showed questionable alphas and built hype as they refined their games and engines).

Snake Oil and slights of hand shouldn't be accepted. It shows an utter contempt and cynicism to us as consumers.
 
jschreier said:
I honestly don't care that the graphics got a downgrade from Trailer A to Trailer F
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Seeing as we live in an age of pre-orders and how the game is not in anybody's living room until people have bought it, trailers are all we have to go on right now. If we're not to make judgments about a game (and its development over time) by way of its trailers, why do they exist?

You also have Ubisoft with a history of showcasing and selling people on seemingly impossible targets for their games.

At least you're being up front about not personally caring about any downgrades evident at this stage, which is fine.
 
jschreier said:
Honestly, the rage might be the more interesting story here. It's fascinating to see how mad people are getting over this - part of me can sympathize because of how many games have just been total disasters recently, but part of me sees this as GAF making a mountain out of a molehill two months before a game is out.

Anyway, it's the weekend, and I've got a big feature to focus on, but maybe I'll look into this a bit on Monday. (No promises.)
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Hey just the fact somebody from the press took notice is enough. Jimquisition (while not 'press' at least a gaming personality) also took note which should be interesting.

If we're going ahead with what we consider interesting or not, I don't know how gamers raging over anything would be news worthy. GAF is a forum strictly dedicated to gaming. The fact the mods have kept it as is should warrant a freaking medal.
 
jschreier said:
Honestly, the rage might be the more interesting story here. It's fascinating to see how mad people are getting over this - part of me can sympathize because of how many games have just been total disasters recently, but part of me sees this as GAF making a mountain out of a molehill two months before a game is out.

Anyway, it's the weekend, and I've got a big feature to focus on, but maybe I'll look into this a bit on Monday. (No promises.)
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I think it's a bigger picture of gamers constantly being lied to with footage, increasingly so by Ubisoft. We're always being shown this very extravagant looking trailers and footage and then the final product is different.

When similar stuff starts happening with a game people were really hyped about then yeah it's gonna turn into something big. Especially when you couple it with all the other stuff coming out about the game like it being delayed due to repetition etc.
 
Personally what hurts the most is that something like Second Son is coming out, which looks amazing, and this game was supposed to be its brother in the graphics department for PS4.
 
jschreier said:
Honestly, the rage might be the more interesting story here. It's fascinating to see how mad people are getting over this - part of me can sympathize because of how many games have just been total disasters recently, but part of me sees this as GAF making a mountain out of a molehill two months before a game is out.

Anyway, it's the weekend, and I've got a big feature to focus on, but maybe I'll look into this a bit on Monday. (No promises.)
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I think there's a real story there of people just getting fed up with the press and how intertwined it is with the industries needs, instead of those of their readers. Between egging on console war bullshit and carrying water for publishers; the hardcore / proud gamer is at a tipping point.

They're sick of being thought of as a bunch of kids that will just lap up PR / marketing, or followers of a illegitimate, childish hobby. They're looking for more when it comes to information, reviews, investigative journalism, and editorials. Their needs are not currently being met by most of the traditional gaming press.

Unfortunately, frustratingly, they see how not much is going to change when everything comes down to release night / day page clicks.
 
Admiral Woofington said:
Personally what hurts the most is that something like Second Son is coming out, which looks amazing, and this game was supposed to be its brother in the graphics department for PS4.
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Maybe having to develop for the wiiu, 360 and ps3 affected it rather than just going for PC, xbox one and ps4.


I wonder if watch dogs would look any different if it did just that (it probably would)
 
jschreier said:
We don't have a preview because we didn't go to Montreal. (Kotaku doesn't take press junkets.)

I'm just seeing this for the first time now, but do you guys really think "game doesn't look like it did at E3" is unusual?
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It should be unusual.

Games sold to the world as one thing should not be bought as another.
 
CassidyIzABeast said:
I can't believe ubisoft tried to sell us on an open world game with that much fucking detail with that level of graphics.

the_division_game_hd_1280x720-1291.jpg

Screen-Shot-2014-03-04-at-9.49.57-PM.png


look at that shit.

That's just one street.
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That first pic with the taxi cab is what sold my naive ass on next gen. When I saw that I preordered my PS4. Little did I know....
 
Jim Sterling said:
It should be unusual.

Games sold to the world as one thing should not be bought as another.
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<3

Rebel Leader said:
Maybe having to develop for the wiiu, 360 and ps3 affected it rather than just going for PC, xbox one and ps4.


I wonder if watch dogs would look any different if it did just that (it probably would)
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Maybe. But that was Ubi's decision. PC versions can still look great when the 360/ps3 version looked pretty bad.
 
jschreier said:
Honestly, the rage might be the more interesting story here. It's fascinating to see how mad people are getting over this - part of me can sympathize because of how many games have just been total disasters recently, but part of me sees this as GAF making a mountain out of a molehill two months before a game is out.

Anyway, it's the weekend, and I've got a big feature to focus on, but maybe I'll look into this a bit on Monday. (No promises.)
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From my point of view it's super interesting, sure I've taken a nonchalant on previous pages, but this is still going... I'm surprised as I am interested that things are still going. I'm keeping watch :D

Also, if you're going to be negative, moregifsplz.
 
TyrantII said:
I think there's a real story there of people just getting fed up with the press and how intertwined it is with the industries needs, instead of those of their readers. Between egging on console war bullshit and carrying water for publishers; the hardcore / proud gamer is at a tipping point.

They're sick of being thought of as a bunch of kids that will just lap up PR / marketing, or followers of a illegitimate, childish hobby. They're looking for more when it comes to information, reviews, investigative journalism, and editorials. Their needs are not currently being met by most of the traditional gaming press.

Unfortunately, frustratingly, they see how not much is going to change when everything comes down to release night / day page clicks.
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I'm sorry that you feel fed up with the press. But I'm proud of what I do (mostly) every day, and I feel like we're serving readers just fine with a healthy mixture of entertainment, information, investigation, and reporting. I'm also happy with our tendency to avoid bullshit stories and find interesting angles that other people aren't talking about. Our readers seem to agree, as readership has never been higher (Feb 2014 was Kotaku's biggest month to date). So, no, that doesn't seem like a real story to me.
 
jschreier said:
I believe in judging a game for what it is, not for how it's marketed. I honestly don't care that the graphics got a downgrade from Trailer A to Trailer F; I care how it plays and looks when it's in my living room. And if Watch Dogs is ugly (or stinks), sites like mine will tell you about it when we play the real thing. That's why I'm finding it hard to get bothered by something like this.

If you're worried about getting conned by Watch Dogs like so many people were with Colonial Marines, and you don't want to be screwed into buying a bad game, your best move is just to never preorder games. Wait for reviews.
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Ok fine, we'll see, but if all this happens to be correct, would you be willing to do an article on the endemic lying that goes on at E3? Because I'd read that. I bet a lot of gamers in here want to be wrong and eat crow come release time. That'd be a joy.

It's a trust issue. I don't lie to my clients like Ubisoft (and many others) have lied about their products to the consumers who keep buying their games and funding their development. High risk industry or not, there's obviously a disconnect between many larger publishers or devs who are afraid to answer the hard questions. It's pathetic, unprofessional, and sloppy.

I would also counter that it's fine to release footage of an unfinished game if you expressly say it's in a WIP state. Ubi was not intending to do that with the E3 2012 showing or any of their demos; obviously the game wasn't finished but its visuals regressed significantly from its reveal. They wanted to recoup on what's probably been a very expensive development process, and thus the bullshit. A small drop in visual quality to meet release standards is fine and expected - sometimes things end up looking much better - but this was a rather large gap.
 
Sword Of Doom said:
That first pic with the taxi cab is what sold my naive ass on next gen. When I saw that I preordered my PS4. Little did I know....
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Just imagine what Ubisoft is thinking.

They just saw a fuck ton of backlash from Watch_Dogs being underwhelming compared to the initial release.

They are probably shitting themselves with showing off The Division.
 
riflen said:
This is the second time you've posted this. Do you know what tessellation is?
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The other thread died without any responses so I made a similar post.

Tessellation is breaking up a single polygon into multiple polygons. Using displacement mapping you can give real depth to a surface. I haven't seen any game use more than parallax occlusion mapping (Thief) so I'm questioning why developers wouldn't use something like tessellation with displacement mapping when they finally can.
 
Sword Of Doom said:
That first pic with the taxi cab is what sold my naive ass on next gen. When I saw that I preordered my PS4. Little did I know....
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PS4 can do it. Ubisoft can't. Even if that game was only for high end PCs, I don't think Ubisoft was going to spend insane amount of time and resources putting in that much detail in every street for an open world game. May be Rockstar will for GTA 6, but for any other game the sales would not justify it.
 
jschreier said:
Right. I mean, I think it's totally valid to say "hey, this game looks nothing like Ubisoft made it out to be" when it comes out. It's still in development. They've got 2+ months left with this thing. I don't really think it's a good trend to freak out over how video games look before they hit store shelves, because it just encourages publishers to hide things and keep game footage under lock and key to avoid complaints like this. Of course, you guys can do whatever you'd like - but if you're wondering why you haven't seen many game outlets talking about this, that's one possible reason.

(I do think it might be fun to do a feature comparing how games looked at E3 to how they looked when they came out, though.)
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blah blah blah you might upset my friends. blah blah blah if I don't damage control for the studios they might not give me access to their games. blah blah blah.
 
Jim Sterling said:
It should be unusual.

Games sold to the world as one thing should not be bought as another.
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Well, sure, but that's a bigger fight, and it's not worth waging over a game that won't be out for 2 1/2 months. I'd definitely love to see some sort of (video?) feature comparing E3 footage to real gameplay in a bunch of games.
 
TheLostBigBoss said:
Just imagine what Ubisoft is thinking.

They just saw a fuck ton of backlash from Watch_Dogs being underwhelming compared to the initial release.

They are probably shitting themselves with showing off The Division.
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But "Gamers" on message-boards are also easy to manipulate. They showed off some tech-demo trailer a few months ago and people still believed the game will look like that in the end.

"They still have enough time!"
"No doubt it will look like that!"

were things you could read quite often.
 
Admiral Woofington said:
Outside of people referencing GAF, not much gaming press mentioned this. Gamespot wrote an article based off a tweet I believe.
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*people* are reacting. the gaming press are not. because the game press are not looking out for gamers. at all. this has become very apparent with resolution gate and Xbox DRM madness. there are exceptions, but what I have just said is generally true.

there are press people in this thread that it doesn't apply to, and press people in this thread it does. I think if they honestly look inside they will know which they are.
 
jschreier said:
I'm sorry that you feel fed up with the press. But I'm proud of what I do (mostly) every day, and I feel like we're serving readers just fine with a healthy mixture of entertainment, information, investigation, and reporting. I'm also happy with our tendency to avoid bullshit stories and find interesting angles that other people aren't talking about. Our readers seem to agree, as readership has never been higher (Feb 2014 was Kotaku's biggest month to date). So, no, that doesn't seem like a real story to me.
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I do hope you realize that wasn't necessarily directed at you or Kotaku which is in my bookmark of sites I trust. More of a general feeling on some of the other behemoths, that generally set the narratives and news cycles.

There are islands of great reporting and reporters out there (and sites), and I'm glad they continue to do great work. But they seem to be the exception.
 
TyrantII said:
I do hope you realize that wasn't necessarily directed at you or Kotaku which is in my bookmark of sites I trust. More of a general feeling on some of the other behemoths, that generally set the narratives and news cycles.

There are islands of great reporting and reporters out there (and sites), and I'm glad they continue to do great work. But they seem to be the exception.
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Kotaku's reporting is generally fine, however, I'm pretty bored with JSchrier defending his 'game journalism' buddies, by always coming into threads like this and talking about how 'not everyone is guilty of this' and conspicuously never taking the side of the gamer. hey look, he's telling us that we shouldn't be upset about this because 'game journalists have to pick their battles'.

never mind what gamers think are the battles that should be picked. no. best to not upset a studio over something like this. how tiresomely convenient.
 
jschreier said:
I'm sorry that you feel fed up with the press. But I'm proud of what I do (mostly) every day, and I feel like we're serving readers just fine with a healthy mixture of entertainment, information, investigation, and reporting. I'm also happy with our tendency to avoid bullshit stories and find interesting angles that other people aren't talking about. Our readers seem to agree, as readership has never been higher (Feb 2014 was Kotaku's biggest month to date). So, no, that doesn't seem like a real story to me.
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Oh really now

FC3:Blood Dragon possible homophobic joke

I have nothing personal against Kotaku or anything as most articles are fine, just pointing out a bit of a flaw in what you're saying
 
jschreier said:
I'm sorry that you feel fed up with the press. But I'm proud of what I do (mostly) every day, and I feel like we're serving readers just fine with a healthy mixture of entertainment, information, investigation, and reporting. I'm also happy with our tendency to avoid bullshit stories and find interesting angles that other people aren't talking about. Our readers seem to agree, as readership has never been higher (Feb 2014 was Kotaku's biggest month to date). So, no, that doesn't seem like a real story to me.
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So the popularity argument, i.e. you invalidate others' input via statistics on subjective items, namely the popularity of Kotaku. I'm glad the site is successful but that doesn't make it or you authoritative beyond the scandal we see in this thread.

GAF threads often have a hyperbolic and/or sarcastic done ("downgradeaton"), I'll give you that. There are obsessive, circular arguments quite often in the gaming side, however Ubisoft's refusal to give straight answers until forced, their dalliance at response in the first place, and general misrepresentation of their product has been undeniably seedy.
 
NotTheGuyYouKill said:
There are people... comparing this... to Aliens: Colonial Marines.

Aliens: Colonial Marines!

COLONIAL MARINES

Time is a flat circle.
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No, not really. They're comparing the unfortunate epidemic of bait and switch marketing tactics.

The degree here is probably going to be much less than that terrible game. But the problem is the same. Ubi won awards and stole the show for what they showed in 2012. People expect them to execute on that promise and deliver.
 
I was thinking about this earlier, and I thought of a reason why Ubi may have done this, under the assumption that the downgrade was intentional (because I refuse to believe it's because of technical reasons, and I think we'll hit/surpass the 2012 level of graphics before this generation is over).

I think this decision was made in the boardroom, under the assumption that the vast majority of the game's sales would be last-gen, PS360 versions, that the next-gen systems wouldn't have sold enough. In order for the last-genners to not feel that their version of the game has been "gimped" by comparison to next-gen, they made the decision that all versions would be more or less identical, a la AC4. Like AC4, it may have some small bells and whistles that the last-gen versions don't have, but it will still be the same experience overall, and the majority of their customers wouldn't feel "left out".

And then the unthinkable happened and the next-gen consoles are doing ridiculously well, software sales are higher than expected, and more and more gamers are looking ahead instead of back, either purchasing only next-gen or holding off on last-gen purchases for the inevitable upgrade down the way. And now Ubi looks like an idiot making a so-called "next-gen" game on parity with last-gen systems that no one wants to buy the game on.

If this theory is correct, then that's good news for The Division because there is no last-gen version. I don't expect it to look like what we've seen so far, because, you know... Ubisoft, but in theory it shouldn't look as bad as Watch Dogs.

Either that, or Ubi's programmers are just a bunch of dolts that need to have the definition of "next-gen" tattooed on their fucking foreheads.
 
plagiarize said:
blah blah blah you might upset my friends. blah blah blah if I don't damage control for the studios they might not give me access to their games. blah blah blah.
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I wouldn't go that far but what he said is nonsense. As it has been mentioned, the graphics aren't going to mysteriously change this close to going gold.

Jason saying they won't release videos if all they get is backlash is valid. Their marketing of the game is the problem. If Ubi didn't get it totally wrong with their target renders, this wouldn't be blowing up.
 
plagiarize said:
blah blah blah you might upset my friends. blah blah blah if I don't damage control for the studios they might not give me access to their games. blah blah blah.
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I certainly don't expect everyone on GAF to know who I am, but I'd hope if you're gonna take the time to say something this nasty, you'd at least bother to, say, click on the link next to my avatar. Defending video game publishers is not exactly my top priority.
 
Yasae said:
So the popularity argument, i.e. you invalidate others' input via statistics on subjective items, namely the popularity of Kotaku. I'm glad the site is successful but that doesn't make it or you authoritative beyond the scandal we see in this thread.

GAF threads often have a hyperbolic and/or sarcastic done ("downgradeaton"), I'll give you that. There are obsessive, circular arguments quite often in the gaming side, however Ubisoft's refusal to give straight answers until forced, their dalliance at response in the first place, and general misrepresentation of their product has been undeniably seedy.
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What you're saying has nothing to do with the post I was responding to.
 
Yasae said:
So the popularity argument, i.e. you invalidate others' input via statistics on subjective items, namely the popularity of Kotaku. I'm glad the site is successful but that doesn't make it or you authoritative beyond the scandal we see in this thread.

GAF threads often have a hyperbolic and/or sarcastic done ("downgradeaton"), I'll give you that. There are obsessive, circular arguments quite often in the gaming side, however Ubisoft's refusal to give straight answers until forced, their dalliance at response in the first place, and general misrepresentation of their product has been undeniably seedy.
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If only there were people here with direct channels through which to contact Ubisoft who could ask some hard questions and force them into non denialing this thing into confirmation. I can't imagine who might have such access. Surely it wouldn't be someone here telling us that what we should actually do is not complain and wait for their website to post their review and give them traffic.

I mean, surely someone wouldn't be so bold faced as to come in here and do that.
 
TyrantII said:
People expect them to execute on that promise and deliver.
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I've seen this posted a few times now in this thread. I'm curious since I honestly don't know, but did they actually say at e3 2012 that they "promise" the final game will look like this? Or is it more that we are suppose to take whatever they show us is a promise as to what the game will look like at release?
 
plagiarize said:
If only there were people here with direct channels through which to contact Ubisoft who could ask some hard questions and force them into non denialing this thing into confirmation. I can't imagine who might have such access. Surely it wouldn't be someone here telling us that what we should actually do is not complain and wait for their website to post their review and give them traffic.

I mean, surely someone wouldn't be so bold faced as to come in here and do that.
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Expose it.
 
Hoodbury said:
I've seen this posted a few times now in this thread. I'm curious since I honestly don't know, but did they actually say at e3 2012 that they "promise" the final game will look like this? Or is it more that we are suppose to take whatever they show us is a promise as to what the game will look like at release?
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As I said earlier, it would be like a movie trailer showing incredible visual effects and not having those said effects on release. It might not be illegal, it might be completely allowed, but it's a great way for a free market to backfire on you when you're discovered. Especially when you tried to cover it up.

And the E3 reveal showed no 'Not the final game.' Because Ubi wanted the next gen hype. They wanted next gen hype for their title while not delivering a next gen title.
 
Hoodbury said:
I've seen this posted a few times now in this thread. I'm curious since I honestly don't know, but did they actually say at e3 2012 that they "promise" the final game will look like this? Or is it more that we are suppose to take whatever they show us is a promise as to what the game will look like at release?
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When a live demo of a game is presented as gameplay footage, I think it's pretty reasonable to assume that that's what the game will look like.
 
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