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[TC McQueen]

I'm wondering if shinobi is part of their marketing wing at this point.

Honestly, I feel like he was some outside consultant/GAF gauge and basically wound up having to do their fucking job because they're so bad at it. I mean, look at this:

I can certainly understand people's apprehension for how 'little' they're showing. I've been close with a lot of the folks there for a little while now, and I know when things are planned for the most part. Believe me, if I was on the outside looking in and had no idea, I'd be absolutely confused as to what's going on. I don't blame people one bit.

It's been a weird ride for sure. I don't think the footage yesterday helped really. It was short. People want lengthy videos of substance. They want to know more about the squadmates and meet them a bit before playing. They want to know more about the story. And I've relayed this and asked about that. I'm not moving the goalpost or anything, but after asking again, things like lengthy demos (10 minutes or more) are coming around mid-February. They haven't even shown most of the environments and worlds we'll explore, creatures we'll fight, space travel, inside the Tempest, inside the Nexus, etc.

It's coming March 21st, and they have a marketing blitz planned leading up to it starting towards the end of this month, early next month.

I just want it all out there already so people can finally feel comfortable that this game is going to be fucking awesome.

We're literally getting more out of a GAF guy than the actual developers and publisher!

 

[Auctopus]

I'm wondering if shinobi is part of their marketing wing at this point.

I wonder if Shinobi's an "insider" at all or whether he has light correspondence with a dev or two.

 

[jett]

Oh how sad, we lost the yo-yo tricks people. Hopefully someone else get in on dat.

p.s. I think Ian will be proven right regarding Horizon. Put its cool setting aside and it looks like yet another open world game, complete with map-unlocking towers, and personally I have zero faith in Guerilla when it comes to story and characters.

p.s.s. shinobi is dangerously coming across like an astroturfer

 

[brotkasten]

I wonder if Shinobi's an "insider" at all or whether he has light correspondence with a dev or two.

He sounds more like a community manager in that thread.

 

[Brian_FETO]

As someone who's never played Mass Effect and doesn't care about Andromeda, EA's marketing has seemed like "yep, we're making another. you're gonna buy it"

Like they aren't even trying to appeal to anyone else

 

[jett]

As someone who's never played Mass Effect and doesn't care about Andromeda, EA's marketing has seemed like "yep, we're making another. you're gonna buy it"

Like they aren't even trying to appeal to anyone else

Agreed. It's almost hard to believe it's coming out in two months, they've shown so little.

 

[ElephantShell]

The marketing for Mass Effect has been whack but I am 100% ready for a Mass Effect game to take over my life again. It's been too long. I don't really need to see more on it.

 

[WarRock]

Kyle said you can't add new characters into old RPGs people love but... What about Dragon Quest V?

Completely disagree with Ian on the aspect of sports games. Every year EA put effort in to talking about their franchises in both trailers and on-stage yet people (including members of EZA!) will immediately just go "SPORTS. I'm out!" with a deluge of resident sleepers on Twitch chat.

Don't tell them to make you care when you won't even give them the time of day. They opened their FIFA presentation with a live 'theater' presentation in to a trailer about a STORY MODE in FIFA before bringing out frigging Jose Mouriniho at a video game presser. Whether those advertised features panned out well is irrelevant.

I'm not that in to sports either but they really tried last year, it's not their fault that people will refuse to listen.

I dunno man. If you want non sports fans to pay attention to your sports game, maybe you should market them as cool games instead of as realistic sports stuff? That story mode presentation was awful and confusing and people who don't follow football won't get what all that career crap means anyway. I mean, a lot of people don't care for fighting games but still were blown away at that first Guilty Gear Xrd trailer and some Tekken 7 trailers. A lot of people don't care about FPS and were blown away by the Battlefield 1 trailer. And so on and so on.

People didn't pay attention to Jose Mourinho and why should they? He wasn't saying anything interesting or convincing, the same way nobody payed attention to Tony Hawk trying to sell that skateboard motion controller on Twitter some years ago, and THPS has history to a lot of people.

 

[LiquidSolid]

Completely disagree with Ian on the aspect of sports games. Every year EA put effort in to talking about their franchises in both trailers and on-stage yet people (including members of EZA!) will immediately just go "SPORTS. I'm out!" with a deluge of resident sleepers on Twitch chat.

Don't tell them to make you care when you won't even give them the time of day. They opened their FIFA presentation with a live 'theater' presentation in to a trailer about a STORY MODE in FIFA before bringing out frigging Jose Mouriniho at a video game presser. Whether those advertised features panned out well is irrelevant.

I'm not that in to sports either but they really tried last year, it's not their fault that people will refuse to listen.

Is anyone really impressed when they bring out Jose Mourinho? To me that just shows they're out of touch. There's a reason Sony and Microsoft don't bother with celebrity appearances any more, because it's a waste of time and money.

Now that EA have their own "E3", I don't know why they don't just have a separate EA Sports conference. Their current format seems to treat games like Mass Effect like afterthoughts, so it's not like they don't have enough games to make it work.

Oh how sad, we lost the yo-yo tricks people. Hopefully someone else get in on dat.

p.s. I think Ian will be proven right regarding Horizon. Put its cool setting aside and it looks like yet another open world game, complete with map-unlocking towers, and personally I have zero faith in Guerilla when it comes to story and characters.

p.s.s. shinobi is dangerously coming across like an astroturfer

Which is why they hired people who ARE good writers. It's like saying "I have zero faith in Taro Yoko when it comes to gameplay" when they specifically went out and brought Platinum on board to fix that issue.

Personally, I'm beyond sick of the negativity and concern trolling surrounding Horizon in some quarters. There isn't even much logic to it, it mainly consists of "bu-bu-but Killzone", extrapolating the entire game from a short gameplay clip or just complete bullshit ("they've shown it less than Mass Effect", "it's another Shadow of Mordor" and so on). It's annoying that EZA have bought into this rubbish.

And Shinobi doesn't even come remotely close to being an astroturfer. He just sounds like he's excited for the game based on what he's seen and that's fine.

 

[TheDarkKnight774]

And Shinobi doesn't even come remotely close to being an astroturfer. He just sounds like he's excited for the game based on what he's seen and that's fine.

I didn't say astroturfer. An astroturfer tries to hide associations. But between the info he talked about both Horizon and ME a lot of that feels like he's either directly or indirectly being used by these devs to help promote their games and do damage control as an "insider". I'm not saying he doesn't believe it or isn't excited for the games but who gets this kind of info consistently and talks about it with no recourse?

 

[Karu]

I would rather risk boring one side of the audience who won't care anyway while marketing to my biggest audience across any franchise whatsoever than trying to play cool potentially making the target audience go "huh?". (You can, of course, argue that the target audience of FIFA on the flipside will inceed care anyway).

The Mass Effect fan will care for the "Mass Effect Gameplay coming in 5 minutes!"-segment either way. EA shouldn't build their marketing around that one time someone on a podcast will give your conference a C instead of a B+ because Mourinho was on stage. Not speaking of the fact that the big marketing push comes with seperate videos on YT after all is said and done.

In regards to Andromeda: I hate their marketing. I hate the concept of Andromeda. I love/HATE Inquisition. But since it's Bioware and I don't get their particular brand anywhere else, it's Day One no matter what.

 

[orthodoxy1095]

And Shinobi doesn't even come remotely close to being an astroturfer. He just sounds like he's excited for the game based on what he's seen and that's fine.

Well we've had Shinobi do this before. He spread all kinds of ridiculous noise about The Order 1886 and I've basically ignored his excitement about games ever since then because whatever cred he has as an insider seems to be marred by a fanboyish approach to games.

With that said, I do agree with the other comments that the way Shinobi has talked about Mass Effect seems to be a step above what he did for other titles. He sounds like a community manager or a PR mouthpiece far too often now.

 

[Earthpainting]

I was on the same page as Ian with Mass Effect. Too many boring smelly humans in the marketing makes me less excited. I love all three entries, but zero of my memorable moments with the entire Mass Effect series had to do with fellow-humans, and I doubt it will change. Especially not with their wierd animations.

 

[Holundrian]

I was on the same page as Ian with Mass Effect. Too many boring smelly humans in the marketing makes me less excited. I love all three entries, but zero of my memorable moments with the entire Mass Effect series had to do with fellow-humans, and I doubt it will change. Especially not with their wierd animations.

It's foreshadowing none of them are real humans. Run for you lives.

 

[Karu]

Played some Resident Evil 5 on my PS4. Deleted it after 20 minutes. After my boring experience with REmake, I am a bit at a loss. I played Resident Evil 4 on my Wii and absolutely loved it, but I realize that may have more to do with the Wii's controls than anything else. The standard controls are just not my cup of tea at all.

My first reaction was planning to ignore REVII, but then I am also really interested in it regardless, but more importantly - it is first person, so any janky third person controls won't be a problem. Well, around two weeks more to make my decision, I guess.

 

[Auctopus]

I distinctly remember Shinobi not having any sort of insider information in the past, then he went away for a while (I remember because he requested to be banned so he couldn't log in).

When he came back, he was this sort of tease insider (which technically should've got him banned) where he'd just leave wink faces or one word answers about things. See: The Order 1886 - he continually hyped that game up as if he knew something we all didn't, then when it released, it disappointed massively.

The other actual insiders on GAF, I feel like we all know why they're trusted insiders - we basically know where abouts they work. Shinobi has always been flakey, he's never provided real answers or information - just teasing or his opinion on something he saw/read. In addition to this, his 'sources' are all over the place. Most insiders have info about a certain developer or publisher, Shinobi seems to know everything about everyone.

I totally see where people are coming from when they think he's an overzealous fanboy because a lot of his time that isn't spent leaving '' or 'You'll find out soon.' is spent dissipating criticisms.

Andromeda will be pretty clear though. A lot of the negativity around that game has been linked to peoples' experience with DA:I's theme park open world and weak character stories. Something they haven't showed anything about with Mass Effect: A media. Yet, Shinobi has promised time and time again that it won't be anything like that.

(Didn't mean to go in depth)

I dunno man. If you want non sports fans to pay attention to your sports game, maybe you should market them as cool games instead of as realistic sports stuff?

I'm almost with the point you're making here but comparing the debut of a sports-sim with Guilty Gear is ridiculous. What do you mean, "market them as cool games" ? They market the games as exactly what they are as that's what their audience wants.

Ian was asking to be marketed/appealed to but him and a couple other of the Allies have definitely just switched off alongside the chat in the past, refusing to be marketed to anyway.

My point is, if FIFA 18 was set in Yharnam and allowed you to play as a custom female character. Ian wouldn't know or care because he'd be in the john with his headphones off.

 

[UrbanRats]

I don't understand why non-sports fans should be appealed to in the first place.
As a big fan of SKATE for example, i wouldn't want it to start featuring SSX or Tony Hawk bullshit just to expand the audience arbitrarily.
Well, in the hypothetical that SKATE was being made still, and i guess you could argue they closed it down because the audience for realistic skateboarding simulator just wasn't large enough, but so be it.

I don't think Ian would want a Bloodborne 2 with walk&talk and QTEs, just to appeal and keep the interest of a demographic outside the game's established one.
And the problem isn't with the marketing, it's with the games.
If you care about soccer/football, you care about FIFA and PES, if you don't, then you don't... there is no marketing magic that can change that.

 

[WarRock]

Still watching the podcast: Kyle is a terrible game designer :lol:

I'm almost with the point you're making here but comparing the debut of a sports-sim with Guilty Gear is ridiculous.

Why? Even on GAF there are plenty of people who automatically turn off when a game is announced as a fighting game, in the same way that some turn off when a sports game come up. Oh well, it's the same from my point of view ¯\_(&#12484_/¯

What do you mean, "market them as cool games" ? They market the games as exactly what they are as that's what their audience wants.

That's my point. They market them to sports fan, and they people who aren't sports fan don't get interested. That's their directive and it's working, so more power to them, but then don't complain when people like Ian go "SPORTS! I'm out" like you said.

Heck, I dislike open world games and I'm interested in Horizon because at first they made it seem like a hunting game with a badass redhead with a well thought design and dinobots. If the game reveal started with the latest trailers I would be turned off immediately too (well, I would be up to an artbook).

 

[Auctopus]

I don't understand why non-sports fans should be appealed to in the first place.
As a big fan of SKATE for example, i wouldn't want it to start featuring SSX or Tony Hawk bullshit just to expand the audience arbitrarily.
Well, in the hypothetical that SKATE was being made still, and i guess you could argue they closed it down because the audience for realistic skateboarding simulator just wasn't large enough, but so be it.

I don't think Ian would want a Bloodborne 2 with walk&talk and QTEs, just to appeal and keep the interest of a demographic outside the game's established one.
And the problem isn't with the marketing, it's with the games.
If you care about soccer/football, you care about FIFA and PES, if you don't, then you don't... there is no marketing magic that can change that.

Yeah, that's sort of the point I'm making too. Anyway, it was a small point that got out of hand. It's quite clear for the people that switch off during the sports games or spam resident sleeper, it's going to take more than marketing to get them interested. L&R

 

[Bahorel]

Somebody needs to make Kyle eat his first toaster strudel on a group stream so we can end this bizarre argument. Cmon allies. Get him.

 

[WarRock]

Brad the MVP in the latest podcast hahahah
Jones face after his sign off holy shit hhahaahahah

 

[Brian_FETO]

Somebody needs to make Kyle eat his first toaster strudel on a group stream so we can end this bizarre argument. Cmon allies. Get him.

Pop Tarts you always know what you are getting. They are always the same and you can eat them straight out of the package

Toaster Strudels looked amazing on the commericals they used to air (I don't know if they even do that anymore) where they looked like the most incredible gooey pastries ever

Then you get it and its like oh, it's a dumb frozen brick of flakey crust and the icing comes out like a mess that doesn't look cool like the commericial

It can still come out fine but it's not like a Pop Tart where you know exactly what's coming out

(not liking Pop Tarts doesn't make it an inaccurate comparison. they're saying you know exactly how good it'll turn out)

 

[Chuck]

That might be the worst use of the pruvit ticket in the history of our species.

 

[Deadman]

Something that the pokemon shows have made me wonder: how common is it for people to nickname their pokemon?

Kyle and Brandon do it to basically all of their pokemon. I've been playing since blue and have literally never done it.

What does everyone else do?

 

[Blackleg-sanji1]

Something that the pokemon shows have made me wonder: how common is it for people to nickname their pokemon?

Kyle and Brandon do it to basically all of their pokemon. I've been playing since blue and have literally never done it.

What does everyone else do?

Main team only not every single one.

 

[Bloodworth]

Something that the pokemon shows have made me wonder: how common is it for people to nickname their pokemon?

Kyle and Brandon do it to basically all of their pokemon. I've been playing since blue and have literally never done it.

What does everyone else do?

I do it if there's a fun nickname that immediately comes to mind and if I know the Pokemon well enough that I don't have to keep looking up its regular name.

 

[Brian_FETO]

I never used to name them because I was conditioned by the anime not to

It never really occurred to me until BPP showed how much more fun it can be.

On a side note....I thought I was gonna be way into Pokemon Moon and play it a bunch on the flights to/from PSX but I haven't touched it. Guess once the initial nostalgia wore off I just kind of bounced from it

At this point there's so many games that I need to finish before the tidal wave of Q1 that I imagine I'm done with it lol

 

[jett]

What a brutal night of tetris, dang.

 

[Brian_FETO]

What a brutal night of tetris, dang.

Yeah I fell asleep, the hype wasn't there

 

[TheCowboyPoet]

Something that the pokemon shows have made me wonder: how common is it for people to nickname their pokemon?

Kyle and Brandon do it to basically all of their pokemon. I've been playing since blue and have literally never done it.

What does everyone else do?

My wife always does. I never did but I started nicknaming my Pokes after Brandon Plays Pokemon, it's kind of fun!

 

[ElTorro]

What a brutal night of tetris, dang.

 

[Mista Koo]

Kyle would probably not like Tricky Towers. He's so used to Tetris controls that the half step will just drive him insane.
SFV's Akuma is pretty cool, as someone who never cared to play as Akuma. And Kyle kinda made me interested in Tekken 7 again?

As for automata, in my computer theory class I've always pronounced it otto-ma-ta.

I thought the idea of the FIFA story mode this last year was interesting, people on my timeline who equally don't care about sports/sports games at all seem to agree (at least during E3).

Something that the pokemon shows have made me wonder: how common is it for people to nickname their pokemon?

Kyle and Brandon do it to basically all of their pokemon. I've been playing since blue and have literally never done it.

What does everyone else do?

I've done it once, picking shorter names based on their names. By the end of that game I realized I didn't know any Pokemon (well, mainly evolutions) actual names and stopped.

 

[Kneefoil]

Something that the pokemon shows have made me wonder: how common is it for people to nickname their pokemon?

Kyle and Brandon do it to basically all of their pokemon. I've been playing since blue and have literally never done it.

What does everyone else do?

I don't name majority of my Pokémon when I'm first playing through a Pokémon game, but I do it every now and then. I always name everyone in my main teams in all the playthroughs after the first one, though.

 

[AAMARMO]

I was in the Talking Syndrome chat today and Kyle spotted my bet question .

Question: How many Coins will we see during the Mario Gameplay?

 

[TheDarkKnight774]

I was in the Talking Syndrome chat today and Kyle spotted my bet question .

Question: How many Coins will we see during the Mario Gameplay?

Just heard that. Well done. An excellent talking syndrome. I love when it's TTE recording day for talking syndromes

 

[Ruruja]

Something that the pokemon shows have made me wonder: how common is it for people to nickname their pokemon?

Kyle and Brandon do it to basically all of their pokemon. I've been playing since blue and have literally never done it.

What does everyone else do?

I think I did it the first time I ever played it, Pokemon Red.

Never since.

There's too many and I just can't be bothered lol.

 

[Wiggy]

super jolly talking syndrome today, hope Huber does try RE2 speedruns- Kyle's right it would be a cool on going stream.

oh and Gandalf would destroy Vader

 

[Karu]

I love the recent threads that just silently scream

OH MY GAWD DONT LET THIS GAME FLOP PLEEEEEAAAZE GAF, GAAAAAAF HELP OUT!!

for

Gravity Rush 2
Resident Evil VII
Yakuza O

The fear is real.... Oo

 

[Burt]

super jolly talking syndrome today, hope Huber does try RE2 speedruns- Kyle's right it would be a cool on going stream.

oh and Gandalf would destroy Vader

magic

that ain't right

 

[Blackleg-sanji1]

I love the recent threads that just silently scream

OH MY GAWD DONT LET THIS GAME FLOP PLEEEEEAAAZE GAF, GAAAAAAF HELP OUT!!

for

Gravity Rush 2
Resident Evil VII
Yakuza O

The fear is real.... Oo

Why would this one need that.

 

[Karu]

Why would this one need that.

Downward trend in sales of the series. High expectations by Capcom. Drastic superficial (important for marketing and long-time fans) change. Recent disappointing sales of numerous franchises & sequels. Not comparable with GR2 and Y0 in any way but still very much a worry.

 

[Blackleg-sanji1]

Downward trend in sales of the series. High expectations by Capcom. Drastic superficial (important for marketing and long-time fans) change. Recent disappointing sales of numerous franchises & sequels. Not comparable with GR2 and Y0 in any way but still very much a worry.

I can't think of too many games not to worry about when it comes to this place honestly

 

[Obliterator]

Quick question that has already been asked, but will there be a betting special / live stream for the Switch reveal? There has to be both right?

 

[Brian_FETO]

Quick question that has already been asked, but will there be a betting special / live stream for the Switch reveal? There has to be both right?

Yes to both

Bets will probably be during the group stream (don't know for sure but it's not 1v1 so yea)

 

[Hedgey]

Quick question that has already been asked, but will there be a betting special / live stream for the Switch reveal? There has to be both right?

Way too many unknowns to guess, and only one developer? Not much content for a betting special. Livestream I can imagine will happen though.

 

[Spiritreaver]

Something that the pokemon shows have made me wonder: how common is it for people to nickname their pokemon?

Kyle and Brandon do it to basically all of their pokemon. I've been playing since blue and have literally never done it.

What does everyone else do?

I name the first Pokemon of a species I catch in every single game, lol.

 

[Holundrian]

Something that the pokemon shows have made me wonder: how common is it for people to nickname their pokemon?

Kyle and Brandon do it to basically all of their pokemon. I've been playing since blue and have literally never done it.

What does everyone else do?

I never used to do it because I wanted to know the names of the pokemon species I'm using, but then I watched Brandon plays Pokemon and with the series somewhere along the way ending up with ~800 pokemon...

I told myself I'm never going to learn those names anyway(because honestly somewhere in my mind I decided arbitrarily that the brain memory cost for every 2 pokemon names would probably equal to learning a new Kanji and that's like 400 Kanji) so I might as well nickname them.

 

[WiseSplinteR]

Great Talking Syndrome and Easy Update this weekend. Kyle really is going to get Switch colour options, troll wishes comes true! So funny.

And Gandalf would destroy Vader, no question.

 

[WarRock]

Downward trend in sales of the series. High expectations by Capcom. Drastic superficial (important for marketing and long-time fans) change. Recent disappointing sales of numerous franchises & sequels. Not comparable with GR2 and Y0 in any way but still very much a worry.

No Capcom release is free of that it seems. Except for Okamiden, lol.

 

[Brian_FETO]

Masters of Teras Kasi is a trash game

Therefore it is the logical choice for tournament week