10 Manipulative Gaming Tactics You Fall For Every Time

10. Suspiciously Impressive Trailers & "Bullshots"

One of the gaming industry's oldest tricks is to lure potential customers in with misleading "target gameplay" and screenshots (or rather, "bullshots") which ultimately aren't representative of what the final game actually look likes.

The most infamous example in the last generation was unquestionably Watch Dogs, which ended up receiving a substantial visual downgrade from its original E3 demo, much to players' disappointment.

Before that, we had Killzone 2's PS3 "tech demo," which wasn't even in-engine but rather a rendered video intended to approximate what the team at Guerrilla Games was aiming for.

In recent years, it turned out that this was originally an internal video never meant to be released outside of Sony, but once the marketing bods feasted their eyes upon it, they actively attempted to manipulate players into believing those visuals were a realistic prospect on PS3.

And today developers still get away with over-promising a visual experience which isn't actually feasible on existing hardware, hiding their deception under the guise of unexpected technical challenges which arise during development.

To be clear, always be skeptical of early gameplay footage, because it so rarely represents the vision that ends up on our screens.