8 Lies The Video Game Industry Can't Stop Telling
4. "Target Renders" Produce Fake Gameplay
Reaching a notable boiling point with Cyberpunk 2077, the idea of a "target render" or "vertical slice" of an in progress game is often a reality of business.
Shareholders need to know where their money is going, publishers have marketing deadlines to hit and developers can sometimes benefit from seeing a snapshot of where they're collectively heading.
Where it gets weird though, is with everything I mentioned in regards to hype, pre-orders and manufacturing a version of the game that starts to exist more in the minds of the masses, than the creators themselves.
In Cyberpunk's case, the 45 minute "gameplay demo" journalists were shown in 2018 was literally faked. Same goes for No Man's Sky and even The Witcher 3 before 2015.
Whether or not you agree that a team doing their best to hit that render constitutes terms like a "downgrade" when a demo's finish line was one level instead of the full game are up for debate. The point is:
The general public are not applying or aware of the rules of a "target render" when it comes to pre-launch footage, and nowhere in the marketing handbook does it say "Tell the truth and risk losing sales".