7 Simple Solutions To The Gaming Industry's Biggest Problems
1. Marketing Promises Versus "Downgrades" At Launch
Solution: Target renders are factored into most AAA game's marketing.
It's ran the gamut of The Witcher 3 having far worse visuals than first shown, to the hilariously tragic - or tragically hilarious - likes of "#puddlegate" that surrounded Insomniac's Spider-Man.
Basically - and there are hundreds more examples of launch day games not living up to marketing everywhere you look - the gaming industry has a major problem with early glimpses of titles, vertical slices, alphas, betas and final code.
Hell, with patches and overhauls to games like No Man's Sky or Rainbow Six Siege continuing development after release, there's a problem with what a release date even IS.
Back to marketing though, and the solution to "downgrades" is cementing in the average consumer's mind that nothing is final until launch day.
A glimpse of a level, character or first pass at a story scene? It needs to come alongside a developer saying on stage that "This is what we're aiming for", or have small print and associated text inside trailers spelling out that these things are "Target renders", indicative of what might be.
We need to collectively understand the process of game development FAR better than we do right now. We should absolutely be excited for what could be, as the developers are, but alongside the acceptance that when a project's finish line is a 60 hour RPG, that's completely different to designing a 15 minute stage demo.
CD Projekt RED's Adam Badowski addressed this in 2015, saying in regards to The Witcher 3's final state, that it wasn't a "downgrade", because the game's performance and visuals are drastically different at full scale, versus those initial showings.
Behind the scenes "making ofs" like what Danny O'Dwyer puts together at NoClip could be rolled out alongside a AAA title's development, much like how we see "first day of shooting" videos for popular movies.
If it was more understood that a team is trying their best to craft a vision - something they themselves can't tangibly interact with until months or weeks before launch - the overall passion behind video game creation could be far more unified between audience and creator.