How much can a developer boast about "incredible in-game graphics", "radiant AI", "dynamic story lines" etc.  just to show the audience pre rendered movie clips, scripted sequences and still retain at least some credibility?

 Some games get hyped beyond comprehension and the developers are deliberately lying about the game's features. How far can they go and still "earn" your trust in future releases? How long/short is the memory of the consumers?

Discuss! 

Consumers are used to being lied to at this point by pretty much everyone trying to sell them something. The only people who still believe those lies are suckers. I'm not saying it's a good thing but the ability to distinguish fact/fiction or even just the thought to ask for proof is what separates the intelligent customers and unintelligent consumers.

The lies themselves usually IMO have to be colossal Daikatana-esqe or FF8-esqe in nature for them to be remembered though.

The only developer I don't take a grain of salt for when he speaks is Shigeru, with his games you kinda know what to expect and well I want what I'm expecting and it's always there.

But that idiot woman behind Assassins Creed high balled me on graphics. The AI in AC was retarded the animation he did was all preset, the entire game was redundant down to its core game play and it was blatant about it.

But redundancy can be fun but in AC case the reward was too insignifigant to make it fun, I seek completion as a reward but even the ending wasn't an ending.

Not even gonna mention Kojima in fear the the Kojima army will consider it flame bait.

dib8rman: The army is watching you.

I have still not seen any big lies in the industry the whole thing is just hype and I got used to it.

Well devs like Peter Molyneux set high standards for themselves. They want to put stuff in a game, for example, when he said that in Fable 1, if you planted an acorn, and came back to it years later, a tree would be there lol

Sure the xbox had a hardrive so it could have possibly been done, but as development of a game continues, they realise that many of the things they tried to do can't be done.

The latest example is probably Hideo Kojima where he says his orginal vision was not met. But that doesn't affect the game, because they have done the best they can with it.

Its not just the developers that do this. Sony has done this for PS2 and PS3 quite often...saying PS2 will display star wars episode 1 kind of graphics and we all know how PS3 turned out. Then they pull the microsofts "shortage" like excuse..."it's hard to develop for...sorry"

In any case, this kind of hype and lying usualy works to the benefit of the company doing it.

This has changed from the old days however...back then companies would throw magic numbers and crazy terms at the consumer and they would sound cool.

Super metroid commercial - "24 MEGS of power!!!!"
Genesis - "Blast processing..."
Saturn - "3 processors"

It is only with the PS2's generation did the showing off a pre-rendered demo and saying "this is in game engine" start.

I see this trend stopping however...if Wii continues to sell like it is.

Peter Molyneux says stuff he know is not true, maybe he wishes it was true but at the end of the day he just speaks shit. If you cant walk the walk dont talk the talk.

I agree with dib8rman, Shiggy dont talk much, but the guy delivers in style and on a regular basis.

Edit:  I guess I should comment on topic here.  Well to the defense of all the developers, most of these game features are something that PR takes and runs with.  I could see the conversation now:

Developer: "Well our game has tons of detailed world to explore, great new battle mechanics that are more intuitive, great story line, it's shaping up to be a great RPG"

PR Guy: "Good, but everything here has been in a game before.  Is there anything different"

Developer: "I guess we are implementing a complicated script program to control the AI"

PR Guy: "What does that mean?"

 Developer: "Well all of the NPC characters are going to act on there own, and make the world seem more alive, but this isn't really an important aspect of the game.  What about the new battle mechanics, immersive gameplay or a great storyline?"

PR Guy: "They don't matter.  So the NPC characters are alive, no radiant."

Developer: "What?  I said appear to be more alive."

PR Guy: "Yes, that's it, we have implemented the greatest in-game Radiant AI, where all the NPC characters are alive.  So it has good graphics too, right?"

Developer: "Yeah we've done a lot of work on the graphics, but....."

PR Guy:  "Perfect, this game will be Radiant AI, best graphics ever, ......"  As he starts to walk away coming up with all the PR hype he is going to start spewing later.

Developer: "But wait, we haven't worked out all the bugs yet"

PR Guy: And don't show the actual game to the audience , show your vision of how it could have been without a deadline.



I'm a sucker! :P I actually believed that about 5% of the talk about Radiant AI was true.

PR Guy: "What you see on screen is all rendered in real time and without any scripts whatsoever! The NPCs are actually more intelligent that all of you consumers combined and they can learn new animations by themself. The expansive world in bigger than North America and it looks more real than reality does."

Edit: And yes, I think that a lot of people fall for the lies in marketing. Especially Sonys boasting about the performance of the PS2. I have friends that still states that PS2 is at least twice as powerful as the GC.  

I think the worst case was Star Wars Galaxies. They promised all kinds of changes to the game one day. The next day not only did those changes never arrive, but the devs did something completely different that ruined the gameplay of its most loyal customers.