No Man's Hype Train: Part 1

Over the past 6 months or so, I’ve thought about two particular games a disproportionate amount compared to how much I’ve actually played them: Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky and Niantic’s Pokémon Go. I find it interesting that two of the biggest, and more importantly hyped, games of summer 2016 experienced such lukewarm receptions post launch. Obviously both Pokémon Go and No Man’s Sky stumbled out of the gate from technical and conceptual points of view - but while Pokémon Go has somewhat rebounded (and is enjoying a steady stream of daily active users and revenue), No Man’s Sky might have sunk their fledgling studio and reputation with misstep after misstep. After thinking about it for a bit, I feel like there’s a few key reasons why the two games have gone in opposite directions despite similar issues faced during launch - and the common thread throughout all of them is the concept of “hype” within the gaming community.

To begin, for those out of the know, No Man’s Sky is an “infinite” procedurally generated Sci-Fi adventure game that allows players to traverse from one planet to another in real time and discover... stuff. The overall goal of this game is to get to the center of the galaxy where the game’s “big truth” awaits. No Man’s Sky is available on PS4 and PC for roughly $25 (originally $59.99 at release). Pokémon Go is a augmented reality game based on geolocation featuring the extremely well known Pokémon IP. Players can catch Pokémon, battle gyms, and complete their pokedex - just like in the Pokemon TV show. The company that made Pokémon Go, Niantic, has another geolocation based game that is similar named Ingress. Pokémon Go is available on iOS and Android for free (with in game purchases optional).

Both of the games had rough launches for a number of reasons. For No Man Sky, the game shipped with less content than many thought it would contain, the core gameplay fell flat for many gamers after a few hours, and Hello Games as a organization was completely silent for a few weeks post launch. Pokémon Go had a few similar similar missteps - low developer communication and flat gameplay - however it also faced the additional hurdle of some pretty severe server issues due to the enormous amount of people playing at launch.

We’ll go more into the specific reasons each stumbled later on, but for the first part of this series I'd to cover the concept of “hype” and it’s place in the gaming community. Strictly by it's definition, hype is any "extravagant or intensive publicity", but from the colloquial usage in the gaming world, hype represents the cumulative amount of discussion regarding a piece of media. In practice it's simple: more people talking about a game = the more hype it has. Moreover, hype can be both positive and negative - as they say any publicity is good publicity.

I’d say that “hype” is something that seems to affect gamers significantly more than other types of consumers. This is could be perhaps due to the nature of the medium (interactive storytelling that represents both a monetary and temporal investment), the median age/maturity of the average gamer, or the collaborative nature of gaming itself (people play games together and enjoy them as a group through social sharing online). Obviously books, films, and other artistic content can/are hyped routinely, but it’s clear that gaming takes it to another level due to some of the unique aspects of the medium just mentioned.

It’s safe to say that the amount of hype a game receives makes a significant impact on it’s sales - and is usually a big part of how the top sellers get where they are - so in many situations developers and publishers try to feed into hype just as much as consumers. In general, the people most affected by hype - either positively or negatively -  are those who try to imagine what they want in a game and how the game can fill those roles. For people on the fence regarding a game, they may tip one way or another based on the perceived hype of a game. These people might not be drawn to a game due to it’s individual merits, but instead are affected by the overwhelming exposure it receives and may end up disappointed when they, upon purchase, finally find out what they are getting. For someone who has “fallen” for a games hype - which typically means buying into the fact that a game will be great despite having very little info - not getting the game you expect can be a very negative experience. Here's a handy comic from Zero Punctuation that accurately shows what hype can do to gamers:

To further understand gaming hype, you could categorize all potential customers into three groups:

Core Target: This represents the smallest group of gamers and is typically very “hypable”. These are fans of the genre/IP and drive most of the games preorders. They’re sometimes content creators and often start small communities or discussions on sites like reddit.

Secondary Target: A medium sized group, the secondary target represents gamers who may be persuaded into buying a game but need more info about it. As a group, they are slightly less hypable than the core target, but can move into the core or general market based on the messaging they receive. A larger number of content creators, writers, etc. are within this group.

General Market Target: Represents the largest group of consumers, essentially anyone who plays games or ever has, and are typically the least hypable.

Once gamers are segmented into these groups, a more generalized marketing/advertising theory can be applied to them. Both brand marketing and hype try to affect these groups of consumers to achieve a similar outcome (increase sales/recognition/brand awareness), but each does so from a different direction. Genuine hype often originates from the core of a game’s target audience and propagates outwards - attempting to convert individuals from the general market or secondary target into core fanatics. Hype is most often created by people not employed by the game studio, but in certain cases can originate from the developers as well. Examples of hype inducing media include new screenshots, teardowns of consoles, direct-to-consumer content, derivative works, and general leaks related to the game. Hype is the authentic reception of an idea based on expectations and the previous experiences of a group. It can also sometimes occur as a halo effect of brand marketing (which is sometimes seen as inauthentic).

Conversely, brand marketing affects consumers at a more upper funnel level, starting with the general market, it attempts to increase the overall sizes of each of the different target audiences. Brand marketing is controllable, planned, and expensive - the latter being the reason why some game studio’s try to hype their games rather than advertise. While creating hype for a game can undoubtedly benefit a studio, when left unchecked it can easily backfire (See: "Suicide" in the forth panel of the ZP comic above).

Most games go through a cycle of hype, expectations, reviews, and launch. From a dispassionate and objective point of view, one could say that both No Man’s Sky and Pokémon Go were “hyped” significantly prior to launch. One could also say that objectively neither fully lived up to the hype that they generated. Now that we’ve defined hype and some of the subsets of gaming consumers, in my next post I’ll talk about why Pokémon Go succeed where No Man’s Sky failed. Expect part 2 in Late March.