Beyond Good Manners
DANIEL WILKS has a heart of stone
E3 2017 has come and gone. Although the event seemed much more subdued than those of the past (I haven’t been in a few years because of clashing deadlines and the fact that I’m old, grumpy and take roughly forever to get over jetlag), there were still a number of announcements and reveals that drew my attention and made me genuinely excited. One of those announcements or reveals that didn’t excite me was the one that seems to have garnered the most press – Beyond Good and Evil 2. Don’t get me wrong – I absolutely loved Beyond Good and Evil and replayed it again recently, and would love to see a sequel, but the trailer, the “gameplay footage”, and the breathless response to them are an example of everything I think is wrong about not just E3 as an event but the way supposedly professional journalists react to industry announcements at said event.
I’m something of a stick in the mud when it comes to hype and industry interaction. I do my best to avoid any events that blur the line between professional and personal relationships and I make it a point of pride never to mince words when it comes to my opinion, as I think that skirting around an issue in order to salve potentially hurt feelings ultimately serves to do nothing but muddy waters and cloud more important issues. I’ll be polite – politeness never hurt anyone – but you can be politely direct
the Beyond Good & Evil 2 trailer looked great, sure, but so did the last trailer at Ubidays in 2008
rather than circumspect. I will always be honest about my opinion and feelings, but one thing I will never do is cheer, scream and carry on about a product, let alone a trailer.
Take the Beyond Good and Evil 2 trailer as an example of this problem. The trailer was met with screams and roars of approval, applause and near orgasmic joy. It looked great, sure, but so did the last trailer, debuted at Ubidays in 2008. That trailer showed the protagonists of the original game and lacked any real context. Now, nine years later, a new trailer shows brand new characters in a context quite divorced from the original game. The trailer really says nothing. It’s a spectacle and admittedly looks fantastic, but ultimately it’s little more than a highly choreographed chase scene free of any real meaning. Who are the characters? Are they just thieves or is there a deeper purpose to them ripping off a crime boss?
After the trailer aired and the wooing died down, game director Michel Ancel stated that they had been working on the tech of the game for three years and later clarified that they were basically at day zero when it comes to actual game development, and announced that people could contribute to development through the Space Monkey Program. Does that mean that the trailer is a spec made action setpiece with no relation to the actual story or gameplay? Could be. There is no release window for the game, so the trailer was essentially an empty announcement for something that may be coming sometime in the future, and given that there has already been a trailer for the game featuring different characters (as well as leaked gameplay footage), the trailer could be totally divorced from the actual game. We don’t know either way and that’s the rub. The press should save its applause for something palpable, not for a promise.
This, at least to me, is the problem with events like E3 and how the press interacts with it. Flash and glitter can’t outweigh substance, and when the press cheers and whoops for joy at a trailer, then those that are meant to hold developers to account and be arbiters of news and opinion stop being the press and become another arm of PR and marketing. We can be excited for a game, but our job is to be, if not impartial, at least rational.