Marketing hype from marketing types can lead to a big retail disappointment, a big company performance let-down, and so on and such as that. It happens when someone high-up does his job poorly. Not by making a bad game, but by expecting a bad one to be better than it was.

I don’t think it bothers the average consumer all that much though, if the marketing didn’t convince them that they were going to love it, and that they needed it, and that nothing else would make them happy.

I’m not convinced the Spore buzz isn’t mostly of the marketing-hype variety buzz.

I might think it’ll be great – as much as the marketing hype wants me to – but they’ll never convince me that something they cannot describe very well is the missing hole in my life. I don’t need for it to be great.

IMO fan backlash comes from the degree to which a bad game delivers a sense of betrayal to the very dedicated, much more than how many of them there are (let alone how well-advertised the game was to others).

‘Could be wrong, or I’m not hanging out on the right forums or something, but I just don’t see what Penny-Arcade was alluding to.

The post this blog linked to says:
“It’s only a few days after EA officially announced the release date of Spore and the Internet has literally exploded with a tonne of new information about the most anticipated game of the year”

…but those aren’t fanboy blogs being listed there, but game news sites that will “explode with a tonne of new information” at the whim of EA’s press releasers.

Google NEWS search, past week:
about 429 for spore game

Google BLOG search, past week:
about 216 for spore game

I submit: that is not anticipation, but marketing.

Google trends:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=spore&ctab=0&hl=en&geo=all&date=mtd&sort=0
(The release data was a spike… but that’s it and it’s not much more buzzy than it was 12 months ago).

That blog post called it the “most anticipated” and another called it the “much anticipated” while yet another went with “long awaited”.

But as with descriptions of the internet literally exploding, saying so doesn’t make it true.

You have to be especially skeptical of emotions attributed to “some people”, and double so if they are “on the internet”. Journalists still seem to be writing to the off-line audience, thinking they can say anything about what is happening online and no one will ever bother to check.

Or maybe that there’s no way to check that sort of thing.

Google trends, versus GTA IV:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=spore%2C+%22GTA+4%22%2C+gta&ctab=0&hl=en&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0
(not that I’d call GTA4 most anticipated, either).

Yahoo buzzlog, not listing it.
http://buzzlog.buzz.yahoo.com/video_games/

There’s hype, and then there’s people from the marketing department constantly insisting that there’s an amazing amount of overwhelming hype. OMGZ OMGZ!

Six months might be long enough to make us think there are a huge number of people for whom Spore is the crack, but I don’t think it’s long enough to make it so.

I was very much looking forward to this, but not so much anymore tbh. The original concept was probably a little too complicated ;).

Good job, Blizzard. In my eyes, you’re still close to the people.

Personally, I’m no where near as excited as I was before.