GG didn't really get away scot-free from that, though. Though Epic's not alone in getting away with obviously-fake bullshots (excluding B3D, of course), so we can't really single them out.
*Important Dilemma* Bullshots vs In-Game Screens
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GG didn't really get away scot-free from that, though. Though Epic's not alone in getting away with obviously-fake bullshots (excluding B3D, of course), so we can't really single them out.
I'm not that mad at either one.
Both devs ended up releasing amazing looking games. Many would say, the best of the gen on each platform.
Obviously both fell from what they showed, but the difference is Gears was shown live ... in 2005. So any difference in Media shown and gameplay graphics was readily seen.
As for GG/Sony not getting away with it ... eh ... I don't recall any official statement saying clearly that the video wasn't gameplay. Those of us that hung around here (well ... some of us) knew it was a BS render, but most at the time were swallowing the vid hook, line, and sinker. Even mass media like Eurogamer and G4.
As I said though, I'm not mad at them now knowing what they produced on ps3. It's a GREAT looking game, even if it doesn't match the vid.
Not at all. The media were quite eager to cry foul and denounce the CG as, well, CG. Everyone calls it that, it's listed in 'biggest blunders' lists on garbage list-posting blogs. Eventually it became a selling point -- people would go 'wow, Killzone 2 almost looks like the CGI render'!
No one so far has really said that 'huh, GeoW looks nothing like that media', and they swallowed more of it when GeoW2 bullshots were sent out. But then they don't say that about GT5 either.
Silent_Buddha
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I think it's just because we don't give the common consumer enough credit.
They know what PR is. They don't have a problem with PR. They know that anything advertised, for any product, in any price bracket, will never be as good as the PR.
So they already have their expectations adjusted somewhat. Sure people new to buying anything might get fooled. What? Budweiser doesn't make me a chick magnet? But by the time you're old enough to be making purchasing decisions, I think most people have become used to the outrageous claims almost all PR (advertisements, etc.) make.
Perhaps it's us, the gaming "elite" (or gaming snobs) that are the ones that are most easily fooled because we've lived a diet of direct feeds of gameplay.
Wait scratch that. I grew up with gaming in the 80's and 90's where advertised gameplay shots bore absolutely ZERO similarity to what you actually got when you played the game. So perhaps I'm a bit more accepting of the practice than some.
Regards,
SB
They know what PR is. They don't have a problem with PR. They know that anything advertised, for any product, in any price bracket, will never be as good as the PR.
So they already have their expectations adjusted somewhat. Sure people new to buying anything might get fooled. What? Budweiser doesn't make me a chick magnet? But by the time you're old enough to be making purchasing decisions, I think most people have become used to the outrageous claims almost all PR (advertisements, etc.) make.
Perhaps it's us, the gaming "elite" (or gaming snobs) that are the ones that are most easily fooled because we've lived a diet of direct feeds of gameplay.
Wait scratch that. I grew up with gaming in the 80's and 90's where advertised gameplay shots bore absolutely ZERO similarity to what you actually got when you played the game. So perhaps I'm a bit more accepting of the practice than some.
Regards,
SB
Maybe my memory is slipping.
Got a link?
FWIR, every major games media outlet was on Sony's jock as if they'd just won the nextgen war before it even began. They used two games as proof of the impending doom for MS:
KZ2
Motorstorm
Both were CG and both were made specifically to fool an audience into thinking they were realtime gameplay.
All MS had running on their box at the time was FullAuto ... which obviously paled in comparison.
I'll see if I can lookup the link.
All this topics, let me the feeling that:
" It's not BS shoot or vid, it's target render! And the game is near this so is good" if you're a Fanboy…
But many here seem also to mixe Press Marketing shoot use to promote game and gameplay shoot use to promote game also…
I known it's not easy to find the good way in all of these, but we have to be carefully.
I'm taking exemple if KZ2 vid is a render and not a gameplay vid exemple, also the Gears pic show above is the same (in fact is a promote shoot to shown the ambience of Gears so is not a gameplay shoot).
But in final, we have got that wee created…
A game need to be "Graphical Whaou!" to interested us, and the first impression is the only that rest so PR make-up their games.
When we will began more critic may be PR change…
" It's not BS shoot or vid, it's target render! And the game is near this so is good" if you're a Fanboy…
But many here seem also to mixe Press Marketing shoot use to promote game and gameplay shoot use to promote game also…
I known it's not easy to find the good way in all of these, but we have to be carefully.
I'm taking exemple if KZ2 vid is a render and not a gameplay vid exemple, also the Gears pic show above is the same (in fact is a promote shoot to shown the ambience of Gears so is not a gameplay shoot).
But in final, we have got that wee created…
A game need to be "Graphical Whaou!" to interested us, and the first impression is the only that rest so PR make-up their games.
When we will began more critic may be PR change…
Don't let 'em see those psp shots of GT!!!
Well, but that's my point! I think it's fine if they see those shots, it's just important to know it's photo mode. Most people would actually be excited to have that feature, and in the meantime the gameplay videos show a very good looking game (if a bit empty with only 4 cars)
We are not revisiting the pre-release PR campaigns of the console companies. That has been done to death. Anyone who was paying attention will know what happened, and anyone who wasn't paying attention won't start now. This thread is about the ongoing use of non-gameplay images to advertise a game. Any historical reference has to be on a software basis. eg. "A game (KZ2, Gears etc) was marketed this way and the market response was such."
Because it's in game.
I agree with the sentiment but disagree with the terms - "in game" to me means what you see when actually playing the game, through a standard gameplay experience, while "in engine" means anything that the engine can spit out when gameplay is not important, i.e. non-realtime, improved assets and render states.
So a photomode is "in engine", while what you see when actually steering around turn 1 in the middle of a pack of 16 cars is "in game".
That's arguing semantics that aren't officially definied anywhere though. There's no law that says 'in game' has to mean 'what you experience when playing the game part of the software'. The problem here is as much interpretation of English amiguities as anything. Whatever one's own interpretation, it's not really fair to claim a company is cheating or immoral for having an alternative interpretation.
Edit : one can continue that argument to the definition of 'in engine'. The photomode engine is different to the in-game engine. What if a cutscene is rendered with the gameplay engine but prerecorded to hide loading times? That'd be in-engine graphics, right? Now what if a cutscene is rendered with a specific cutscene engine that adds features not in the gamepla enginey? That'd also be an in-engine cutscene but be a different thing.
Edit : one can continue that argument to the definition of 'in engine'. The photomode engine is different to the in-game engine. What if a cutscene is rendered with the gameplay engine but prerecorded to hide loading times? That'd be in-engine graphics, right? Now what if a cutscene is rendered with a specific cutscene engine that adds features not in the gamepla enginey? That'd also be an in-engine cutscene but be a different thing.
The irony is, it is on boards like this where people know what to look for and analyse screenshots in detail to pick up the smallest effect or inconsistency, who also seem to embrace the photomode or the bullshot and proclaim game x will blow everybody away - and when challenged with the question of it being in-engine and not in-game, will justify their thoughts based on some crazy estimate of how much the game has been enhanced by the photomode and therefore what it must look like in-game. The reality is, until we have the game running on our TVs, nobody knows what it's really going to be like in-game, especially regarding this generation's forgotten pillar of graphics - framerate.
It's my belief that average gamer on the street wouldn't be able to tell the difference, unless explicitly shown a mix of in-game and in-engine (photomode) shots and told to point out which ones looked better. The same goes for the endless 360vPS3 graphical debates. An average gamer viewing an online gallery of images from a particular game (not that this is an activity an average gamer would undertake
), wouldn't even notice if the gallery was a mixture of in-game and in-engine, or PS3 and 360 and PC. They'd just see images of the game.I've seen plenty enough people ask if CoD4 is 1080p because that's what their TV says, they simply have no idea about the difference between 1920x1080 and 1024x600 (and this from supposed videophiles) - which sounds so hard to believe, but it's true and quite commonplace. We project a lot of what we know and have come to look for in graphics onto the average gamer, who really doesn't know, or care, unless pushed to point out differences, at which point they might squint their eyes and say "this one looks a bit fuzzier" or "that one seems less colourful" or something else non-technical, and just as likely to look so hard for something that they might even pick up on a difference which isn't even there.
Of course there is no law, but "in-game" implies gameplay, which is why it has stuck as the most widely understood term for what you see when you're actually playing the game.
Yes, "in-engine" is a superset which contains "in-game". It can also contain photomode, replay mode, etc. I guess "in-engine" means you didn't fire up 3dsmax, but actually used the same rendering pipeline as in-game uses, just without the constraints of in-game (i.e. 16 or 32ms per frame, perhaps more memory, clock cycles as other game systems aren't running).
An interesting one is Gran Turismo garage mode. Is that in-engine or not? It's realtime, but doesn't use the same rendering mechanism as in-game. Plenty of geek fun to be had categorising that one
Of course anybody can use whichever terms they wish, but these terms seem to have stuck for good reason and are pretty clear, and if everybody is on the same page it makes reading discussions a lot easier
Clearly they're not though, which is why we have these arguments!Of course anybody can use whichever terms they wish, but these terms seem to have stuck for good reason and are pretty clear, and if everybody is on the same page it makes reading discussions a lot easier
Personally I'd call what you call 'in-engine' graphics as 'gameplay graphics' whereas 'in game' just means produced in the game instead of offline. then there's nothing implied or ambiguous about it. "Are these screenshots game-play?" It's a yes or no answer without any room to manipulate, whereas "are these screenshots in-engine?" can be answered by a dev or PR crew as "yes" while being non-committal.
Clearly they're not though, which is why we have these arguments!
then there's nothing implied or ambiguous about it. "Are these screenshots game-play?" It's a yes or no answer without any room to manipulate, whereas "are these screenshots in-engine?" can be answered by a dev or PR crew as "yes" while being non-committal.
It doesn't matter how any one individual interprets a particular phrase or term, its how the term or phrase is generally used. In game generally means gameplay. In-engine graphics isn't an excuse for PR shots or video to be described as in game if they are not representative of actual gameplay. Engines can produce better IQ when you remove constraints levied by gameplay, so in-engine cutscenes that take advantage of those lack of constraints shouldn't be labeled in-game if they are beyond what the engine produces during gameplay.
Its all false advertising. Just because racing games have an photomode feature is not a good excuse to have the majority of the PR revolve around such a feature. One because the photomode is no where near the primary motivation for purchasing such a game. And two because the feature itself is never promoted by marketing just its products, which is not generally label by the dev as being a product of such a feature. How many times have you ever seen a photomode feature being touted as the best in the market.
I doubt anyone here would be supportive of nintendo's PR. If it produced a game with the Wii's standard graphics but had a gameplay feature that allowed replays who's IQ out rival the PS3's and 360's best gamplay effort then used that feature as a PR tool to plaster those visuals everywhere described as in-game or in-engine and yet were impossible to produce during gameplay.
I'd just like to clarify that I was talking about the terms in-game (gameplay) and in-engine (rendered by the engine either in realtime or not), but I have no problem with using replay mode, photomode or supersampling/>AA/>AF etc to promote a game, as the average gamer wouldn't notice or care, and people like us do notice and know what we are looking at.
According to who?! Has anyone ever compiled statistics on the verncular use of terms and their meaning within game discussions? I'm not being pedantic here, just from what I've seen over the years, people use general terms in discussion assuming the other person interprets it the same way, but sometimes they don't. "In game" may very well be applied always to screenshot from game-play, but I don't think it's use is exclusive, and I think often it is used to mean in-engine. I don't recall lots of occassions where developers have explicitly denoted the difference, instead using the same terms loosely. I don't think discussion on the whole is that intersted in the difference; it only comes up in regards PR. Otherwise, in ordinary discussion, it seems to me we talk about 'in game' as 'created by the game', such as cut-scenes.
Maybe I'm just not in touch with mainstream terminology here, but I haven't picked up on a clear if unofficial definition as determined by usage. I would say for those to whom it's obvious that 'in game' means 'in gameplay', they've formed a personal definition that isn't universally shared. I'm willing to be proven wrong though, and change my personal lexicon! Except I'd rather have an official term differentiating where differentiation is needed.
Of course there is no official definition and its the devs, pubs and their PR departments that have taken advantage of the lack of formal definition and created this often vague and overly broad definition of the term. In an effort to say "yes!" when a person asks "in game?" knowing that the person is more than likely asking "is that part of gameplay experience?" and the true answer to that question is "no"
. In layman terms "in game" commonly means "in gameplay". We primarily buy games to play them, not look at them. So it makes perfect sense that common terms like in-game refers to the meat and potato part of the game not some secondary feature like watching a replay. Lay terms is what we should stick with because we aren't devs, pubs or PR depts so there is no need to muddy the water to obfuscate our discussion and recognize definitions of basic terms that are often times broken out to be used in an unscrupulous manner by PR departments. There should be no need for a technical discussion on how an image or video satisfies such a common and generally used term such as "in game".
Would custom animations unique to an in-engine cutscene from a Madden game satifies the term in-game? If Gears could use its engine to take a snapshot of gameplay and rerender it with higher resolution textures, better AA, higher polygon count models and produce an image at a resolution 5X greater would than normal, is that in-game? For most gamers those questions would be generally answered with "no".
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Imagine buying a brand new Corvette ZR1 -- a racecar for all intents and purposes -- but taking delivery of a Chevy Cobalt, with the only explanation from the dealer being that you must have bought in to all of the marketing bullshots.
"As a consumer you should have known better," they would say. "But since you were so adamant about paying five to eight times its sticker price, who were we to stop you? Thanks for the commission buddy!"
I realize what you are saying, that we consumers must educate ourselves and know what we are buying. But it's a two-way street. At some point companies have a moral (and possibly legal) obligation to tell consumers what they are selling.
But that's not what's being sold. If the bullshots are created in-game, then they're not swapping one product for another like your example. It's more a case of seeing a Covette ZR1 for sale, advertised as 'a model sportscar' for $50, buying it, and finding it's a tiddly little model where you read 'model sportscar' to mean a pinnacle of design.
English is full of ambiguities as interpretations. It's no-one fault. People just have to make sure they understand where someone is coming from, rather than assuming everyone else uses the same meaning for words as oneself. I'll grant photomode shots can be unethical if the creators deliberately release photomode shots or tarted up non-game imagery knowing that the public will expect that to be in game without trying to educate them, but that's advertising the world over. We're lied to constantly, from businesses and politicians and so many others, bending the truth and manipulating language. It'd be nice if everyone was straight-up, but that's unlikely to happen as people compete (who here has stretched the truth on their CV for example...). It's better for people to learn and understand how things are and work out wehat's what themselves, until some cosmic event creates a truthful Utopia!
And in this case, just labelling something as 'in-engine' isn't IMO any form of untruthfulness. In most cases it's applied anyhow.But that's not what's being sold. If the bullshots are created in-game, then they're not swapping one product for another like your example. It's more a case of seeing a Covette ZR1 for sale, advertised as 'a model sportscar' for $50, buying it, and finding it's a tiddly little model where you read 'model sportscar' to mean a pinnacle of design.
English is full of ambiguities as interpretations. It's no-one fault. People just have to make sure they understand where someone is coming from, rather than assuming everyone else uses the same meaning for words as oneself. I'll grant photomode shots can be unethical if the creators deliberately release photomode shots or tarted up non-game imagery knowing that the public will expect that to be in game without trying to educate them, but that's advertising the world over. We're lied to constantly, from businesses and politicians and so many others, bending the truth and manipulating language. It'd be nice if everyone was straight-up, but that's unlikely to happen as people compete (who here has stretched the truth on their CV for example...). It's better for people to learn and understand how things are and work out wehat's what themselves, until some cosmic event creates a truthful Utopia!
English being full of ambiguities doesn't mean we should accept anyone who will take advantage of those ambiguities to basically be dishonest with you.
Its like trying to overnight shipped a purchase to your home and asking your local shipping company if they can have it "here" by tomorrow and told "yes". Whereby the item does not arrive the next day and while inquiring its location you are told it is in route and will be there in three weeks. You then become dissatified only to have your complaints met with "Oh, when you used the word 'here', we defined that as 'here on earth'".
It obvious what you meant by the question and its obvious that "here" can be used in such fashion as meaning "here on earth", but whats more obvious that in the context of which you used "here" was not meant to be used as "'here' as in 'on the earth'" and you were lied to.
When someone generally sees a screen shot or a video and asks, "in-game?" often it means "during gameplay?". Why? Because gameplay is the most relevant part of the game, not photomode or a videomode. It would be like Sony espousing that the CG of KZ2 2005 is "in-game" and responding to the outcry later that it was being truthful because the video would be available to watch in the movie viewer feature that would be a part of KZ2.
Any word, term or phrase becomes absolutely worthless if allowed by the answerer to be defined in anyway without taking the context in which the questioner is using the word, term or phrase.
Its obvious misrepresentations what devs like Turn-10 and PD do to promote their titles. These photomode images are not used to promote the photomode feature, the intent of their promotions are to lead general consumers to believe that these shots represent gameplay. General ignorance or apathy is not a justifiable excuse to be dishonest.
I have absolutely no trust in how most racing games are marketed so titles like GT or Forza produced no level of anticipation in me because the PR is a major turn off. I haven't looked at any PR material from GT5 in years and never with F3. My purchase or purchases will be decided by reading commerical on the net and private reviews posted here.
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