Daily Debate: Does Marketing Hype Help Or Hurt Your Zelda Experiences?

Video games exist in steep competition. Over just the past three years, there have been hundreds of games released in an industry whose global revenue sits comfortably at the 100 billion USD mark. Each one vying for an individual consumer’s time and money. If you look back even further, there are thousands of titles that can be bought relatively cheaply whose gameplay and visuals still hold up well in our current year. And all of this competition is aiming for your attention and excitement.

So, how do new games get noticed amid the throng? They rely on two kinds of hype. The first is manufactured hype. This is the marketing directly created by the game creators such as artwork, interviews, trailers, demos, and promotional material. The second kind of hype is more powerful. Fans of a given series or genre spread the word. Because fans have a love for a series, they put a lot of effort into conveying their enthusiasm and interest though videos, social media posts, podcasts, and word of mouth. Because this message is being spread by fans (our peers) rather than the production company, it is easier to believe and get sucked into the marketing and develop a desire to purchase the game.

My question to you today is, do you find that hype helps or hurts your experience when finally playing a new Zelda game?

Personally, the hype let me down for the most recent Zelda game, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. Nintendo promised that the game would be a gripping story of what happened when Hyrule fell, and that it would also be a true prequel to Breath of the Wild. The fanbase went wild with speculation over the first canon war story in Zelda history. But when the demo came out, we instead were treated to a side-story that I found to be too saccharine to live up to the hype. I felt cheated. Nintendo lied to us to boost sales for a game that, while fun in its own way, did not deliver what was promised.

But what do you think? Does hype effect how you feel about a game once you have played it? Or does it not affect you at all? Let us know in the comments below.