ViDoc - The Road Ahead (Destiny)

by Korny , Dalton, Ga. US. Earth, Sol System, Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 14:58 (2191 days ago) @ breitzen
edited by Korny, Wednesday, November 28, 2018, 15:16

Yeah, this is it right here. I mean all the Vidocs were sales videos at the end of the day, but they felt more fan focused before and not a pitch to buy stuff.

So if it wasn't labeled as a ViDoc would you (and Korny, or anyone who seems to be upset that this exists) be... more OK with it?

I mean, they can use whatever name they want for it. That part is ultimately irrelevant (although ViDoc has historically meant a look into the sausage-making process and/or a dialogue about aims and challenges. You know, a sort of video documentary on the developer and their work), the issue is the content. It's a thinly-veiled plea to purchase the Season Pass for their underperforming game, and it just feels... not desperate, but insincere.

I wanted to see what they've been working on, and I got that, I guess. But they keep pitching the Season Pass as "this is us listening to feedback and stepping it up with a constant stream of content!" When it's essentially making people pay the same money for trickled out content that's seemingly not even CoO in size, scope, or potential. But Annual Pass!
Annual Pass!
Dev 1: Have you heard about our Annual Pass?
Dev 2: Whoah, really, PREMIUM content?
Dev 1: ADDED LAYER OF VALUE!

Maybe if the title included the term "Annual Pass" in any capacity, it'd be more honest. The video is mostly an ad blurring the stuff you pay for and the stuff you don't. But given how they've split this into the Battle Royale seasonal-trickle model, they've made it difficult to really advertise this stuff any other way, but again, this video feels much more like an eight-minute informercial than a ViDoc.

I'll admit it doesn't feel like some of the old ViDocs, but it's not like any other Destiny or D2 ViDocs have been really behind the scenes like the H3 ones. Heck, even the Reach ones feel more like marketing than a documentary about the making of process. I mean, you're the one who preaches about how much the culture has changed, do you really think they could make ViDoc's like they use to?

Absolutely. Fans want communication. They want understanding. Bungie should know this with how well-loved and well-received their ViDocs have been since the days of Halo 2. Is it really that hard for them to talk about what they do? What their process is? Is it really that hard to get someone to talk about their passion? When the most recent (completely free) expansion for Warframe was about to drop, over 40,000 people watched a stream of the Project Lead Steve Sinclair talk about the game and what went into it, as he and his team tried to fix a final batch of bugs before it launched. It wasn't new footage. It wasn't carefully edited videos of folks having a gay old time telling us why we should give them money. It was a tired dev working hard as he talked about his passion. This stuff matters to people.

Would it be beneficial for them as a company?

If there is one single idea that's become one of the biggest issues in gaming in the past couple of years, it's communication. It's goodwill.

Their ViDocs are one of the single biggest reasons that I bought Ninja Theory's Hellblade, and even having the game, I still go back and watch them. If you communicate with people, they will often want to help you achieve your hopes and dreams (unless you're a weird cynic who only feels envy/sadness when you see other people succeeding, but that's a whole 'nother topic).

When it comes to communication or honesty, Bungie faltered, 343i faltered, DICE faltered, Bethesda has faltered. Every single one of these companies has had to issue "We're sorry, we're listening! We'll communicate more moving forward!" proclamations/apologies. And why? Because their sales figures were hurt. This stuff absolutely matters. Look at sales for Battlefield V, or Fallout 76. How you communicate with your audience matters.

Everyone points to companies like CD Projekt Red and Digital Extremes as examples of how you communicate well with your community, and in DE's case, how you can afford to mess up, because people know you will course correct. Because those devs have shown people what their work is like, what their ambitions are, why they couldn't quite reach them, and what they're doing moving forward. They've put out real ViDocs.

I mean, maybe it's just me, but I respect stuff like that. Seeing Bungie's idea of communication being an extended commercial just asking me to give them more money for a product they won't deliver for months to a year? and on top of that calling it a ViDoc? I dunno. It just doesn't sit well with me.