Sander said:
EDIT: Rosh, I'm unfamiliar with the game industry, but my experience with sales and PR is that they aren't involved in the design of the game and usually get enough info to 'sell' the product, and take what they think are the selling points of the product and really show those to the world.
Not entirely true. The PR guy also has to be the one to answer questions about the game, which means he has to know enough about the game and its design, what goes on, and what the current state and expected states of the game can be expected to be.
Given ol' Pete's words in the beginning, I think it's unlikely he ever picked up the game until it became obvious to even those at Bethesda that they couldn't have someone speak about it so cluelessly. Which, I do applaud them for that.
Playing through Fallout again only would do two things. Reinforce some setting points by reading through them again, if they even bothered to go through Zax a first time like MCA obviously didn't, and a re-familiarization of the interface, without explaining why it was used. The rest could be easily recalled upon, as Fallout was fairly fucking unique when it came out, which has been lamely copied ever since and skullfucked into trendy ideals. Well, you do get people who miss the obvious pulp references, even with the 10c comic screen and the style, and you don't have to be in your 70's to know when comics were priced as such with that kind of style. Then there's the signal test screen from that time, also used as a loading screen.
Playing through Fallout also doesn't give you the understanding of the industry then, or the state of the CRPG genre. Nor does it give you the original developers intended design, when the Bethesda developers say "we will do what we do best" and then say "[Fallout's design] is not what we do best". We could wish that the design would be obvious to anyone with a bit of mere familiarity with the industry and genre, but since they fucked up TES for Morrowind and Todd's said some clueless shit previously, that's a laugh and a half. Playing the game also does not give you the impact that Fallout had in the game industry and upon other designers. Given Bethesda's RNG design style, Fallout doesn't look like it would be their cup of tea, since Fallout relies more on design and style, than RNG and AI filler.
To cut through the PR-speek, Pete's quite likely lying about having played the games previously, else he would have been a bit brighter in the past press-releases, would have caught the obvious "survivor-horror" garbage, and would have been wiser to the reception of his bullshit. As someone in the industry, the man has displayed as much understanding of Fallout as the random <10 post nooblets we have come onto the forum and try to argue that RT combat is okay with them because it's MODERN! From someone who has to frequently discuss design points with developers, to correctly portray and explain them to the gaming media, he's done a spectacular fuck-up job. Unless he truly is doing his job, and they are just as clueless as he.
So he is not just a poor liar, he's a poor PR/marketing guy as well. He failed to research his audience and is just doing the same spineless song and dance of PR and marketing everywhere to try and appeal to the Lowest Common Denominator, which is what Fallout was designed AGAINST, the LCD fantasy shit in the mid-90's. He failed to note the state of the industry, in particular the problems around the reception of Lionheart and other games raping the Fallout name/system, and that is simply his own fault.
In light of this, I don't think that this is such a big deal, Pete probably isn't familiar with Fallout and is trying to 'sell' the game on really general terms.
That is his own fault for being ignorant about that which he's supposed to discuss at length with the gaming media. His job, in essence.
This means he has to appeal to the lowest common denominator.
No, it doesn't. Nor does it say that he has to talk to his audience as if they were a bunch of Metal Gear SolidOMFG!!SHINY!! fans. He's approached the intended audience of Fallout, those who like to play real role-playing games, aside from the stat systems of Bethesda and BioWare, completely wrong.
This doesn't mean at all that this is where the development is going, though.
Unless, of course, sales and PR work really differently in the game industry from the industries I'm more familiar with.
No, as the spokesman of those who are designing the game, if he's clueless, then they are likely even more so. As PR in the industry, at least in the less corporate bullshit companies, they should know fully well what direction the game is going into and already what the design team knows, as they have to be somewhere on the same page. They should also know a sufficient portion of the industry and background in the industry. Which helps, especially if they are going to claim "innovation" like BioWare's PR monkeys.
So instead of discussing about the solid roleplaying aspects of Fallout and the variety of play, they instead go about the aforementioned 5% of the setting that makes it "edgy" to sell off like GTA and has no relation to most of the rest of the game. Well, Fallout was never intended to be bought by naive parents for their children, so why is it being marketed to as if it were for children? Why do these idiots assume that we have a child's mentality of "Shiny Thing of the Week"? Or what if their development turns into Chuck Cuevas' and that 5% now becomes the whole damn game?
That wasn't the focus of the game in 1997, as it was designed to be a solid role-playing game, and that is how it was sold. Now it's being sold out.
That was really just an announcement that we had gotten the license. So we like to sort of hold off on talking about our stuff and announce it formally until we've got a bit to talk about and to show. Talking about something when it's in its early stages isn't really prudent because things are still being figured out and worked on. SO we like to wait until we've got screenshots and 'This is how it works' and that sort of thing.
The claim that they only announced having the project is another hopeful re-write of reality, but it doesn't absolve the truth that Pete and others went on to say a number of wholly clueless shit in regards to the game, which makes it clear that well...they all are pretty fucking clueless, and think we're stupid enough to fall for their lies.
Pete learned, a bit too late, that putting PR hype to Fallout is like igniting rust and aluminum shavings together. Again, what a brilliant job at failing his job. Given how Fallout was treated in the past, it would be insanity to expect that there wouldn't be a violent reaction.
Translation: "We're staying quiet, because our heads are still spinning from the last idiotic things we were called upon, so we're staying quiet until we have enough of a clue to try and fake it again."
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