Final Fantasy VII Remake and Cyberpunk 2077: Two Opposite Sides of Hype Culture
2020 saw the release of two RPGs that were anticipated for years - Final Fantasy VII Remake and Cyberpunk 2077. Both were recipients of hype culture as a result of the long periods of time between their announcements and releases. However, the two games had opposite receptions that resulted from such hype.
When is the right time to announce a project? Is it best to announce a new novel just months before its release? Is it best of release an album on the same day that it’s announced? Is it best to announce a game years before it gets released?
There is unfortunately no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. Deciding the length of the gap between a project’s announcement and release is determined by a ton of factors, including but not limited to its length, scale, amount of people working on it, and the very type of project that it is. For video games, we see a wide variety of announcement strategies from different developers and publishers. AAA releases from larger developers typically have larger windows between their announcement and release, while indie games often have smaller windows between their announcements and their releases. Many indie games are typically on a smaller scale and have generally shorter development cycles than those of AAA releases and thus take a different promotional strategy, though this isn’t always the case. Super Meat Boy Forever, the follow-up to 2010’s indie darling Super Meat Boy, was announced in summer of 2017, nearly three and a half years before its eventual release.
On the other end of the scale, Hades, Supergiant Games’ most recent critically-acclaimed roguelike, was originally announced during the Game Awards in 2018 and was revealed to be playable in Early Access the same day. While the game wouldn’t see its full release until just under two years later, it was still a recipient of being shadow-dropped, immediately being adored by many early adopters of pre-1.0 builds of the game.
Super Meat Boy Forever and Hades employed different announcement and release strategies, and yet they both had a fair amount of hype behind them because of one noteworthy commonality - they both came from developers that have impressive portfolios of game releases. Forever specifically had the advantage of being a sequel to a game beloved by many - a notable head-start for building interest in a new game. It’s due to both of these developers having trusted backgrounds and working with beloved intellectual properties that allowed people to get hyped for both of these releases.
Naturally, as the scale of projects and developers increase in size, so too does the consumers’ hype for projects. Per Dictionary.com, to be hyped is to get excited either immediately or gradually through flamboyant, dramatic methods shown through public and/or promotional materials. With the modern age of E3s, Game Awards, and video presentations like Nintendo Directs and Sony’s State of Play presentations, trailers are consistently fed to consumers to inform people of the newest games releasing. Developers often show highly optimized versions of their games, presented in a way that gets people excited to buy the newest games.
If that was all that there was to this conversation, then there’d be nothing wrong with the hype culture within gaming. There’s nothing inherently bad about a culture of getting excited for new releases. However, there’s a dark side to hype culture that sees developers and/or publishers, typically for AAA game releases, marketing and promoting their game in a light that makes the game look overwhelmingly impressive, so much so that it can end up giving consumers unrealistic or inaccurate expectations of what the final game will be like. Failing to live up to these unrealistic, too-good-to-be-true expectations set by impressive promotional material so often results in consumers feeling genuinely misled and misinformed from trailers, causing people to get disappointed, angry, and, unfortunately, vitriolic.
Especially over the last decade or so, many games have been featured in trailers that make bold promises about features, scale, and interactivity - only for the final experience to underdeliver, causing greater disappointment and negativity towards the final game and its developer and/or publisher than if such promises were never made in the first place. Hype and expectations arise from when games are announced, when and how they’re presented between announcement and release, and eventually leave their impact in the game’s final critical and commercial reception at launch.
Games being announced a long time before their release inherently gain more interest by the public simply due to the game being in the public consciousness for longer. But with this extended window of interest, peoples’ hype and expectations for the final release grow to daunting, perhaps unattainable levels. There are positive and negative examples of hype culture in games, and just that was exemplified in 2020 with the release of two games that were announced long before their respective releases.
Those games were Final Fantasy VII Remake and Cyberpunk 2077. These games, while having the commonality of being announced years before their releases and being helmed by beloved developers, ultimately left different impacts in the gaming industry following their release. Let’s look at how these games, both clearly hyped up releases, attained different fates upon their launches.
Cyberpunk 2077 was announced in May of 2012, eight and a half years before its release. Despite its early announcement, Cyberpunk didn’t enter full development until late 2016. Future trailers painted the game in a manner that made it look far different than the final product, betraying a lot of The Witcher fans’ trust in developer CD Projekt Red. Had the game been announced after the game was already in full production, it likely wouldn’t have had as much monolithic expectations. Cyberpunk 2077’s early announcement only hurt it in the long run. // Image: CD Projekt Red
As stated at the beginning of this piece, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to when something should be announced. Sometimes, announcing a project via a teaser trailer when the project is early on in development can mull fans over as development ramps up. Though, that didn’t quite happen in Cyberpunk 2077’s case. In early 2013, developer CD Projekt Red, known for their work on The Witcher games, unveiled a teaser for a video game that they had announced in May of 2012. This game was Cyberpunk 2077, an adaptation of Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk, a tabletop role-playing game whose first edition released in 1988. This adaptation was to be an open world RPG in the same vein as CDPR’s previous Witcher endeavors.
Due to CD Projekt’s prior track record, the niche but nevertheless strong fan passion and appreciation for the original pen-and-paper role playing, and the growing popularity of ‘80s-inspired futuristic dystopias in popular culture, Cyberpunk 2077 quickly began garnering hype, and didn’t stop doing so for nearly eight years. Despite its announcement and teaser trailer, Cyberpunk 2077 didn’t enter full development until late 2016, per statements from developers at CD Projekt Red. By the time that the game had begun its proper development process, it already had expectations to live up to thanks to the game’s early announcement and teaser trailer that informed the public about the existence of the project. When the game resurfaced at E3 2018, CD Projekt Red began ramping the game’s promotional material, releasing 40+ minute gameplay demonstrations, a “deep dive” video explaining the game’s features, and Night City Wire video presentations that released throughout 2020 to continue building hype throughout the year.
This was in addition to the numerous times that the game was pushed back further into the year. While they were delays at least partially caused by COVID-19’s impact on development and scheduling, the game’s need for more development time only meant that there was more time for fan expectations to continue to build. Delays can be interpreted by the public as a sign of troubled development, but thanks to CD Projekt Red’s messaging on social media, fans were assured that the delays were just meant for further refinement and polish for the game. And thus, in spite of numerous delays throughout the year, people continued to build up their anticipation for the game’s release, with each delay only further heightening such anticipation.
All this resulted in a game that, upon its release, was absurdly buggy and rough around its edges. The quantity and severity of issues that the game had at launch are well documented in countless videos and articles online, so I’ll spare any additional comments about that particular aspect. What matters in the context of this conversation is that the game crumbled under the weight of the monolithic expectations that CD Projekt Red set up for themselves. Through teasing the game for years, confidently displaying the game’s features and mechanics so proudly (some of which either looked drastically different in the final product or were removed altogether), the final product looked like a step back from what was featured in promotional materials for the game since 2018. This resulted in massive disappointment from the game’s overall community, sparking a lot of negative discourse around the game in the days and weeks after its release.
Could the negative conversations around the game and the bugs and missing features compilations have been avoided or at least been made less severe? Simply put, absolutely. So, what could have been done to avoid the game’s negative reception at launch?
Firstly, announcing and teasing the game was a notable mistake in my eyes. Having an eight year gap between announcement and release with so much of that time not having the game in actual full development only put the game in a disadvantageous situation. The game already had expectations to meet when starting proper development. Beyond that, when the game was more shown off in promotional materials at E3 2018 and E3 2019, far too much of the game was shown off, with most of the game’s features still in the process of being finalized. The game’s studio head used the defense of any creative work having features that change or get removed being a natural part of the creative process, thus rationalizing why some content once shown to the public was modified or removed as development progressed. What Badowski states is true - every creative work goes through the editing process, with features getting refined or removed - not being what they used to be. However, not every creative work has such aspects shown to the public in detail before they get edited, further refined, or removed. Early drafts of screenplays or unedited clips for films aren’t shown publicly prior to a movie’s release because they don’t accurately represent what the final product is going to be at that time.
It’s of my opinion that features for games should only be shown off and elaborated upon for games when they’ve been finalized. There can be visual changes and minor improvements prior to release, but the core implementation of the mechanic and its role in the overall game design should be concrete and finalized prior to being shown off to the public. Showing off and demonstrating a feature that isn’t present in the final game, such as a wire used for physical hacking, or an in-game monorail system, is proof that the game’s core mechanics weren’t finalized at the time of their being demonstrated. This gives an implication that the developer was far too eager to show the game to the public - they were willing to demonstrate features that weren’t finalized just for the sake of being able to show something to people and continue to drum up hype.
Indeed, CD Projekt Red chose to hype the public by any means necessary, even if it meant showing off aspects of the game that were not cemented as being parts of the game. What hurt more is that such early demonstrations of the game are now revealed to have been “fake” demos, looking far more impressive than what any hardware was capable of outputting upon release. A decision to create a demo that looks as visually impressive as possible even if it’s not realistically what the final game will be able to look like again implies that CD Projekt Red prioritized giving in to hype culture and scaling up excitement and anticipation for the game instead of showing the game as it was closer to completion, with its features and final look appearing more representative of what players could expect in the final product.
CD Projekt Red ultimately decided Cyberpunk 2077’s fate long before the game released. They partook in showing off the game far too early, showing the game to the public with details that weren’t concretely finalized in the game’s design. The heads of CD Projekt Red thought that their choices in the game’s marketing and overall presentation to the public would be justified by the levels of hype and excitement for the game - and it ended up coming to haunt them.
This isn’t to say that Cyberpunk 2077 is a bad game. Despite my critiques on how studio heads decided how to market and present the game to the public, the actual developers of the game did a solid job at creating an open world RPG. Ignoring the obvious technical issues, Cyberpunk is a flawed but overall enjoyable game. It’s just not the amazing, innovative title that promotional materials and pre-release hype would want you to believe. However, studio heads at CD Projekt Red relied heavily on hype culture to garner excitement and, more crucially, sales - a strategy that ultimately backfired, as the refund fiasco following the game’s launch demonstrated.
Building up excitement for the game far before it was in a state more representative of the final product truly hurt the game. While Cyberpunk is a solid, fun game in its own right, it’s likely going to be remembered for failing to live up to its promotional materials and the very expectations that CD Projekt Red themselves set for the game. Hype culture hurt the game and likely tarnished its reputation, at least for the foreseeable future. Unless a significant comeback situation happens and the game sees a relaunch of sorts, Cyberpunk 2077’s legacy will likely be forever tied to the submission to hype culture that hurt more than helped.
Final Fantasy VII Remake was announced at E3 2015, nearly five years before its release. As such, the game was in the public consciousness for a long time. After a brief trailer in December of that year, the public saw very little of the game until E3 2019, less than a year away from the game’s release. Here, the game looked quite close to its final product, finally warranting fan hype and excitement. // Image: Square Enix
Hype culture can doubtlessly hurt a game by building unrealistic expectations for a final product. However, when a game is promoted and presented to the public more responsibly, hype culture can be a positive thing for a game. In April of 2020, Final Fantasy VII Remake launched to critical and commercial acclaim. Aside from some purists that criticized the game for decisively deviating from the original Final Fantasy VII, the reception of Remake was mostly very positive, with many being surprised that the game turned out so well given the doubtless pressure that the developers must have felt while making the game.
Indeed, the very idea of a remake of Final Fantasy VII, one of the most beloved games of all time, has been something that’s excited fans for years. Ever since the now-infamous PlayStation 3 technical demonstration that recreated FF VII’s iconic opening cutscene, fans have been hopeful that the game could be remade with modern graphics and gameplay systems. And in June of 2015, Square Enix finally committed - they announced a teaser trailer for Final Fantasy VII Remake, immediately getting fans across the globe hyped and excited.
To follow up, Square Enix presented a gameplay trailer for Remake at PlayStation Experience in December of 2015, with aspects of the game looking a bit rough, causing some fan concern in the short term following the trailer’s release. After this brief gameplay trailer, Square Enix went radio silent on Final Fantasy VII Remake, rarely talking about the game, let alone showing it off to the public, for nearly three and a half years. While a few screenshots and key art for the game were shown off during this period, no new trailers or gameplay demonstrations were shown off to the public for nearly three and a half years.
The reason for this is partially, if not primarily due to the game switching developers and essentially restarting development not long after Remake’s announcement to the public. Nevertheless, as the game went through an overhaul, nothing was shown off for the game for over two years after this point.
Was Remake announced too early? While it’s unknown to the public how far CyberConnect2’s development on the game had progressed before the game was taken in-house by Square Enix, the fact of the matter was that releasing the first teaser trailer and gameplay trailer so early in development ramped up fan expectations for what was already a highly desired and anticipated release. After all, Square Enix had garnered a bad reputation with announcing games for too early during the late 2000s and 2010s, with Final Fantasy Versus XIII being the most infamous example - a game announced in 2006 that didn’t release until 2016 as Final Fantasy XV. VII Remake, while not nearly as egregious as Versus XIII’s situation, was still likely announced too early.
While the game was going through its overhaul, Square Enix opted to go silent on the game until it was entirely ready to be shown off. This caused an aura of mystery and concern to surround the game. A game that essentially restarted development, switched developers, and seemed like it didn’t have anything to show for it from the public’s perspective gave rise to fans being concerned that VII Remake’s development was too troubled for the final game to be any good. Years passed since the announcement of the game switching developers. With no trailers or significant updates on the game for over three and half years, hype and overall excitement for the game waned, concern and skepticism over the game’s quality beginning to take its place.
That was, until in the summer of 2019 at that year’s E3 when Square Enix finally did an information blowout for VII Remake, the game looking much more impressive than when it was last shown off in 2015. The game hadn’t been seen by the public for so long that this new presentation of the game almost served as a redo for the game’s announcement. Combat, gameplay systems, characters, and other details for the game were unveiled, impressing fans and critics alike. VII Remake, a game that so many people were convinced would end up undercooked because of the internal troubles happening for the game behind the scenes, actually looked good. The narrative was turning. Suddenly, the concern and skepticism about whether the game would be worth the wait was turning back into hype and excitement. Moreover, the game was announced to be coming out in spring of 2020, less than a year from that E3.
After a minor delay, FF VII Remake released in April of 2020 and garnered a mostly positive reception at launch, eventually snagging many accolades and awards by year’s end. While the game barely had any promotional material that built up excitement between December 2015 and June 2019, the stretch from the game's former unveiling in June of 2019 to the game’s release in April of the following year saw promotional trailers that looked almost exactly like the final product that gamers would be playing.
What’s important from the story of this game’s road to release is that it didn’t have to be this way. Square Enix could just as easily have began drumming up hype and excitement with more trailers from when CyberConnect2 was leading development. Or they could have released information about the game when it was still early on in development in-house at Square Enix. But they held off on doing so - very little was known about the game itself until the aforementioned information blowout in 2019. Outside of 2015, VII Remake was only being hyped up for about ten months before its release. Outside of 2015’s short gameplay trailer, Square Enix didn’t show anything significant about the game until it aligned very closely with what the final game looked like. And thus, when the game was released, there was no disconnect or conversations about cut content because of how the game was responsibly promoted and hyped up by Square Enix.
While Square Enix definitely stumbled by announcing FF VII Remake too early, they ultimately did the right thing by going silent about the game until it was almost entirely representative of what the final game would look like. Against all odds, Square Enix managed to salvage Final Fantasy VII Remake, in part due to their smart approach to publicly presenting the game after 2015.
The reason that I’m taking the time to compare the histories of these games’ roads to release is to highlight the value of how less can be more in regards to promotion. CD Projekt Red opted to show off Cyberpunk 2077 at nearly every appropriate opportunity that they could. Releasing extended gameplay segments two and half years before its release, showing and highlighting content that would either appear different or be entirely absent in the final game - doing this ultimately hurt the game, as fans had so much pre-release content to compare the final game to. This naturally gave rise to disappointment, as CD Projekt showed far too much of the game too early. Cyberpunk 2077 was hyped so much for so long in its road to release, but in doing so, CD Projekt Red showed off more than what they could realistically deliver. It ultimately came to haunt them, with a launch that was unprecedentedly negative, with so many comparing the poor state of the game to how good the game looked in the many promotional materials that CD Projekt Red made in the years prior to the game’s release. In pursuit of hype, CD Projekt Red ended up misrepresenting their game and irreparably damaged their reputation as a result.
Square Enix chose a different strategy for marketing and hyping up Final Fantasy VII Remake, and in the end, it worked out for the better. Fans didn’t have much pre-release material about the game to look at until just under a year before release. While this caused some concern in the short term, all promotional materials released in that ten month between E3 2019 and release for Final Fantasy VII Remake allowed for people to properly get excited to play something that looked nearly identical to what was being shown in trailers. The game may have been in the public consciousness for a long time thanks to an announcement that came too early, but showing so little promotional materials until the game was in a near-final state proved to be the best, most responsible strategy for getting people excited to play the game, despite the troubles the game faced during development.
Announcing a project too early can happen for a multitude of reasons. Sometimes, it just happens because the project ends up coming out far later than originally expected. Other times, it’s done to build up excitement over a long period of time for the sake of long-term hype. Cyberpunk 2077 and Final Fantasy VII Remake showcase entirely different strategies about how a game ought to be presented to the public following an announcement that occurred earlier than it probably should have. While CD Projekt Red tried to show off their game as often as they could, it ultimately highlighted how many things were changed in removed over the course of Cyberpunk’s development - information that perhaps shouldn’t be so widely known to the public. This was alongside the poor technical state of the game that made the game appear to be a downgrade from what was shown pre-release. Meanwhile, Square Enix only showed off the in-house development of Final Fantasy VII Remake when the game was fairly representative of its final build - a strategy that gave them realistic expectations to live up to from then on, as the final game functioned nearly identically to how it was publicly presented at E3 2019.
There is no one-size-fits-all strategy to announcing a project, nor is there a one-size-fits-all strategy for promoting a game pre-release. However, the differences in CD Projekt Red and Square Enix’s approach to marketing their biggest titles of 2020 do highlight that some strategies are more healthy and responsible than others. In an age where hype culture is so prevalent in the realm of gaming and in a year where two games suffered significantly different fates in large part due to how they were hyped and presented to the public, the term “hype responsibly” rings ever true.
Thanks for reading! What are your thoughts on Final Fantasy VII Remake and Cyberpunk 2077 and how they were publicly presented pre-release? Do you think the way a game is hyped matters in the end? As always, join the conversation and let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter @DerekExMachina.
