Pokemon GO, No Man's Sky and the Dangers of Ambiguous Marketing

       Video game hype is a fickle beast.  The same force that garners millions of pre-orders is often the same force that drives the reputations of many games and many developers into the mud.  But why?  Looking specifically at two recent phenomenons - Pokemon GO and No Man's Sky - the dangers of the "hype machine" are easy to spot, and not for reasons so simple as over promising and blatant misinformation; ambiguity is the most dangerous cog in the hype machine's workings.
       Before discussing, a simple breakdown of these two games is warranted, as Pokemon GO isn't a disaster by any objective measure.  Yet as much money as GO has been bringing in, it was still seen as a massive disappointment and a huge waste of potential by thousands of fans upon release.  But why?  Looking at the reveal trailer, the picture becomes more clear...

       That first trailer almost completely misrepresents the Pokemon GO of reality.  You have to imagine: when this trailer was released, the words "Pokemon geocaching" sounded too good to be true.  The concept Nintendo and Niantic very briefly layed out was one of dreams:  We would be able to explore forests, deserts, ponds and parks, searching for rare Pokemon!  Individual Pokemon could be meaningful again!  We can all be real life Pokemon trainers, just like in the main series games! ... Maybe we can travel our country and battle for gym badges! Oooh, what about vanquishing evil teams ala Team Rocket?  I can't wait to level my Pokemon alongside me, just like a real companion!      
       You can see what I mean.  The Pokemon GO of people's imaginations became so idealistic that it was unclear on whether Nintendo or Niantic could deliver on their promises at all.

What promises, you ask?  That is exactly my point.  After GO's reveal, Nintendo and Niantic were silent on the game for months, with fans only left with that first glorious trailer.  Can you blame fans for letting their imaginations run wild?  Its not like Nintendo and Niantic were completely unaware of people's expectations either; It didn't seem unreasonable at the time to expect mainline Pokemon mechanics to be applied to a geocaching model.  

       Yet as the game entered beta and the reality set in that GO was destined largely to be a Pokemon themed Ingress, the frustration was understandable.  Nintendo and Niantic had hardly communicated at all with their fanbase.  The reveal trailer made it seem that we would essentially be playing the Pokemon games in real life;  although GO would go on to be a massive success, the misleading way that Nintendo and Niantic chose to represent their game - allowing unreasonable expectations to fester based on bloated promises - makes it certainly frustrating that the scope and mechanics of the game were not clear from the outset.  
       No Man's Sky is a fitting comparison for Pokemon GO.  Both games were massive financial successes, but have suffered great backlash for their content.  No Man's Sky is now mostly famous for one thing: undelivered promises.  But what were these promises?  Were they really promises at all?  Let's look again at the reveal trailer.  

       In retrospect, this first trailer *is* largely representative of the game's content.  Yes, we got those smooth planetary transitions, and yes, we did technically get millions of unique plants.  But it is the scope of the game that went unanswered for so long.  In the ~3 years between NMS's reveal and release, it is hard to believe that Hello Games was completely ignorant as to fan's admittedly high expectations and desires.  So why didn't they say anything?  Why, in that huge amount of time, did they allow hype to fester to a level that could never be met?   
       The cynical answer is simply money.  Hype in the game industry equates to pre-orders and sales, and pre orders and sales equals money.  As much as I would like to believe that directors like Sean Murray had the best of intentions throughout development, it is undeniable that NMS's post-launch fallout could have been avoided with better communication. 
       So are fans to blame for unrealistic expectations?  In this writer's opinion, not entirely.  The burden should always be on the developer to clearly communicate the scope of its project.  When games like Pokemon GO and No Man's Sky are hyped for so long with such ambiguous and silent marketing, it is hard to believe that the developers were truly ignorant as to the game's pre launch expectations.  
       But maybe these games would have been far less successful had their admittedly smaller than anticipated scopes been clearly and effectively communicated.  Truly and literally, this is the million dollar question.