ASA orders Activision to can 'misleading' Call of

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=63009


Personaly this is great news. I used to base a lot of my games purchases in the 80's and 90's on in game footage shown on the videos in local game stores. And to be quite honest, and sick to death of FMV.

FMV is typicaly pretty boring drivel that has little real indication of gameplay for most games, and will often put me off of getting a game unless I get the opportunity to play it first.

Hope this does send waves through the industry. I wonder how much budget goes into making these expensive FMV sequences, most which are totaly uneccessary to further the gaming experience.

I agree, fmv suxxorz. I do watch cinematic sequences in the game, but much prefer cinematics done with the real-time graphics to maintain consistency with the gameplay, plus I'll skip through them if they're long.

Depends how the FMV is used if you ask me, I've seen quite a few good humourous FMV commercials for games that try to use things like humour and what not to try to appeal to the gamer it seeks.

What I dislike are the commercials that show 1sec of real game footage, and 29 seconds of FMVs that are either created for commercial, or are littered through said product...

If people buy games based on promotional stuff then they deserve everything they get for buying crap games.

Anyone with common sense will check out a review and read about it first.

Yeah I think all adverts should only be allowed to contain real gameplay footage only because who buys a game for FMB, noone! So it shouldn't be in the ads. However, I don't mind MFV intros or storyline bits in-game proving it has a skip button. Quite a few console games DON'T have a skip button and this is criminal!

I remember that the Harry Potter game adverts were like that (I never actually bought Harry Potter game, just tried it at Toys R Us once). I remeber the advert didn't have any in game footage at all.

Excellent news, as a whole advertising does represent that actual product being sold and as such computer games should show realistic footage.

We all know that Sunny D in your fridge does not light up the room as advertised when you open the fride door and most people realise that this is just an advertising gimmick.

Computer games need to be more strictly advertised since it is not clear what is really being sold and what is virtual.

Since we have had such advancements in recent years it is getting to a stage where games will be matching their fmv sequences in realtime and because of this the distinction between the two needs to be made clear.

ABOUT TIME TOO!

Great news! for consumers who otherwise might be duped into purchasing games with the hpe that somehow a new way to improve graphics has been found lol!

IPete2.

I think the harry potter one said "not actual game fottage" at the bottom.

"Depends how the FMV is used if you ask me, I've seen quite a few good humourous FMV commercials for games that try to use things like humour and what not to try to appeal to the gamer it seeks."

There was a good commercial for Siphon Filter 2 which had some fake footage, but it looked like the game.

Activision's commercials though look NOTHING like the game. I thought the same thing as these guys when I saw them... That they were hideously misleading.

I think it's a good thing they're being forced to stop running them, but it's a bit too late now. At least in the US. I don't know if they just started selling the game over in the UK or not.

This is really just a step toward getting game companies to be honest with their hype. A company might claim that they aren't intentionally creating the implication that the pre-rendered stuff is in-game graphics, but they certainly aren't doing anything to dispel the illusion, and game companies are notorious for directly lying, pulling crap like showing pre-rendered movies at E3 and claiming it's in-game footage (sped-up footage where the game is running really slowly is not a loophole.)

This is good.

On one hand I agree that it is nice to see pictures of the actual game. On the other hand, isn't all advertising partly lies? It's all special effects and fantasy, why should a video game add suddenly show BORING footage of the actual game.

Even if they show in-game graphics, you still don't know if it's a good game. So the next step is for these commercials to also include a clear warning that a game is @#!*. Otherwise people will say "Oh the in-game footage looked great on tv but the game is actually @#!*."

Hey, I didn't know that word was forbidden here. Well what I meant was about the same as "crap".

Oh maybe they could be forced to put "Actual game graphics may vary" in the screen! :)

Still I agree this is a good thing. *reluctantly throws his space invaders FMV in the bin*

Depends on how it's used. In that CoD commercial it was made to look like it was the actual game. That stinks. However, in some instances I think it's fine. I like to see actual gameplay ... but in TV commercials it's not usually as eye catching as CG. With the current gen systems though it's damn close ... most of the time they'll probably show in game footage. I just got Fight Night Round 3 ... it's the absolute best looking game I've ever seen ... just incredible!

The fact that advertising routinely includes lies doesn't make it right. Y'know, I haven't heard much "truth in advertising" advocacy lately.

I suppose someone would have to prove that what you're paying for in the game are the visuals and that the advertising is false because you don't get what is shown.

Wow, that'd blow everyone's theory that gameplay is king straight to hell!

I had to make a game in 8 months that was started from scratch, and our first milestone for the first month was to come up with screenshots of what the game was going to look like. As they needed shots for the marketing department, and previews etc.

I spent a month franticly making fake art assets and coming up with techniques that we could use for the game and coudl believably be 2.5D tileable RTS.

In the end we got the final game damned close to the fake screenshots, the biggest difference being the antialiasing. But 1 month is a huge chunk of time that could have been used better earlier on.

Here's a couple of the fake screenshots, you can mostly tell by the antialiasing, since this was a GF2 era game.





The entire game was created by 7 guys, 2 programmers, and 5 artists (3 who had to be trained first) and all in 8 months.

Despite hating the game, I was pretty proud of what we achieved in the time avaliable, shame there was one HUGE bug on release. Your saved games would often load up completely different to where you left off.

Unfortunately, we were all too busy to do any testing during development, and so it was completely missed. OOps hehe

But anyway, this didn't end up being a particularly bad example, as we were trying to be honest. But it was definately a waste of time that could have been better spent on improving the game.

That's a damn good point.

That must have been tricky, to make screenshots that look fantastic but not TOO fantastic! ;)

The second screenshot reminds me a lot of Desert Strike *misses genesis* What's the game?

It was Real War right?

Yeah I thought Desert Strike as well. That whole series of games was really good at the time.

The Activision news is mega cool. Those screenshots are mega cool. They make want to play Command and Conquer again. <sigh> There goes another week...

Now if they could only whack EA for how they hyped the first Battle for Middle Earth game. The game box even has shots that don't appear in the game!

Heh. for far more blatant 'false advertising' just look at boxed games from the 80's, where you had semi-photorealistic boxes containing 16-color 320x200 games... conveniently not putting any actual screenshots on the box itself. Of course pretty much everyone would know that's not what the game itself would look like, but still....

Arg, I hate those commercials. Doesn't show one bit of what the actual game is.

More asshole behaviour from game publishers - not allowing the user to skip past their oh-so-pretty logo animations in order to actually start playing the game they paid for.

EA Games?
BFME2 Demo has 5 unskippable "logo animations".

And well, any EA game has at least 2 unskippable logo animations. It's very annoying. Although I think it can be by passed by deleting (or renaming) some files.

At least they don't (yet) last 10+ minutes, unlike some Disney DVDs with un-forwardable previews.

yeah I hate that, what is the point in having DVD if you can't bloody skip straight to the menu or movie!

If you are going to stop all forms of misleading, overhyped or embellished advertising then there would be no advertising at all.
I can't think of a single advert for any product I've ever watched that didn't have some form of half-truth or element in it that could mislead the user.
If you drink Redbull - you can't actually fly and if you eat Ready-Brek you don't really get a radioative halo around your body. If you use a cetain toothpaste it won't make your teeth sparkly white no matter how hard you brush. Coca-Cola is not "Life" or the "Real Thing"- it's just carbonated water with some flavoring.
After all that's the whole point of advertising - to make the consumer aware of/buy a particular product instead of a competitive one that is probably identical in its attributes.

When buying computer games I ALWAYS play a demo first or at least read as many reviews as I can - I've never bought a game based purely on an ad.

Thanks for the info on the COD2 advert.

I'd almost given up programming due to that.
Now I hear it's a con!

He-he - great!
Back on with the work.

> It's all special effects and fantasy, why should
> a video game add suddenly show BORING footage of
> the actual game.

Well that's ok if you want to buy the game to continually watch the intro over and over again. BORING footage would mean BORING game.

yeah me too except often I'll buy it based on a review without playing a demo. If enough reviews give a gmae >80% they have either a) all been paid off b) taken in by the hype or c) it really is good, and to be honest it's nearly always c).

You are right, I was just thinking from the game company's point of view, as in "why would they do that".

I actually like very few games. Currently I'm playing Rome:Barbarian Invasion. And everything else since (in that genre) seems to pale in comparrison.

I tried Battle for middle earth 2 demo and got bored almost immediately. The graphics look pretty, but the game itself when animated and the gameplay. They seem really wooden.

The starwars RTS was fun, but seemed a bit too simple, and more about learning the units and how many of each you need in order to counter the opposition. I don't see it having long lasting playability as it's too predictable.

Some of these things you could pick up pretty quick from a gameplay video. In both cases. watching the start of a battle and how the units react to one another would tell me neither game comes close to Rome total war.

More recently, they released Command & Conquer : The First Decade, a compilation of all 12 releases on a single DVD. The two key selling points were 'recoded for XP compatibility' and 'updated IPX networking'. As it turns out, 'recoded for XP compatibility' means 'XP compatibility settings turned to ON' and 'updated IPX networking' means 'no multiplayer support in C&C and Red Alert'. They've been copping a LOT of @#!* about that.

Okay, guys... don't hate me but I'm responsible... somewhat.

I worked for the company that made the 'enhanced gameplay' videos for Activision. At first it was game footage + 10%. But we got so good at it that we kept making it better and better. I worked on a Lemony Snicket & Madagascar commercial. And I was offered to work on the COD Big Red 1 commercial which is causing all the heat but I was already booked on another gig.

My guess is that a simple "Not actual game footage" will be added to all future commercials and everything will remain the same. If not then are they going to yank all ads for television and video-playing cell phones that have "all images simulated" as well?

Sorry to dig up this old post, but I guess Activision must have won, because I just saw a CoD2 ad in Aus for the first time last night and I'm sure as hell that that ain't game footage. No little caption on the screen saying so either...

Toby Zuydidlyfink:
I saw that Advert as well. I have seen it many times. Looks like they still think it is OK to trick Aussies!

Well, we are stupid. =]

Let me revise that comment after the elections...

On a similar note, I see EA's back to their old tricks with the new BFME game - putting out spectacular trailers that use the in-game engine, but which feature unit animation and camera angles that won't appear in the game.

People who purchase games based on shiny graphics alone, deserve everything they're getting.

'People who purchase games based on shiny graphics alone, deserve everything they're getting. '

Yeah, yeah. Tell that to the average punter.

I don't have to. They'll learn that themselves soon enough.

They don't though, that's the problem. They keep buying the drivvel EA squirts out.

I still don't see the problem. You can't protect people from their own stupidity. How else will they learn?

EA needs such advertising tricks. No one else would spend money for yearly fullprice upgrade crap otherwise I fear and the worlds largest publisher would need to kick out its uncreative teams ( I would not mind if they did. It would not be a lose if the they would not sell yearly upgrades anymore as they lost the to their competitors in nearly all yearly update games anyway)

They don't though. =] But that's not the problem. I couldn't care less how often some fool likes to burn his hands on the kettle. But it encourages the hospital to keep raising fees on burns victims. Or, crap analogies aside, it encourages EA to keep producing the same drivvel.

Dunno about that - I've got C&C95 here and it seems fairly adamant that it doesn't want to work on XP.


Maybe not everyone is embroiled in the world of videogames as much as a bunch of net nerds and would simply like to buy the occasional game without being lied to by the telly?

Fine. I still don't see how its a problem. Don't want to get lied to on TV? Switch it off. Don't want to get lied to by publishers? Stop buying their games.

I can't believe how much of a non-issue this is. Most video game stores will let you play the game in advance in order for you to determine whether you want it or not. Isn't that what demo units are for?

C&C Gold with the official XP patch and Win95 compatibility should run on everything except Win64.

Unless you own the latest 'upgraded for XP compatibility' The First Decade compilation (which refuses to install on anything other than XP or 2000), in which case you're screwed.

Hmm - maybe there's hope for C&C95, then. They've got patches coming out of their ears.


That's about as impractical as blaming the victim is unhelpful.

I think this affects mostly newbies only. They buy a game based on the impressions on shiny tv ads. The even only slightly experienced buyer and gamer like eg. me will realize immediately that the game must be crap when they don't show ingame scenes. So I think the sooner or later they'll stop with this. Or did you see a movie ad that contains scenes that are not part of the main movie? You can fool people only for a limited time.

What? No, just the one for C&C Gold. The XP patch. Works on XP, turns off multiplayer. Although there are third party solutions to remedy that of course... lots of die hard nerds out there.

People who think advertising is factual are not victims. Just stupid.

You mean like HL2?

Well I followed a few links and for some folks the Gold patch fixed their '95 editions - I'll give it a whirl anyway. Ta for mentioning it.


Advertisers are obliged to refrain from making misleading claims. Consumers have every right to expect advertisers to comply and to complain when they don't. In your odd little world we would see - what? - all advertisers lieing and nobody buying their stuff after inevitably being stung? Yes, that's a brilliant way to ensure commercial growth and encourage civilised standards. Let's all do that. :P

You appear bitter to the point of uselessness on this issue. I mean c'mon - there's nothing stupid about a layman mistaking FMV for modern in-game footage at all, is there.

It depends. If you see an ad for a game that seems to have significantly better grapohics than all your other games, you should hear a little bell ringing.

Besides which, how is using FMV misleading, if the FMV is actually in the game? Surely you can't hold a publisher responsible for assumptions made by consumers?

Oh, bit of confusion there. C&C 95 -IS- C&C Gold. Original C&C was DOS only.


Which I guess is the argument they made for them to keep advertising said ad on Aus TV.

.

Aha!



Well if we were talking about Supreme Warrior then you might have a leg to stand on. For the vast majority of games, of course, you don't play the FMV and the FMV doesn't remotely represent gameplay content. This, as you doubtless know perfectly well, is the nub of the matter: The core component of the product is the game - no game publisher tries to sell you "fabulous FMV in a box", and while that remains the case they've no business presenting a non-playable movie that could conceivably be mistaken for in-game footage without making it clear exactly what it is.

The reason publishers are reticent to mark FMV with a clear "not in-game footage" tag is that consumers, though possibly not technically adept, certainly aren't stupid and would immediately smell a rat. You seem to want to damn them simply for not magically being aware of which graphical and gameplay strides have and have not been made - now that's stupid.

@muk, lay off it man. Besides, this is about Activision, not EA. But they suck too...