When Watch Dogs was first announced at E3 2012 it arguably stole the show. Revealing the new IP during its own press conference, the game’s developer Ubisoft wowed us all with its ambitious, high-concept new entry into the popular open world sub-genre, and it immediately became the most prominent blip on our radar.
Fast-forward to 2014, and Ubisoft has revealed that it’s the company’s best-selling day one game in its illustrious 28-year history, despite it being the first entry in a brand new series that hasn’t yet garnered itself the dedicated fanbase of the likes of Assassin’s Creed. Its sales, combined with the positive reviews and fan feedback the game has been receiving, point to it being one of the biggest gaming success stories of the year, but up until its release it didn’t seem likely that this would be the case.
Prior to its delayed launch, which saw it pushed back into May 2014 after a penned 2013 release date, Watch Dogs was the subject of the kind of preemptive negative reaction usually reserved for yearly titles such as Call of Duty and EA Sports games. The backlash stemmed from a post on the NeoGAF forum “revealing” a visual “downgradeation”, which featured a .gif comparing a gameplay segment from a 2014 demo of the game to similar footage shown at its E2 2012 reveal.
This .gif instantly sparked a torrent of outrage, with some claiming that it was confirmation that the game was in “development hell”, and that its delayed release was likely because of this. Suddenly the frenzied circus that had surrounded Watch Dogs in eager anticipation of its release began to collapse in on itself, with many decrying Ubisoft’s “misleading” E3 2012 presentation before getting their hands on the game itself. Watch Dogs went from being a game that many wanted to play, to a game that many seemingly wanted to see fail. But why? Well, I believe that the reasoning for this backlash lies at the feet of Sega, Gearbox and, more specifically, Aliens: Colonial Marines.
When Aliens: Colonial Marines was first revealed, its debut trailer showcased stunning visuals that, at the time, ranked alongside some of the best we’d seen. After the travesty that was Aliens vs. Predator, fans of the classic sci-fi series waited with baited breath to get their hands on a game that successfully replicated the claustrophobic atmosphere of the alien world crafted by Ridley Scott, James Cameron & co. and, from its debut trailer, Colonial Marines seemed well-equipped to give them what they wanted.
But then the game was released and, instead of looking like the above trailer it instead looked like… well… this…
Needless to say, critics and fans alike were up in arms about how shamelessly they’d been misled. It transpired that the footage publisher Sega had released up until the game’s release had all been completely unrepresentative of the game itself, with a huge discrepancy between the footage that had been shown in its 2012 “gameplay demo” that had impressed everyone so much, and the final product itself. There was even a class action lawsuit filed against Gearbox and Sega, accusing the developer/publisher of false advertising.
Aliens: Colonial Marines ended up being one of the most controversial and reviled releases in video game history, and the flagrant abuse of trust displayed by its publisher and developer when it came to courting the consumer with wildly exaggerated demos and trailers made many people wary of alleged “gameplay footage” released by other developers, too. There has always been a lack of trust between the creators of video games and the people who buy them, but Sega and Gearbox had made that wariness so prominent it was almost palpable.
Which brings us to 2014 and Watch Dogs. What was a game that many believed to be a surefire Next Big Thing was suddenly on the receiving end of a barrage of criticism, with the prevailing opinion being that it would grossly disappoint and fail to live up to any of the hype it had generated since its E3 reveal. It seemed as though many actually wanted it to fail, some out of sheer morbidity and others due to not wanting to be duped once again. Fool me once, shame on Ubi; fool me twice, shame on me.
Luckily, though, Watch Dogs was a success. Its reviews have ranged from good to great, consumer reaction has largely been positive and its sales have been phenomenal. This is a great thing because not only does it show that we can still have faith in a new, AAA IP, but it also demonstrates that we needn’t be so wary of big-name developers and publishers all of the time. Aliens: Colonial Marines put a black stain across the relationship that devs share with the consumer, but in some way Watch Dogs has helped to partially remove that stain. While the question of whether or not it lived up to the hype is debatable, Watch Dogs is most certainly a fun and accomplished title that is an example of a developer giving us what it told us it would. While it’s always good to be vigilant when it comes to pre-release footage, maybe the next time we see negative reports on the Internet circling an upcoming release, we’ll think of Watch Dogs and not Aliens: Colonial Marines.
