Why do video game developers announce a game, then wait years to show it?

[Deathknightish]

You know what I mean. It's E3, and a developer drops a huge bombshell announcement, but... it's just a name plate, maybe an animated teaser with the main character speaking.

After that, it's dead silence for 2-3 years, maybe even more, before we see even an inch of proper gameplay. Between the announcement and the gameplay we MAAAAAYBE get another animated teaser showing a bit of action, but no gameplay.

Why do they do this? Why don't they just wait to announce a game until they have actual gameplay to show off?

Some examples of my mind:
Metroid Prime 4 (This can be somewhat excused as they had restart development)
Elden Ring (Seriously, where is it?!? It's been years and all we have received are cryptic teasers, not even showing much of the actual world)
The new mainline Elder Scrolls game (Don't really care much for this as I never relaly enjoyed their games)

I guess it's to build up hype, but what hype can be built up with just a title and not much else?

[Kumorii]

I guess it's to build up hype, but what hype can be built up with just a title and not much else?

You got your answer. And yes, spend time among ANY community for any game and you see players hyping themselves up constantly for nothing... best hype machines is in fact the players themselves. Showing a title card makes people imagine how they want the game to be and then they get excited about it. Then rumours starts to spread yadda yadda.

It's clever. Players keep doing it too.

[Zyky]

You know what I mean. It's E3, and a developer drops a huge bombshell announcement, but... it's just a name plate, maybe an animated teaser with the main character speaking.

After that, it's dead silence for 2-3 years, maybe even more, before we see even an inch of proper gameplay. Between the announcement and the gameplay we MAAAAAYBE get another animated teaser showing a bit of action, but no gameplay.

Why do they do this? Why don't they just wait to announce a game until they have actual gameplay to show off?

Some examples of my mind:
Metroid Prime 4 (This can be somewhat excused as they had restart development)
Elden Ring (Seriously, where is it?!? It's been years and all we have received are cryptic teasers, not even showing much of the actual world)
The new mainline Elder Scrolls game (Don't really care much for this as I never relaly enjoyed their games)

I guess it's to build up hype, but what hype can be built up with just a title and not much else?

Because it builds hype and excitement, people talk about it for months/years and as long as they don't drag it out excessively long, then the players literally talk about it for the 2-3 years it's going through development. When you have a big name like "NEW ELDER SCROLLS GAME" when literally only showing a short landscape video and the name...players talk, they theorize, they speculate. It all creates traffic for the game, it builds hype, and traffic = revenue that isn't tied to sales of the game.

[A Chozo]

Why do they do this? Why don't they just wait to announce a game until they have actual gameplay to show off?

Some examples of my mind:
Metroid Prime 4 (This can be somewhat excused as they had restart development)

I guess it's to build up hype, but what hype can be built up with just a title and not much else?

To generate expectations, hype, etc. Metroid Prime 4's title alone had a warmer reception than anything else in that convention because people already expect it to be awesome, given the track record. It works best when it's something that fans have been waiting for, because it switches a dread anxiety of nothingness with anxiety for an actual something.

[Vampyr78]

It's mostly related to Stock Market. Announcing a project sends a message to potenatial investors that working on new things that can be profitable and you should buy some shares.

[vian]

Why wouldn't they keep the fan-base in the loop?

The only ones suffering from it is the "I want it now I WANT IT NOW" people.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Fairly certain it's to get investors. Present it to fans, get and show hype, investors throw money at it, then sit on the hill of cash making the game. These days they can even get people to throw money at it without any return with gofund me type shit as well. Just got to give them a pixel hat or something.

[ParanoiD84]

To build hype you can clearly see how much copies hype alone sold for cyberpunk.

[Blueobelisk]

People can set aside money and mental capacity to get the game.

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Apparently you think it has been "years" since Elden Ring was announced. It was announced in June, 2019.

Let that sink it for a few minutes before you start spouting hyperbolic nonsense like "years" for a game that was literally only teased at 18 months ago. Just because the past 18 months have been totally insane (natural disasters, crazy leaders, a global pandemic, etc...) doesn't change the fact that it still has only been 18 months, regardless how long it feels.

It has been a year and half since Elden Ring was announced with a teaser trailer.

Also since you said there has been "nothing", here is something about Elden Ring for you.

https://www.pcgamer.com/elden-ring-everything-we-know/
A short summary of a very relevant bit of information: Apparently Phil Spencer has played some of it, so the game is definitely playable to some degree.


I think From Software doesn't want to build more hype because fans are already plenty hyped, and hyping too much too soon can result in the sort of disaster that is Cyberpunk 2077 and what is going on with CDPR (CDPR might wind up facing multiple lawsuits).

[Hellobolis]

elder scrolls HAD to. else they would have had diablo immortals levels of backlash if all they did was announce a mobile game and said nothing about the main games.

elden ring not sure. i'd guess some publisher really really wanted to keep the fromsoft hypetrain going.

[Rennadrel]

Aside from Nintendo, who seem to be pretty tight lipped about their projects until they are ready to show them off. I think the whole unveil a cinematic and then wait a couple of years to start showing it off is silly.

[aceperson]

my question is why do people get hyped over games they haven't seen anything of and then get mad when it doesn't meet their obviously stupidly high expectations?

[NineSpine]

Im a game developer so I can answer this question.

Its mainly two-fold, to generate hype and to generate publicity. Im talking about AAA companies here, as that's an important distinction to make in this example. Theres not that much time between a game having extensive gameplay that they can show off and a full release, a lot of major companies have hundreds of people working on these titles and that doesn't give them very much time to get it in the publics view, hyped and pull preorders in.

Instead they do the opposite, they make a gameplay trailer, which is almost always completely fake. It can contain some assets that you may find in the game, but the video itself is completely staged, and often the scenes are too. A good example is the recent Stalker trailer, its completely fake, its basically just a production company that has been hired to make some scenes that are Stalker'ish' and make a short video showing them. If you turned around the camera, you'd see nothing, it doesn't exist as an open world game, just a scene with carefully picked angles.

They drop a trailer like this, and it gives them space and breathing room to do marketing, build up visibility etc and by the time they are done with that, they've usually made the entire game.

Thats very different for indie for example, because the time it takes to make a game is so massive that quite often they will do one of two things. Fake it, like the above then take obscene amounts of time to make it a reality, often 5-10 years. OR, release a video WELL into development when there really is a game to show, quite often they've earned very little to no money on the product and have done it off their own backs with little to no money and a small dedicated team, they then use actual gameplay to make videos and generate hype, then they fall into a similar timeline of a year or two before release.

Hope that makes sense.

I can provide some more detail to this.

It's super important to remember that large corporations in 2020 are not simply entities that create goods and provide services in exchange for money. Instead, they are treated as complex financial instruments. Making money is only valuable insofar as it increases stock values, but that isn't the only thing that increases stock values. Hype increases stock values. In fact, nonsensical irrational hype can often increase stock values more than actually making money, because what propels the stock market is not buying stocks to make money on dividends. What propels stocks is the belief that the stock will be worth more later.

Obviously, what I describe is a fundamentally broken model of capitalism, but that's how it is today, and that's why horseshit hype is actually more important than anything else. Look at Tesla for example. That company is almost entirely build of horseshit hype.

[Yorimar]

my question is why do people get hyped over games they haven't seen anything of and then get mad when it doesn't meet their obviously stupidly high expectations?

entitlement

[Val the Moofia Boss]

They announce to assure shareholders and to raise stock prices. "Yes, we are making a big game and you should invest now so in a few years when it releases and we make hundreds of millions you will make money too!".

[deenman]

Why wouldn't they keep the fan-base in the loop?

The only ones suffering from it is the "I want it now I WANT IT NOW" people.

yeah sorry but...going from ''i want it now'' and waiting 10 years is a big strech lol

i get why things get announced earlier than its ready,but it is truly frustrating when you literaly wait a decade for some stuff,i mean countless people died just waiting for some of their favorite games lol

[Very Tired]

Seemed pretty important Bethesda let people know they are working on another Elder Scrolls game and hadn't forgotten about it or claimed their MMO was good enough. Really no harm in getting the word out.

[Pony Soldier]

Obviously it's to build hype. There's really no other reason for those types of reveals. It's to get people thinking and talking and get them hyped up for the fact that this new game is coming out. That's how they reel in those pre-orders and launch day purchases.

[Traveler Voltin]

i had it explained to me.
its more for investors and less for the fans/player base.