Gamasutra - The Ministry of Hype

Felipe Pepe published a new article on Gamasutra where he talks about a conversation he had with a game design class. He calls the article ,"The Ministry of Hype."

Recently I was asked to give a short lesson about CRPG history in a game design class of about 30 students. I started by asking how many had played Skyrim. All raised their hands. Then I asked how many considered themselves to be really hardcore fans of the Elder Scrolls series. About 60% kept their hands raised. The next question: "how many of you played Oblivion"? Now only 20% still has held their hands high. Only two hands remained in the air when I asked about Morrowind, and none at all when I asked about Daggerfall and Arena.

That was not a casual audience. Those were students of a game design school, people who decided to bet their future on gaming. More than half of them had professed to be "hardcore fans of the Elder Scrolls series", yet not a single one had bothered to learn the origins of the series. I'm not talking about watching obscure foreign documentaries or reading huge and rare books - I'm talking about playing games, at the very least trying them out for like 10 minutes. And free games even! - both Arena and Daggerfall are freely available for download at Bethesda's website.

When I confronted them about that, they were somewhat embarrassed, but also claimed that those were old games, that had dated badly and were outclassed by newer releases. Now, let's stop here for a moment.

None of them had ever played Arena or Daggerfall. They don't have any first-hand experience on its gameplay and couldn't come to that conclusion by themselves. So where did that prejudice come from?

Well, from the gaming industry itself.