In a very long post published recently on the most famous forum dedicated to the video game sector ResetEra by Thomas Mahler, the CEO of Moon Studios and game director of Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps, talked about those whom he himself defines as the “Snake Oil Salesmen,” that is, those figures or studios who, in order to sell their new product, advertise it in fraudulent ways.
More specifically, Mahler attacked Peter Molyneux, creator of the Fable series, creator of No Man’s Sky, and founder of Hello Games Sean Murray and the studio CD Projekt Red.
In his speech, the game director has railed against these figures who have aimed too high in their marketing campaigns, duping hundreds of thousands of fans and enthusiasts, and then not fulfilling any of the promises made.
It all started with Molyneux. He was the master of ‘Instead of telling you what my product is, let me just go wild with what I think it could be and get you all excited!” – And that was fine, until you actually put your money down and then the game was nothing like what Peter was hyping it up to be. […] Then came Sean Murray, who apparently had learned straight from the Peter Molyneux handbook. This guy apparently just loooooved the spotlight. Even days before No Man’s Sky released, he hyped up the Multiplayer that didn’t even exist and was all too happy to let people think that No Man’s Sky was ‘Minecraft in Space’. […] And then came Cyberpunk. Made by the guys that made Witcher 3, so this shit had to be good. Here’s our Cyberpunk universe and – trust us – you can do fucking everything! Here the entire CDPR PR department took all the cues from what worked for Molyneux and Murray and just went completely apeshit with it. Gamers were to believe that this is “Sci-Fi GTA in First Person”. What’s not to love? Every video released by CDPR was carefully crafted to create a picture in players minds that was just insanely compelling. They stopped just short of outright saying that this thing would cure cancer. This strategy resulted in a sensational 8 million pre-orders.
The game director of Ori and the Will of the Wisps concludes his attack by saying that his intent is not to put the people who worked on these products in a bad light, but is to highlight one of the most ignoble forms of marketing that have popped up in recent years, hoping that his outburst that he defines “a chip he needed to get off my shoulder” will make many more consumers think, who may not yet fall for these fraudulent advertising campaigns in the future.
