Lemme kick this off the right way by undermining my own headline that I wrote myself. The gaming industry isn’t feeling so good right now,Mr. Stark. I mean, they’re making money! Oh, they’re makinga lotof money. But with ballooning development budgets and the lever on the layoff machine broken at ‘Maximum Warp’, making video games often seems more like something people do on their way to a more boring career rather than a permanent forever home.
And I understand that releasing an expensive title makes companies nervous, so executivesreallywant their games to sell, which usually necessitates putting a lot of time and money into promotion. I get it. If you want a game to sell, you need years of trailers and hype. That’s the only way to convince people to play a gimmick fad shooter released two years after the fad of that specific gimmick already ended.=
But… what if you didn’t always need that? The past few months have been making me think, yeah, I don’t know, maybe more games should come out of nowhere? I’m not just talking about surprise drops like the remaster ofOblivion, although I do mean that too. I’m also talking about games likeBlue PrinceandClair Obscur: Expedition 33that had far less promotion other than a handful of articles here or there.
2025’s Best Games Have Been Surprise Hits
With Blue Prince, I saw maybe one preview and a demo. With Expedition 33, I saw a few articles about a celebrity cast andconfusion over a future movieand that’s about it. Games that might even have been noticed and put on the old calendar, but many people ignored as the B-team of releases. Or even games likeSchedule 1which seem to have just appeared in reality out of nowhere and now are international obsessions. Again, maybe it’s better when games just come out of nowhere.
Yes, yes, yes, I get why we can’t do that for every game. There are plenty of counter examples from this year likeMonster Hunter Wilds. We knew it was coming and when it showed up, people clapped and held hands and sang and got attackedwhile cooking food. And there is no world in whichGrand Theft Auto 6will suddenly appear on our machines like a U2 album on iPhones.
There is also no world in which I should be making a reference that old, if I’m cursed to be here, at least I can pass it on to you. So, I do respect that promotion and long marketing tails are vital for triple-A franchises. You gotta keep the public pumped, especially for massive titles that might get pushed back for years.
Good Games Will Always Deserve A Chance
Then again, look at the Oblivion remaster. Sure, it’d beenrumored and hinted at for a long time. But we didn’t have endless screenshots. There weren’t breathless previews from massive invite-only events. We knew somethingmightbe coming, but notwhenorhowuntil the very last second. And, you know what? By all accounts people were very happy with this fortunate series of events.
Whether or not you love Oblivion is between you and your God, but surprise dropping the game was a success. People rushed to Game Pass to download it. People rushed to Steam to buy it. True, it was a remake of a famous game (from nearly 20 years ago), but people were not mad that it was justavailable. Same goes for the remaster ofMetroid Prime. Famous helps, but finding out it existsandyou can buy it right now is a real shot of dopamine.
We can also put to rest that this only works with famous games. Blue Prince and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 were not famous before, oh, five minutes ago. Now they’re some of the biggest titles of the year.GOTY contenders, with both selling past expectations. One is basically taking the SATs in the form of a house.
The other is Final Fantasy: Hyper French Turbo. If these games weren’t great, they would’ve flopped like the many games that hitSteamwith no warning and disappear with even less. But here’s the rub: Theyaregreat. The fact they didn’t have months of promotion - especially in the case of Blue Prince - did not hurt their sales. A lot of fans found out the games existed and were fantastic at the same time. No middle man required.
Hell, I’d argue that these releaseshelpthose games’ sales. It’s harder for the internet to rile up a frenzy about a game that they don’t know much about. I can’t really complain when writing about video games pays for my video games - I’m clearly a hypocrite - but the intense analysis games undergobeforethey’re released is really something. It’s good for building a fan base, it’s good for showing off cool features that will get folks excited. But these same games with endless trailers and launch videos that come out two months before launch are also picked apart in both good faith and bad.
BeforeAssassin’s Creed: Shadowscame out,much of the internet had already decidedwhether it was going to like it or not. The die had been castwithout anyone playing the game itself. Would surprise releasing a game like Assassin’s Creed: Shadows have been easy or even possible? Probably not. Stock investors would’ve crapped themselves. But perhaps it would’ve given the game a better shot at standing on its own rather than the expectations foisted upon it.
There’s Too Much Hype For Anyone To Be Hyped
I don’t know. I’m as vulnerable to the hype game as anyone else. I pre-ordered aSwitch 2despite the lineup feeling sparse. I’m excited forDoom: The Dark AgesandDeath Stranding 2. I’m sucking down on the PR machine like a gerbil drinking from a little metal tube, which is a far better simile than what you were expecting this sentence to end with. And I know that it’s possible I missed all the massive promotional pushes around the games I’ve mentioned.
But, honestly, I was barely aware of the existence of Blue Prince or Expedition 33 (outside of jokes about its name) before I heard friends and critics talking about them. I didn’t hear about Schedule 1 until there was an article on how nobody else had heard about Schedule 1 but it was the biggest game ever.
I also know this is already how a lot of the indie space works. Many developers don’t have the budget for a PR blitz. A game comes out and, hopefully, people find it. I respect this is a tough situation and not ideal. That said, I feel like I appreciate the big, new surprises morebecauseI wasn’t forced to hear about them for years. I appreciate that I didn’t have them blown out of proportion to be the best thing ever or worst game ever made.
Instead, they came out and everyone went, “Holy crap! Check out this game!” I have no idea how long it took to make Blue Prince. Maybe it took twelve years. I’m just glad I found out about it when it came out rather than twelve years ago with a trailer that just revealed the title and nothing else.
We like new things! There’s almost a Christmas morning quality to seeing a trailer for something amazing and then finding out it’s availableright now. And it reminds me of being in elementary school when all of my friends start texting about a game I’d never heard of before. There’s an excitement to it. Rather than, “Did you get New Game?” the question becomes, “Oh my God, you need to get New Game right now!” I missed that. I missed the surprise. I know that some of you might be furiously typing in the comments that the games I mentioned were already slated to be the biggest things of 2025 and I’m a moron for not having noticed. But I didn’t notice. And I was surprised. And I was thrilled about it.
