On February 14, a YouTube account called PlayMeThrough uploaded a series of videos titled “The Order: 1886 Gameplay Walkthrough.” The title was rather literal — the videos, which were separated into 16 parts, walked viewers through the entirety of The Order: 1886, from prologue to final boss.
Given that The Order: 1886, a highly-anticipated PS4 game, doesn’t come out until Friday, this immediately kicked off a number of furious discussions. The loudest and most inane of these discussions involved the game’s length, which clocked at around five hours according to the video leak. Gamers desperate for as much information as possible about The Order fretted that the game was too short while the developers frantically tried, and failed, to control their message.
It’s funny. As often happens during those strange weeks before a game comes out, we’re in a bit of a stasis period, where reviewers are currently playing The Order: 1886 but can’t actually talk about it until the publisher-dictated review embargo is up on Thursday. So as the headlines came fast and spurious — “Report: The Order: 1886 is five hours long?” — no outlet could give an answer the question people really want to know: is this game worth playing? Is it worth our time? (Check Kotaku on Thursday for our answer to that question.)
Game leaks are common, so common that it’s not even that surprising that someone was playing the game a week before release. Early bootlegs of many major games wind up on the web thanks to torrents, review copies going astray, and rogue leakers at various companies. What’s unusual is the convergence of this latest game leak and the culture of Let’s Play videos. Five years ago, it’d be barely imaginable that you’d be able to watch a full playthrough of any video game online; today it’s just unusual that you could watch one this early. Many publishers have tolerated post-release playthroughs because they see those videos as good marketing or because they choose not to enforce copyright claims. YouTube is full of playthroughs even from other Sony games, like Infamous: Second Son.
And just as post-release Let’s Plays have changed how people see games, so too, now, has a pre-release Let’s Play, one whose first chapter was viewed by 100,000 people before it got shut down.
One early leak has changed the entire narrative of this game. Days before it’s out, gamers across the world are talking about how long it might be, how many quick-time events it has, and how it apparently reuses boss battles in embarrassing fashion. The world won’t play the game until Friday, and reviewers can’t contextualize any of these conversations until Thursday, so the game’s narrative currently revolves around the footage and opinions of a single YouTube leaker.
Floating around the front of r/games yesterday, for example, was this thread about the playthrough, offering firsthand details that nobody else has to offer. “Took me a little over 5 hours on my first playthrough,” wrote the person behind PlayMeThrough. “Not much replayability. You can’t level up any skills or anything and there is no New Game+.” As expected, the reactions were harsh. Said one Redditor: “This caused me to cancel my preorder. I’d still very much like the play the game but I’ll rent or wait until it’s $US20.”
Over on GAF there’s an Order: 1886 thread with several hundred posts worth of discussion — not over the characters, or the gameplay, or any of the other game aspects that Sony is pushing so hard on people, but over the fact that PlayMeThrough’s playthrough took five hours.
What’s more, because this specifically is a video game that was primarily marketed based on looks rather than, say, innovative gameplay, it’s far more difficult to justify stepping back and wondering just how different the experience is when you play it rather than watch it on YouTube. So the reactions are even more polarised.
It’s not quite clear just how The Order: 1886 escaped its release cage so early. At some point in the past 24 hour, the developers at Ready At Dawn filed a takedown notice and got all the videos removed, and the YouTube account has been suspended, but we don’t know whether this was a pirated copy or just a rogue video-maker breaking embargo. (Our reviewer, Kirk Hamilton, got his copy of the game last Friday.) It does suck for the folks behind the game, as many have noted.
What we do know is that this one set of videos has dominated the pre-release coverage of The Order: 1886, and that all anyone can do is sit back and watch as we wait to see whether this game will be worth all the attention.
Comments
43 responses to “YouTube Leak Derails Launch Of Big PS4 Exclusive”
Well on a positive note this game will live on for years in speed running circles 🙂
I feel so bad for the guys at RAD, I see layoffs on the horizon. 🙁
Unless they’re trying to shill 3 hours of gameplay and 2 hours of cutscenes (with reused boss battle QTE’s) at full retail price onto foolish customers who’ve been sold on pre-release hype.
In that case f*ck them.
They’re happy to take your pre-order dollars but put an embargo on when professional reviewers can tell you if it’s good or not, then we defend them when some people jump on the front foot and try to warn others that they might be about to get screwed.
Is the wrong story getting out RAD? Then lift the embargo so your customers can know how “good” your product is.Until then I’m happy for the internet to keep shitting on their game.
This happens all the time when European versions of previously-Japanese-language-only games for 3DS/WiiU (ie platformers where you can simply watch the game played for you from start to finish) are uploaded as entire playthroughs, even before their release in America.
I consider this to be a very, very weird thought.
Let me rephrase it for MY contextualization:
“Reviewers can’t spin any of these conversations until Thursday, so the game’s narrative currently revolves around the evidence of what’s in it, laid bare.”
Oh no, the horror, seeing something without a reviewer handy to interpret its context for us! Judging things by the evidence in front of our very eyes!
I’m very curious as to why this is considered a bad thing. There are absolutely elements that you miss out on such as how responsive the controls are, the potential for disconnect between what’s happening on screen and what the player intended to do, but beyond that, I can’t think of anything that a reviewer would be necessary for to interpret that a gamer can’t see for themselves.
And the attitude of some commenters is baffling.
Yes, how dare you make an informed purchasing decision? It’s totally not fair for gamers to bypass the glitz and glamour of expensive, mysterious, misleading marketing! Publishers have the RIGHT to trick you into thinking you’re getting a different experience than what’s actually there! How is the industry supposed to survive if it can’t rely on tricking gamers into preordering before review embargoes are up?
What a poisonous, consumer-unfriendly attitude… Not EVERYTHING wrong with the industry, but a very significant part of it.
Did I go mad and wake up in a world where it’s considered a bad thing for sales to be hurt by consumers knowing what they’re getting? How fucked up is that?
***
Edit: That isn’t to say that the whole thing published in its entirety isn’t unethical insofar as it’s like releasing a bootleg movie:
That’s something I’m undecided on. If the primary part of the game is what it presents to you, its narrative and cinematic experience, then watching it in advance for free is obviously wrong, right? Getting a book pirated on an e-reader and claiming that it’s OK, you’re just ‘previewing’ it because the whole book experience is based on turning pages.
No, the experience is the story, the pages are just what you turn to navigate that. If the controls are really so dismally perfunctory that your inputs are the gaming equivalent of nothing more than turning pages, I’d be pretty comfortable in saying it’s effectively in the same area as piracy. You aren’t turning the pages/QTEs yourself, but you’re getting the story for free.
But if the primary purpose of the game is to navigate its challenges and interact with and explore the world, then that’s a different issue, isn’t it?
Agree 100%. It’s so fucked up. The playthrough was about as unbiased as you get. It’s funny that the leak of Deus Ex: Human Revolution probably garnered sales just on the strength of the product. How some people link making informed decisions on spending cash to being disrespectful is just ….
Watch as the blame game start when sales are less than expected. “Ohh its not that we made a game that misrepresented what we’ve told everyone for the last 2 years – it was the damn leaker WHO SHOWED GAMEPLAY WITH NO COMMENTARY”…
“But if people know what the product is really like, they won’t buy it!”
GOOD. THAT IS HOW THINGS SHOULD BE.
However.
If the game is really just meant to be a fairly rote pushing of buttons to get to the primary purpose of delivering a story, and people have viewed the story in advance, there’s not really any reason for them to buy the game. And that’s not fair. That line of thinking I can get behind.
But that line of thought also leaves open the door for excuses.
Similar to how the MPAA tried to idiotically claim that every pirated copy of a movie is a lost sale, I will put money on someone trying to make the excuse that poor results for The Order will be down to people viewing the story in advance (under the presumption that the story is the primary purpose of the game) and not feeling the need to buy it now that they got all that entertainment for free, instead of realizing that the game isn’t as ‘gamey’ (interactive, deep, exploratory, challenging, etc) as they’d hoped.
Wouldn’t people that aren’t really interested in game play just watch the entire play through a day or two later on youtube and save $60? Which is no loss iether way? I was interested as it had a setting i kinda like and the gameplay was presented to have an uncharted\last of us feel. It makes no difference to me i wouldn’t have purchased anyway, would have watched a lets play for 30 – 40mins before deciding on a purchase or not.
Yer the MPAA are fuckin incredible when it comes to making absurd claims on piracy – that one download = one sale is just one of the many. Sad thing is that its trending towards lets play’s or just entire play throughs getting shut down or limited in some fashion – this is just a gut feeling but it definitely *feels* like that’s the direction they want to go.
For me the reason why the “Wow you’re a douche… Be respectful and wait until february 19th” comment is valid is because a consumer doesn’t have to purchase the product day one. As others have pointed out, this isn’t just about the fact the content is being shared, it’s about when. If one is concerned about the quality of the product, then they can wait and read reviews and watch let’s plays or talk to people who have played it or whatever, after it has legitimately been released. This one set of videos was so powerful because of it’s exclusivity, which was achieved by breaking the rules.
Devils Advocate: A publisher doesn’t have to hold the embargo until the game is released (or very close to it).
Yeah… that’s not a bad interpretation. But I still can’t agree with it and my point STILL stands because they’re shitty, consumer-unfriendly ‘rules’.
I think the advantage of a review in this case is that you don’t spoil the game by watching it on Youtube. Sure, I could make an informed purchasing decision by watching it but then what would be the point? It’s a story-driven game so it’s not the same as something like Evolve or Destiny going up on Youtube before release.
By the same token, you don’t have to pre-order the game – you can wait until after release and listen to reviewers, or even word of mouth, before making a purchasing decision.
You wouldn’t have to watch the whole game to get a good sense of what it’s going to be like. With this if you like the purely cinematic story driven games with QTE’s galore and little actual gameplay you’d work that out in the first 30mins.
Just to be clear not dissenin anyone that likes that style – each to their own. Personally i hate it. I’d be pretty upset making a $60 purchase and found out it was nothing like the previews (which is reflected in this case).
And @zambayoshi
Exactly. I was interested in the Order and so I watched small parts of gameplay from a spread of 3/4 of the levels, trying to skip/ avoid cut scenes.
I came to a conclusion that I would not be buying the game based on the gameplay that I saw, not the other stuff, and I still don’t know what the main ‘story’ is. (At least nothing I din’t already know before watching the videos.) It’s easy to pause youtube and scrub forward to unobtrusive gameplay for the most part.
They consider it a bad thing because they aren’t going to get any advertising revenue for their opinion.
I guess it’s not so much the leak for me but the response.
6 hours. So what?
Is THIS the end of the world? Are we going to again attempt to find a correlation between quality and how high Youtube commentors can count? I mean, KNOWING isn’t bad but this information has been generalised and misconstrued completely. A 6 hour game doesn’t have to suck (many haven’t and don’t) and seemingly a huge number of games today also believe this and I’m glad they do. This, though. This isn’t a case of “in this situation, quality isn’t up to standard”, it’s “SIX HOURS!!! ARBITRARY OUTRAGE!!!”
I don’t want what could be a minor criticism or even a potential benefit to the game be completely generalised for all others and become a rule. Just like with the idiots over Mass Effect. It wasn’t a case of “i didn’t like the ending” (words I have used on many a series and film that doesn’t translate into a blanket statement of hatred), it was “this writing is wrong”, all through the ironic lens of an illiterate 14 year-old.
The problem for me, isn’t people knowing, it’s studios catching on to the fact that ambiguous endings and shorter games are inherently a bad thing because that’s how the simple, immature hive-mind works. Every time someone stirs up a massive outrage over something arbitrary, you have to believe confidence in that entire direction is gone from a publisher standpoint, they don’t need the press.
I don’t think 6 hours is a waste, nor is anyone being ripped off. But a narrative IS being constructed and it can’t account for subjective opinion, one that perhaps would find 6 hours to be irrelevant if considered alongside the quality of experience. Is anyone actually commenting on the quality, the delivery? Not really, people are MASSIVELY generalising. There’s nothing wrong with consumers knowing, I don’t care that people saw it, that it was released or even if some people are so insecure they need a summary of time spent accompanying each game they purchase. What bothers me is that the narrative that they have created is not real.
I want games that could be 6 hours or two hundred, I don’t care and neither is an account for quality. I don’t want 2 more hours of DLC if I pre-order but to publishers, that’s the narrative people are projecting. They’re projecting that you HAVE to pre-order and buy it, which is also definitely something publishers will take away. Sure, publishers might make excuses no one will believe but if they think people actually equate length with quality then more will be inclined to increase length to unnecessary proportions (Alien Isolation) to ensure sales. Leak game videos, I don’t give a shit but these people are in no way equipped to deal with a concept as startlingly complex as game length and now the narrative says “game sucks cos 6 hours”. This is the perceived message. Not “watch it, make up your mind”, it’s “FEED ME MORE” and it’s ignorant. This isn’t consumers purely being informed, it’s the narrative being controlled by people even less qualified and more prejudiced and ignorant than the general media and the power given to it means a lot of stupid concepts become facts to them and others.
Excuses by publishers don’t matter – unless you believe them – but on the other hand, you can’t just release everything including story etc. in a video just willy nilly, as irritating (in another way) as a lying studio controlling the narrative is, it definitely holds less sway than the hate-filled, ignorant voice of the people. In summary, if people weren’t so quick to outrage over arbitrary dot points like game length and force a simplified narrative, I wouldn’t see any problem here.
What I find funny is how shocked people are that games are short, if there is a difficulty option and you are worried about length of game time, bump up the difficulty to as hard as possible. For me I’m not so worried about short games, or hard games, what I want is an enjoyable experience, whether that be in the form of a 100+ hour RPG, or a 1 hour sit down and experience it once type game.
We have all seen the game as it was being developed, and what the developers wanted us to see. What it appeared like was a bit of a Gears of War type cover based shooter in a steampunk 19th century england, and seeing as I finished GoW in about 7 hours, GoW2 in about the same, I wasnt expecting a 20 hour plus piece of game. 5-6 Hours is a bit short, but not the shocking revelation that most people seem to think it is. Almost all modern shooters are finished in that time frame.
I think the reaction probably varies based on the degree of marketing exposure they’ve had so far. I pegged it as Steampunk GoW meets Resident Evil or something after watching a developer diary video with some gameplay and lost interest. The teaser story fluff around it, though, before that gameplay video came out? I was expecting something… richer.
Anyone who’s complaining about a mis-match of expectations is probably operating on less information. Such as, say, all the early pre-gameplay-video hype.
It’s expectations and value for money. I think for most cinematic experiences (Cod like last of us uncharted etc) its around 12 hours. At least that is what i expect for $60. I don’t do the collecting and or trophy/achievment hunting its fluff shite that doesn’t interest me i do expect it to be ~10hrs on a AAA $60 game following the main story. It’s fine if it isn’t but i’d like to know that going in as it would certainly affect at what price point i purchase it.
I think the Last Of Us is about 15 hours of main story. I was actually extremely happy with the level of content in that game, and probably would have accepted less for the price. That being said, 5-6 hours including cinematics isn’t much. I think The Last Of Us had a good balance, with probably 1-2 hours of cinematics.
In my opinion, unless it gets raving reviews, I am unlikely to spend $60+ on a 6 hour game.
Hi Mate … I’m not worried about short games either but I am worried about having to pay so much money for such little game … You mentioned Gears being the same length but reality is there are still people today playing multiplayer so that argument doesn’t quite hold true. Most modern shooters have co-op or multiplayer tacked on … even the Last of Us which can be finished in under 4 hours has a multiplayer element that means gamers get longevity out of the game.
Highly doubt is a bootleg. Even the fakes they sell in the building on Nanjing St in Shanghai are just PS3 silvers in a PS4 case
Well, all this kerfuffle actually caused me to pre-order the game (limited edition), as it sounds exactly the kind of thing that I would appreciate.
Which is good for you. Glad you were able to make an informed decision 😀
Ha ha, well, it was mostly a decision based on the fact that I was thinking about getting the game at a later stage, but when it leaked I felt sorry for the devs because of all the people dissing the game’s length.
That’s not an informed decision.
He has no more information than the people who decided to cancel their pre-orders.
Just because it’s a course of action that you might personally agree with doesn’t make it “informed”.
Huh, he\she learnt facts relevant as to whether he\she would like to purchase it.
How exactly was that not an informed choice?
This person has become aware of a game only through negative publicity regarding its length and the effort that was put into it.
Despite the outpouring of negative buzz about the game, professional reviewers who have now finished the game remain gagged by the developer so they can’t tell the public (who’s pre-order dollars the developer is still happy to accept) if the negative rumours are true or not.
This person just committed to purchasing said title.
You congratulated them on their informed decision.
I don’t know what more I need to say, but I certainly don’t know what “facts” you think were considered. It seems like one party (RAD/ Sony) are intentionally obfuscating the facts in the hope that they will gain financially from people who’ve paid for the game before they’ve been given access to the information they need to make an informed decision.
The playthrough spoke for itself. Im not sure how u could get a more unbiased view of the game – it didn’t even have commentary. You’re saying the only people that could speak against\for are paid reviewers – its not, the video was seen by thousands of people before it was taken down. Its been pretty universal in acknowledging that the game is rather short and that the play through wasn’t a speed clear. That said by no means was it an achievement clear or trophy hunting one either, pretty sure it was played on the lowest difficulty too so that might double\triple your playtime. The QTE’s, boss encounter and the cinematic nature of it these aren’t subjective – it was laid out bare with a full play through.
The decision they’ve made has been reflected on that information? That’s an informed choice. It might not have come from information gleaned via someones opinion on their own playthrough rather information collated from many people who watched someone else play.
It’s pretty clear sony/rad are intentionally obfuscating and that the playthrough has pretty much fucked their pre release marketing strategy as what information i had on the game prior was more a uncharted/last of us feel, which without a doubt was their target audience – that play through alone has destroyed that credibility, well it certainly has for me (i wont be purchasing but i didnt pre order either so it made no difference – i’ll be waiting till bargain bin or viewing on youtube whilst doing menial tasks around the home). Which is an informed decision i made based on the play through alone.
I’m all for the informed decision making process, but this person had no fucking right to put the game up before release, with material they weren’t authorised to use in such a fashion.
I don’t really have any sympathy for the people whinging about pre-ordering a game and getting fucked by marketing. If you’re really that concerned by the potential for that to occur, the answer is pretty simple: don’t pre-order, wait for the release and check reviews, etc AT THAT POINT IN TIME.
Nobody forces you to pre-order. It’s generally a bad idea. There are hardly ever any really worthwhile reasons for doing so. Why would you?
IDK, a lot of people judge a games worth by watching gameplays. Mostly because they would rather see a game in action and come to their own conclusion than trust a reviewer, who may have different tastes to them, to tell them if the game is worth their money or not. And that’s an OK way of doing things.
Those people would have watched gameplayes before buying anyway (edit: In other words, not just because they pre-ordered). Whether it was before or after the embargo period is irrelevant in that case.
Edit: I underlined ’embargo’ because, in my personal and subjective opinion, embargoes are marketing tactics which are aimed at deceiving/ holding off the spread of information in the hopes of misleading the consumer to get more day 1 sales. Hence they are, IMHO, anti- consumer in nature. As I say though, that’s a subjective standing.
No need to be so diplomatic about it – embargoes exist soley to control information until it’s in public domain. Anyone who can’t see that – well i don’t know what to say about that.
It stems from publishers having way to much control over what is essentially their independent reviewers tie this in with just how powerful media can be and its rather sad affair.
An example of that power is to look at gamergate and how media twisted and portrayed it in such a negative light when originally it was just about gaming journalism and a lack of ethics – instead they all jump all over a minority of people that where misogynists implying to be pro gamergate is to be pro misogyny which mainstream media then picked up on and now u got garbage like that svu episode. (Check http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/gamergate if your interested in it)
Sadly that tactic is not uncommon and is very effective way of subverting attention from the original topic (occupy wall street is another example where they did this).
I agree with some of your points, and don’t really want to get into ethics, misogynists and gamergate. I will however say this: I personally believe they should have been treated as separate issues and not made to fight for the banner/ name of gamergate, leading to neither getting the full support they need, while making the arguments seem more petty trivial than they actually were IMHO.)
I was diplomatic because this is the internet and I have no desire to get into an argument about something like this, and hence rather try to state my intent plainly to try keep things civil and enjoyable.
Heh, made me laugh – civil & internet 😀
It is what it is. I by no means meant to turn it into a gamergate discussion rather it was just an example of how powerful the media and public perception can be which is exactly what an embargo attempts to control. Product image\perception until date of launch.
You don’t own the IP. I don’t own the IP. The company does. Nobody forces you to spend your money. If you don’t want to get burned by a bad product, wait before you buy. Don’t go taking things into your own hands and intentionally disseminate material that you have no right to.
Rather simple.
The problem is the leak wasn’t damaging as it mislead the public – its about as honest as it gets. Its not like its the odd screenshot\clip of pre release code showing major flaws bugs etc. It was an entire playthrough.
I’ll never understand people that will defend a system which sole purpose is to mislead for money. If the product can’t stand on its own without review embargoes then it doesn’t deserve any money. Word of mouth is the best way to make a sale – imagine if this had gone the deus ex route and garnered tons of positive press. Hell we don’t even know the circumstances behind the playthrough and why it was uploaded and made public – maybe it was an honest mistake, maybe they didnt have to sign a embargo (mistake on publishers end).
Personally it made no difference i was waiting for a playthrough before i made up my mind.
YES to this. All of this.
“Studio exec says internal tests put normal game length between eight and ten hours.”
Because that’s so much better for a game we’ve been lied to about multiple times.
I haven’t really been following the Order so I really don’t know and I am curious: What were the lies?
Okay that was a bit overdramatic. But we’ve been “lied” to about the frame rate and also about how the game actually looks a couple of times.
Really? I always thought the game was a 30FPS game with the cinematic aspect ratio. Is that what you were referring too? Please elaborate.
As for the visuals themselves, the game looks great. IMHO It’s visually in the same league as the best looking next gen games (Infamous, Killzone, Drive Club, Ryse, AC Unity, etc. While AC was disappointing, it still had stuff going on that other multi platform games don’t have yet). Further more, the wide screen is a native resolution widescreen and not scaled, meaning that its not 800p.
Plus, from my understanding, it has 4XMSAA. That suggests that the wide screen was definitely an artistic decision and not one made by hardware limitations. If they wanted the game to run at 1920x1080p and not 1920×800, it probably would just fine if they dropped the MSAA.
As I say, I don’t know much about the Order and the gameplay doesn’t interest me. However, as someone who isn’t really interested in the game, I am starting to feel that people are being extremely hard on it compared to other games, especially new IP’s. It’s almost like people are looking for ways to fault it like no other game, before it’s even released. Not many people are giving it a chance, so no. I don’t think the visuals are bad, and I honestly don’t think anyone’s been deceptive about the game.
Are we lied to about games? Yes. But you make it sound like it’s BF4 or Watchdogs. I don’t recall any lies and I’m certainly happy to be wrong, but I’m afraid you’ll have to offer some proof.
I have no idea how a company could think that releasing a 5 hour, single player only game at full retail price wouldn’t come back to bite them on the ass.
Unless there’s extensive untruths being told by people from within the gaming community then the developers of this game have tried to sell a game that’s:
• About five hours total long
• About 2.5-3 hours of actually gameplay (non-cutscene) long
• Reuses the same QTE battle for both the mid-game boss and the final boss
Now, obviously the game COULD be some kind of masterpiece that makes that 5 hour experience worth as much as a game like GTA V, but I’d SERIOUSLY F*CKING DOUBT IT.
The length is one thing, but the (alleged) reuse of cutscenes really smacks of a game which hasn’t been given the love you’d expect for a game they are charging full retail for. If I was a person who pre-ordered in the first place, I’d be cancelling mine.
i seen consumer concerns about the length of gameplay described as inane, dumb & immature.
I see its a valid consideration as one of many factors that go into my descision wether to buy it, but rather than waiting for reviews only to do this research, the leak has given me one piece of info early.
Sure, it may hurt the developers, but so toowould reviews that stated the same thing! Why is it all of a sudden is there a number of articles with this condescending tone towards a legitimate concern?
I will still look at other aspects of it because I was really hoping to like it, but this idea that ‘gamers need to be more mature’ is a worrying response from the people who usually supply the consumer with the information they use to make their decisions.
Is it something that these outlets that have written these articles would have neglected to tell us or downplayed it when they reviewed it?
this is karma for Ryse I think, haha still wanna give the order a go love the setting