Is it possible that the marketing team and the development team were working completely separately with no coordination?

[GeraltOfRivia_PL]

Hey i am new here so please be nice

Looking at the trailers and teasers, it's obvious a lot of features got cut or were never in the game in the first place. Now, i understand that during a game's development, many things get cut and that's natural. I also understand that they want the game to sell well, so they are obviously going to portray it it a good light, playing up the strengths. However in Cyberpunk's case, the dissonance is quite large. Wall running, car customization, important choices that matter, varied cyber implants, realistic and believable NPC's... All these things are present either in the bare minimum or not at all.

Therefore, i am wondering whether there might have been a dissonance between the marketing team and the devs. I mean, it seems like the devs might not have fully informed the marketing team about what they are and what they aren't going to be able to insert in the game. Thus, the marketing team fooled us with a vision of a world that is believable, alive, and realistic, when in reality it's far from any of these.

Again, i know that the marketing team's job is making the game sell well, not being truthful. But the dissonance between the ads and the actual game is unbelievable. I think it might be a case of some complete mismanagement. It's almost like the devs and the marketing team worked in total isolation with almost no coordination.

 

[gallantchar]

Wouldn’t be surprising.

I went out and got Cyberpunk Red today. Already enjoying it more than 2077 and I’ve barely read the rulebook.

 

[MAXXVOLTAGE]

 

[Joao241]

I totally agree,

It seems the marketing team just heard the "possibilities" of the game and went and sold them.
And i do love the game, but naturally it over promised and under delivered.

All the time this game was being sold as "you can edit your penis" but what the fuck does it matter?
It doesn't affect the game at all, it was more as fuck we already posted this we need to deliver this option, regardless it has no impact in the game. I would have loved that at least the "relations" you can interact with would say something as ok i prefer them this or that way, oh man it's too big for me or i like them bigger. I dunno...

But going back to the post, either control the marketing department and muzzle them into a realistic deliverable, or eat the required shit of taking the time to make the lie a truth.

I still loved the game, but it has much more potential.

 

[Grindders]

I don't think so. A lot of false promises were made by Miles Tost, a senior level designer.

 

[GrimReaper801]

No.

Ultimately it all falls to management.

You can be certain that whatever the developers were allowed to say in interviews was verified and allowed by management. The same goes for whatever the marketing team was sending out.

It's not an issue with the developers or the marketing team.

This was management. Management took the decisions. This was management screwing up. That's it.

 

[Hernan_Gonzalez90]

It's posible that marketing was made based on features intended to be finished in final version. Remember that marketing starts at a very early dev stage.
And probably they were forced to keep it that way knowing that a lot of content was cutted down the road.
Trying to hide poor console performance is one example of this behavior.

 

[HazadoV]

Nah, the marketing team was doing their best to maximize the good and minimize the bad.
They did their job flawlessly. Their job is to sell the game not tell you all the truths, like car sales, focus on whats good, only talk about the bad if they directly ask about it (and I don't mean like the car is failing I mean like features that aren't included etc)

 

[Shaamaan]

Well, there's "Hanlon's razor": never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

But to be stupid on this large of a scale would be really baffling. Either the right hand has no idea what the left is doing at CDPR, or someone's been deliberately feeding wrong information.

Ultimately the PR people responsible for the ads and marketing did a phenomenal job given how good the game SEEMS. It's just a shame the actual developers didn't do / weren't allowed to do a phenomenal job as well. But I don't think the PR company is responsible for this blunder, more likely whomever fed them the bullet points...

 

[Mentos3]

No. I work at IT, not so fancy like game-dev. But I know what our marketing is telling our customers. They get their infos from us. Maybe they add a few more colors, but 98% is fact.

Ultimately the PR people responsible for the ads and marketing did a phenomenal job given how good the game SEEMS. It's just a shame the actual developers didn't do / weren't allowed to do a phenomenal job as well. But I don't think the PR company is responsible for this blunder, more likely whomever fed them the bullet points...

The marketing-unit is 1A.

 

[Meccanical]

Wouldn’t be surprising.

I went out and got Cyberpunk Red today. Already enjoying it more than 2077 and I’ve barely read the rulebook.

It's really interesting how CDPR has their logo on the rulebook but not a single mechanic it has made it into Cyberpunk 2077.

 

[NevaEilhart]

The real issue to me is that it's obvious the dev team took an incredible amount of time just to decide how the game should be played and what it should feature. Between the switch from 3rd to 1st person and what it implies (general gameplay and combat system redesign) and the switch to a futuristic urban setting (meaning free roam mechanics such as police, cars, overall interactivity, but also implant mechanics and verticality), you can tell they started from scratch without the slightest idea of how to make it work, and there was a lot of back & forth between designs.

We know the pre production was scrapped almost entirely 2 years in because of that 1st person switch. The game has been in developement hell.

I guess that led marketing to showcase a product, without really knowing what that product was really supposed to be. RPG ? FPS ? GTA ? Witcher ? Something else entirely ? Watching the old PR stuff, you can tell how they went with what features they had at that particular time in developement and without be certain it would make the cut. Guess that's why you have this strong "half baked" taste while playing it. They just took whatever running build they had on their hands and built on that. I guess that's also why I found their marketing campaign back then to be very "odd", because I couldn't really get what they were trying to sell me. I remember watching the gameplay trailer featuring Pacifica and finding it very off putting - bad editing, info dump all over the place, gameplay taking 180° turns (are you playing GTA ? Watch Dogs ? Doom ?). There were fancy words spoken, sure, to hide the bare bones showing underneath it.

Given how production works, we ended with a game which is functional on general design / global story (not talking about branches here, but the general flow of it) / dialog / characters, but which isn't functional on other secondary features. Balance, world interactivity, minor activities, UI and user experience, all of that comes later in the developement process, and it shows.

 

[darksharke]

CDPR be like Francis Urqhart ... ' you might think so, but I couldn't possibly comment'

 

[VoxFerrata]

Absolutely. Otherwise the marketing team would have known better how important, no, let me rephrase, how VITAL it was to make Judy and Panam statues in that sweet Dark Horse collab.

/joke

/not a joke

 

[hulkman2456]

There was a definite disconnect between the two. Just one example is Sasquatch. First, the Animals in general do NOTHING for the game. They are the worst utilized gang in the whole game. Second, Sasquatch herself. She's featured in demo videos, for boss footage.

She has promo art. She has the most unique element done in a boss fight. But is SOLELY seen in this boss fight. She's not at the gang. You never directly talk to her. And if you spare her after the boss fight. She has no continuing story. You would not use a character like this for promotion. River is a far more bigger and developed character than Sasquatch ever was. Than you have T-Bug in that CG rendering of her defending Dex. Why would you make a promo like this? This never happens. And she's the worst used character in the whole game. Make CG renderings with actual important characters, to show off the game.

They just did the reverse. Use every character that's badly used. Or has no impact on the game to sell the game. Like WTH? Instead of making that stupid CGI video of V talking to random car dude. Hyping up cars. How about make that River. The two talking about how messed up the city is. What type of hell he goes through every day. Than show V and River's paths crossing together. With Jackie's death and his family problem. Without spoiling his story.

 

[XALex_LiX]

There is no such horrible false propaganda, this game has only a lot of mistakes, but it gives consumers so many false hopes, which reflects that it is not just a publicity problem, but the entire company has problems.