Trusting or not, I belive that in this corporate world every non-indie company is worth at least a little mistrust.
For me, even though I don't hate or mistrust them in the specific, I can tell that I don't play Trion games, whatever the game may be, even though I have to admit that I gave AA and Rift a try. The reason is that I have a dinamic IP and everytime I try to log in I need to wait for an email that does not arrive in time, when it does arrive the session is expired. This means essentially that a quick loss of connection means I can't get back in game in a timely fashion (assuming of course that I mange to log into the game in the first place). I have not much knowledge regarding software programming, but how can it be that steam and bnet can store a token in your system and use that as authentication, and these other companies can't come up with something as smooth as that?
I guess this was more a rant than anything, sorry for going offtopic if I did...
As far as MMOs go, The only one I trust is Square Enix with FFXIV. They have the most polished product on the market IMO, and frequent updates that are massive.
Then Arena Net, But they need to start making some big changes to GW2. I'm hoping Heart of Thorns delivers, But I know better than to get my hopes up in this genre.
FFXIV=PvE GW2=PvP
Everyone else seems dead set on butchering their own titles after a short period of time. (Can't speak for Zenimax. ESO didn't stick with me.)
Monster Hunter since '04! Currently playing: MHW & MHGU
Gamers always say big companies, try Indies, most indies are gamers, or AAA devs
Just look at Aventurine and you'll find that Indie developers can be just as deceitful or in case of Early acess games, even more so.
Also Developers make a good living(albiet long crunch hours) and they take OUR money for their product. Mmos for the most party break even or make money, epscially with F2P being so prevaliant now. I'm not saying developing a game is easy, but giving in to the casual masses and alienating your genrebase/fanbase is all in the namesake of a quick buck is why we are so angry
Anyone that trusts anyone else that is trying to make money off them is woefully ignorant of the principles of modern business practices.
Thats unfair, my buddy owns a small gamestore, he earns enough money to survive on it but he certainly don't do it because he want to get rich, he just loves games and enjoy working with them (not computer, P&P RPGs and boardgames even if it is Magic the gathering that pays most of his bills). -He don't rip people off and assuming everyone who works with computer games want to is just too cynical even for me.
Now, big publishing houses like EA are run by suits and they would most likely sell their won mothers for the right price but many people works in the genre because they love games and they make games they believe in. Not all of them turns out great but sometimes something sounds good until you actually do it (like going on a diet).
There are exceptions to most every generalization. When making generalizations you go with what is predominately displayed and or common place, which is not your friend.
The video game industry especially has little to no legal recourse available to consumers. Consumer protection laws dont seem to apply to game companies, nor does quality assurances, functional products on sale or even basic return policies for faulty products.
Hell I even remember Bioware charging me "tax" when I bought points for some me3 dlc. After demanding tax code info from them they finally admitted it was "Bioware tax" and had nothing to do with state or federal sales tax.
The video game industry is the wild wild west of profiteering and anyone t hat trust anyone else in the industry is just asking to get taken advantage of.
Anyone that trusts anyone else that is trying to make money off them is woefully ignorant of the principles of modern business practices.
What I think is woefully ignorant is any company these days who thinks that they can engage in shady business practices and get away with it. Fact is that companies are more accountable today then they were 10 years ago. If a company believes that something isn't going to leak to the public then they're ignorant.
That's not to say that there aren't shady people, still. I'm sure there is. However, the general mission of the company as a whole is not going to be to rip people off. Sorry, I think it's ignorant to believe that companies in a business where customers are so knowledgeable (and have such a lack of knowledge at the same time), critical, and have paramount access to information, that they could get away with anything. Take a look at Destiny, Borderlands, etc. recently. You don't think that companies will be held accountable for things? Damn! And that stuff isn't even anything that was justified (in my opinion).
So you are saying that delivering faulty products with no ability to return products, having federal consumer protection laws not apply to their products and blatantly misleading or even lying to their customers is protection? Please man you cant be serious.
Sure when it comes to physical locations selling products consumer protection has increased. But when it comes to the gaming industry it is nothing but profiteering and exploitation.
You talk about game companies pissing off people with sub standard products and "paying" for it, yet EA is still a titan despite some of the worst products, lies and substandard products on the market. Borderlands? great game by gearbox, Aliens Colonial Marines? A complete lie being sold as a game by the same company, with little to no effect on their earnings reports.
Sure we as consumers have become smarter, but that doesnt mean companies will try and screw us over any less. When you put profit before people you cannot be trusted period.
There is always an exception to every rule. EA is one of them, for sure. There are juggernauts out there, like EA, who can basically sell you whatever they like because there's nothing else out there. They have exclusivity for the NFL. They have exclusivity for Star Wars. However, again, that's the exception, not the rule. You're acting like every single dev house has a pool full of money out back that they refill on a weekly basis because they just don't know what to do with it all. That's bullshit!
Consumers THINK they're smarter but, as is the case most of the time, they are nearly never as smart as they think they are. Here's a list of the game companies which have been shut down since 2006. That's like over 10 studios per year closing, and it's not like these are no-name companies.
Then there are companies like Square Enix, Capcom, Konami, etc. who used to produce a metric ton of games. Now we've got EA and Activision. That's pretty much the last of the titans at this point.
The fact that you can't see the unparalleled transparency between 10 years ago to today blows my mind! There was a time when a dev diary didn't even exist. I know this might be difficult to believe, but there were times when you didn't even know about a game until six months before its release. Now, we have massive crowd funding initiatives that give us insight into the development process and we can't even wrap our minds around how something could take 2 or 3 years to develop, let alone 5 or 6 years!!! So you can call me a pessimist, but I think you're seriously over-estimating how educated people actually are.
I think that people are way too critical of developers, and probably have unrealistic expectations. I understand that maybe developers don't meet your expectations all the time. They probably make some promises they don't keep. However, people walking around calling them evil is hilarious, like their sole purpose, their company mission is to rip people off, piss people off, or be as deceptive as possible. It's American Paranoia at it's best.
All I can say is that I hope your children are more forgiving than you are, because if you don't think that you've ever let anyone down, not met expectations, or lied, then you are lying right there.
Totally agree - I often wonder how many people who are critical about developers here are themselves so incredibly efficient, competent and passionate in their own profession work in RL that their clients and employers never had a excuse to admonish or complaint about some perceived short-comings in their work or service.
Every profession has its own challenges, so I feel that unless a person has some real qualification in this field, his criticism should be more measured - ask yourself how would you feel if some stranger call out that he doesn't like your work or service so you must be lazy or incompetent.
So all of the developers are beyond reproach because we ourselves aren't perfect.
Well shit, lets just shut these forums down. No point in discussing what we like and don't like about games and their publishers since we aren't game developers and/or aren't perfect.
I agree, and simply put developers 100% need to be objectively scrutinized for the work they are doing. I also disagre about the "field qualification" as aside from posting a photo with your name on a plaque or certificate from a college you really have no way, at least on the internet of proving you have these qualifications. So what the, does everyone without a degree or prior experience have a null opinion? To me thats a bit of a stretch, especially since we are the "users" who are experiancing their product first hand.
For example a man could say he is a great chef, and good at making burgers. Serve me and you the burgers simply as consumers and not as head chefs, and we could both agree the burger was absolute crap. We dont have to know what goes into the creation of said burger to find the objective reasons we dislike IE: Its too soggy, its burnt to shit, etc.
Would intimate knowledge of cooking help us to deduce what could have gone wrong in the process? Most definitely, but it doesnt make our original opinions any less substantiated because again, as consumers we are given the full right of the producer/creator to judge his work. Simply put, if developers didnt want to be scrutinized then they wouldnt put their work out there to begin with.
Objectively scrutinized? Huh, well I can't really comment on that since I'm not sure what that looks like. It might be welcomed, though.
As far as having an opinion, I don't think that you need experience to whine and bitch about a problem with a game, but I often see "how hard can it be" posts which amuse me. For instance, "How hard can it be to write good server software that doesn't crash at launch? Seriously, we've been doing MMOs for 10 years and still have launch-day issues?" Instead, you might ask yourself, "Wow, this is still a problem after 10 years, this must be a difficult problem." It's not like they're getting you your morning coffee. It's even fine to dislike it. I'll often complain, but I rarely question a developer about their abilities, calling them evil, or insinuating that they're inept in some way.
Today, the world of game development is more transparent than ever. Developers readily put themselves out there to be criticized, and they are held accountable, more than ever before, for their failures. There may be companies we'll never "touch", but for the most part developers are extremely transparent. People will still continue with misinformation, paranoia, and conspiracy theories, but they are generally unfounded and more funny than hurtful.
If a game is shit, it's shit, and people should tell the developer that, but people believing that a developer is developing a game to be shitty to pry money from the hands of the consumer is laughable. Again, there could be a handful of companies who might get away with this, but they are the few.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I understand this may sound odd or funny, but I trust Broadsword/EA/OSI? how ever it is now. They have been very helpful in game too me, and also when I had some password issues. I never have a lot of problems but they have been 100% helpful each time I needed them.
EQ2/Daybreak has also been helpful to be though I have not had a lot of issues. They just seem to take much longer to get help, but when then did get to me they have been helpful.
Not triple A developers anymore. They all want to attract as many gamers as possible and thus their titles suffer, in my opinion. If one of them, just one, got their focus back and hit a specific target audience instead of the current "shotgun" trend, I may change my tune.
I do not know of any "Indy" developers that I would say I see their name and get excited for their projects.
i do think they are in over their heads some times when i look at their decisions. but yeah so far i've had no reason to distrust the devs of the games i play. not a lot of shady business going on as far as i've seen.
I think that people are way too critical of developers, and probably have unrealistic expectations. I understand that maybe developers don't meet your expectations all the time. They probably make some promises they don't keep. However, people walking around calling them evil is hilarious, like their sole purpose, their company mission is to rip people off, piss people off, or be as deceptive as possible. It's American Paranoia at it's best.
All I can say is that I hope your children are more forgiving than you are, because if you don't think that you've ever let anyone down, not met expectations, or lied, then you are lying right there.
I would agree with that premise IF said developers/publishers did not actively market demographics they couldn't actually satisfy and didn't set those "high expectations" themselves. The only dev/pub I trust is the one who doesn't say ^&^#$ about it's game till it's done and/or releases a demo. Letting the game sell itself. If you need a market dept eating more than 25% of development costs to sell your game in a social media age it wasn't that good to begin with.
Never trust a business, and game companies are no exception, their aim is to make money. Once you are confortable with that concept, there are Companies that at least try to stay in touch with their customers trying to keep some kind of dignity and others that unashamedly follow the smell of money.
In my view Turbine is one of the few developers that saves themself, regarless the quality of their games, they never really upset their customers which for me is one of the key elements for a successful business.
The worst company in my opinion was SoE. I am not surprised Sony got rid of it.
I've not played many games and never have time to sit down and play "high quality" online games. So I've just played browser games. Must say I'm disappointed in Gameforge (Ogame) - they went totally overboard in their P2W implementation. Took some of the point out of the game. Playing AD2460 by Fifth Season now - they seem bona fide interested in the games they make and the way those games are played by the ppl playing. But not a big shot developer so maybe not relevant to the discussion, still..
I very explicitly do NOT trust and will never subject myself to NCSoft ever again. Learned my lesson the hard way a couple of times, and I'm not interested in being abused again. That's the only one I'll go out of my way to avoid... though EA does make me skittish.
As for ones I trust? That's easy! Paragon Studios. Oh wait, they don't exist anymore, thanks to NCSoft.
Okay, okay, I've got a few that I don't hate and am liable to feel kindly towards, but I can't speak of outright 'trust': Funcom, Turbine, CityState
I trust the developers that I choose to buy products from to keep the game I want to play running until they can make a better profit with the same resources elsewhere. I trust that only a few will agree with this, and I trust that a vocal portion of people will still stomp their feet and complain that they were mistreated because corporation "X" didn't continue to provide product "Y". I also trust that they don't make a violin small enough.
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I trust corporations about as much as I trust individuals that I don't know and some that I do know.
"I used to think the worst thing in life was to be all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone." Robin Williams
Sadly not any more, even the ones that use to make a stand and speak out against the deceptive and shady business practices have all now sold out and become the same crooked criminal enterprise. Honestly if the industry had any regulation at all the entire industry would probably be facing everything from tax evasion to laundering to Rico charges. I mean they literally print money, if you want to get technical. I mean if bit coin is against most national laws so is every in game cash shop currency.
I don't see what trust has to do with it. I think it's probable that a team that produced something I liked might do so again... so I watch what they're working on and if it turns out well I'll play it. But I have no trust that they will hit another home run.
But if you're talking about how they monetize the game, I have zero trust that anyone with a F2P scheme will be able to resist the temptation to cripple game play and play mind games with their customers to maximize profits as their primary consideration.
Some are better than others. I will at least check-out the ones that don't sell RNG gambling boxes simply because they're showing some self-restraint by skipping the gambling addiction big money maker. It's a good sign that there is some self respect and reluctance to prostitute themselves.
But I won't bother with the ones that include it. There's enough sleaze in RL. I don't need it in the games I play.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Anyone that trusts anyone else that is trying to make money off them is woefully ignorant of the principles of modern business practices.
Thats unfair, my buddy owns a small gamestore, he earns enough money to survive on it but he certainly don't do it because he want to get rich, he just loves games and enjoy working with them (not computer, P&P RPGs and boardgames even if it is Magic the gathering that pays most of his bills). -He don't rip people off and assuming everyone who works with computer games want to is just too cynical even for me.
Now, big publishing houses like EA are run by suits and they would most likely sell their won mothers for the right price but many people works in the genre because they love games and they make games they believe in. Not all of them turns out great but sometimes something sounds good until you actually do it (like going on a diet).
There are exceptions to most every generalization. When making generalizations you go with what is predominately displayed and or common place, which is not your friend.
The video game industry especially has little to no legal recourse available to consumers. Consumer protection laws dont seem to apply to game companies, nor does quality assurances, functional products on sale or even basic return policies for faulty products.
Hell I even remember Bioware charging me "tax" when I bought points for some me3 dlc. After demanding tax code info from them they finally admitted it was "Bioware tax" and had nothing to do with state or federal sales tax.
The video game industry is the wild wild west of profiteering and anyone t hat trust anyone else in the industry is just asking to get taken advantage of.
Anyone that trusts anyone else that is trying to make money off them is woefully ignorant of the principles of modern business practices.
What I think is woefully ignorant is any company these days who thinks that they can engage in shady business practices and get away with it. Fact is that companies are more accountable today then they were 10 years ago. If a company believes that something isn't going to leak to the public then they're ignorant.
That's not to say that there aren't shady people, still. I'm sure there is. However, the general mission of the company as a whole is not going to be to rip people off. Sorry, I think it's ignorant to believe that companies in a business where customers are so knowledgeable (and have such a lack of knowledge at the same time), critical, and have paramount access to information, that they could get away with anything. Take a look at Destiny, Borderlands, etc. recently. You don't think that companies will be held accountable for things? Damn! And that stuff isn't even anything that was justified (in my opinion).
So you are saying that delivering faulty products with no ability to return products, having federal consumer protection laws not apply to their products and blatantly misleading or even lying to their customers is protection? Please man you cant be serious.
Sure when it comes to physical locations selling products consumer protection has increased. But when it comes to the gaming industry it is nothing but profiteering and exploitation.
You talk about game companies pissing off people with sub standard products and "paying" for it, yet EA is still a titan despite some of the worst products, lies and substandard products on the market. Borderlands? great game by gearbox, Aliens Colonial Marines? A complete lie being sold as a game by the same company, with little to no effect on their earnings reports.
Sure we as consumers have become smarter, but that doesnt mean companies will try and screw us over any less. When you put profit before people you cannot be trusted period.
I really think you should take some public relation courses or some hospitality courses at a college or something.
I don't think we have to "trust" either devs or publishers. We are not keeping our savings with them. If you wait until a game has come out, seen the reviews, you need trust nothing but your own ability to spot a dud.
First of all, the AAA companies have to stay focused on their financial goals. Especially if they have various investors on board. It's better to put trust in indie developers, but they not always know what they do.
Square Enix (as developer, not as publisher!) Bethesda
By trust, I mean that I trust those two companies to make the games they say they are going to make to the best of their abilities. I don't trust them to make games that I'll enjoy, but on the whole, when they say they are going to build a game, they generally build that game and dont over-hype, outright lie etc like most companies.
I hope there are other trustworthy companies out there, but I've not come across any. The vast majority simply cant reconcile the intentions of the designers / developers with the reality of deadlines and budgets (i.e. they over-hype and under deliver). A lot of companies just have a massive misconnect between the developers and the marketing department, resulting in outright lies (even if unintentional).
A good example: I worked for a games company in the UK in QA department, working on a AAA game. The designers and developers had virtually no interaction with the marketing department for the game, so when it finally came time to put together promotional videos, blogs etc, the marketing department would be saying and implying one thing whilst the game would be doing something else. It wasn't malicious, it was just incompetence on behalf of the marketing dep and the managers of the company.
From speaking to others in the industry, this seems fairly common. I was shocked at how few people in upper management were gamers (iirc, only 2 of the directors were or had been gamers, out of 10-15 ppl).
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
Comments
For me, even though I don't hate or mistrust them in the specific, I can tell that I don't play Trion games, whatever the game may be, even though I have to admit that I gave AA and Rift a try.
The reason is that I have a dinamic IP and everytime I try to log in I need to wait for an email that does not arrive in time, when it does arrive the session is expired. This means essentially that a quick loss of connection means I can't get back in game in a timely fashion (assuming of course that I mange to log into the game in the first place). I have not much knowledge regarding software programming, but how can it be that steam and bnet can store a token in your system and use that as authentication, and these other companies can't come up with something as smooth as that?
I guess this was more a rant than anything, sorry for going offtopic if I did...
Then Arena Net, But they need to start making some big changes to GW2. I'm hoping Heart of Thorns delivers, But I know better than to get my hopes up in this genre.
FFXIV=PvE
GW2=PvP
Everyone else seems dead set on butchering their own titles after a short period of time. (Can't speak for Zenimax. ESO didn't stick with me.)
Monster Hunter since '04!
Currently playing: MHW & MHGU
Also Developers make a good living(albiet long crunch hours) and they take OUR money for their product. Mmos for the most party break even or make money, epscially with F2P being so prevaliant now. I'm not saying developing a game is easy, but giving in to the casual masses and alienating your genrebase/fanbase is all in the namesake of a quick buck is why we are so angry
MurderHerd
There is always an exception to every rule. EA is one of them, for sure. There are juggernauts out there, like EA, who can basically sell you whatever they like because there's nothing else out there. They have exclusivity for the NFL. They have exclusivity for Star Wars. However, again, that's the exception, not the rule. You're acting like every single dev house has a pool full of money out back that they refill on a weekly basis because they just don't know what to do with it all. That's bullshit!
Consumers THINK they're smarter but, as is the case most of the time, they are nearly never as smart as they think they are. Here's a list of the game companies which have been shut down since 2006. That's like over 10 studios per year closing, and it's not like these are no-name companies.
Then there are companies like Square Enix, Capcom, Konami, etc. who used to produce a metric ton of games. Now we've got EA and Activision. That's pretty much the last of the titans at this point.
The fact that you can't see the unparalleled transparency between 10 years ago to today blows my mind! There was a time when a dev diary didn't even exist. I know this might be difficult to believe, but there were times when you didn't even know about a game until six months before its release. Now, we have massive crowd funding initiatives that give us insight into the development process and we can't even wrap our minds around how something could take 2 or 3 years to develop, let alone 5 or 6 years!!! So you can call me a pessimist, but I think you're seriously over-estimating how educated people actually are.
Crazkanuk
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Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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Objectively scrutinized? Huh, well I can't really comment on that since I'm not sure what that looks like. It might be welcomed, though.
As far as having an opinion, I don't think that you need experience to whine and bitch about a problem with a game, but I often see "how hard can it be" posts which amuse me. For instance, "How hard can it be to write good server software that doesn't crash at launch? Seriously, we've been doing MMOs for 10 years and still have launch-day issues?" Instead, you might ask yourself, "Wow, this is still a problem after 10 years, this must be a difficult problem." It's not like they're getting you your morning coffee. It's even fine to dislike it. I'll often complain, but I rarely question a developer about their abilities, calling them evil, or insinuating that they're inept in some way.
Today, the world of game development is more transparent than ever. Developers readily put themselves out there to be criticized, and they are held accountable, more than ever before, for their failures. There may be companies we'll never "touch", but for the most part developers are extremely transparent. People will still continue with misinformation, paranoia, and conspiracy theories, but they are generally unfounded and more funny than hurtful.
If a game is shit, it's shit, and people should tell the developer that, but people believing that a developer is developing a game to be shitty to pry money from the hands of the consumer is laughable. Again, there could be a handful of companies who might get away with this, but they are the few.
Crazkanuk
----------------
Azarelos - 90 Hunter - Emerald
Durnzig - 90 Paladin - Emerald
Demonicron - 90 Death Knight - Emerald Dream - US
Tankinpain - 90 Monk - Azjol-Nerub - US
Brindell - 90 Warrior - Emerald Dream - US
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"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
EQ2/Daybreak has also been helpful to be though I have not had a lot of issues. They just seem to take much longer to get help, but when then did get to me they have been helpful.
I do not know of any "Indy" developers that I would say I see their name and get excited for their projects.
VG
I had fun once, it was terrible.
I would agree with that premise IF said developers/publishers did not actively market demographics they couldn't actually satisfy and didn't set those "high expectations" themselves. The only dev/pub I trust is the one who doesn't say ^&^#$ about it's game till it's done and/or releases a demo. Letting the game sell itself. If you need a market dept eating more than 25% of development costs to sell your game in a social media age it wasn't that good to begin with.
Once you are confortable with that concept, there are Companies that at least try to stay in touch with their customers trying to keep some kind of dignity and others that unashamedly follow the smell of money.
In my view Turbine is one of the few developers that saves themself, regarless the quality of their games, they never really upset their customers which for me is one of the key elements for a successful business.
The worst company in my opinion was SoE.
I am not surprised Sony got rid of it.
As for ones I trust? That's easy! Paragon Studios. Oh wait, they don't exist anymore, thanks to NCSoft.
Okay, okay, I've got a few that I don't hate and am liable to feel kindly towards, but I can't speak of outright 'trust':
Funcom, Turbine, CityState
All of my posts are either intelligent, thought provoking, funny, satirical, sarcastic or intentionally disrespectful. Take your pick.
I get banned in the forums for games I love, so lets see if I do better in the forums for games I hate.
I enjoy the serenity of not caring what your opinion is.
I don't hate much, but I hate Apple© with a passion. If Steve Jobs was alive, I would punch him in the face.
But if you're talking about how they monetize the game, I have zero trust that anyone with a F2P scheme will be able to resist the temptation to cripple game play and play mind games with their customers to maximize profits as their primary consideration.
Some are better than others. I will at least check-out the ones that don't sell RNG gambling boxes simply because they're showing some self-restraint by skipping the gambling addiction big money maker. It's a good sign that there is some self respect and reluctance to prostitute themselves.
But I won't bother with the ones that include it. There's enough sleaze in RL. I don't need it in the games I play.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
Square Enix (as developer, not as publisher!)
Bethesda
By trust, I mean that I trust those two companies to make the games they say they are going to make to the best of their abilities. I don't trust them to make games that I'll enjoy, but on the whole, when they say they are going to build a game, they generally build that game and dont over-hype, outright lie etc like most companies.
I hope there are other trustworthy companies out there, but I've not come across any. The vast majority simply cant reconcile the intentions of the designers / developers with the reality of deadlines and budgets (i.e. they over-hype and under deliver). A lot of companies just have a massive misconnect between the developers and the marketing department, resulting in outright lies (even if unintentional).
A good example: I worked for a games company in the UK in QA department, working on a AAA game. The designers and developers had virtually no interaction with the marketing department for the game, so when it finally came time to put together promotional videos, blogs etc, the marketing department would be saying and implying one thing whilst the game would be doing something else. It wasn't malicious, it was just incompetence on behalf of the marketing dep and the managers of the company.
From speaking to others in the industry, this seems fairly common. I was shocked at how few people in upper management were gamers (iirc, only 2 of the directors were or had been gamers, out of 10-15 ppl).