The game industry is
notorious for a number of problems, one of them being an almost
complete unwillingness to let any information slip out even a second
before schedule. But almost paradoxically, despite this level of
secrecy, leaks are commonplace. Gaming journalists like Jason
Schreier and Laura Kate Dale over at Kotaku have broken stories of
upcoming projects, games, and announcements with great accuracy, and
before the publishers in question wanted the leaked knowledge to go
public.
That said, video
games are not the only source of entertainment with such unscheduled
reveals. Early last month, one of the oldest collectible card games
around had a premature disclosure. Before the leak, it was widely
known that Magic: The Gathering's next set of cards would take place
in the plane of Dominaria, but one of their offices in China
erroneously sent out specifics on what cards would be contained in
this set, along with mechanical or verbiage changes that would be in
effect going forward. I'm not interested in discussing the leak
itself in any significant detail. Instead, I want to discuss the
response from the company that makes Magic, Wizards of the
Coast(WotC), and how they provide a stark contrast to how the game
industry handles similar events.
Yet before we do,
it's important to understand how the game industry tends to act when
details are revealed to the public before their intended date. When
leaks happen, the first thing publishers almost always do is deny it
in very specific terms, or go radio silent. Before her current job at
Kotaku UK, Laura Dale was a journalist working for Destructoid UK,
where she disclosed that a new DLC project, titled Rush of Blood, was
coming to Until Dawn for the PlayStation 4's VR headset. The
developers, Supermassive Games, hosted an AMA on Reddit shortly
thereafter, where they both declined to comment on the story and
specifically stated that there was “no DLC” in the works.
To most people, that
reads as if the story Laura Dale reported had no basis in reality,
but that would've been a misconception. Until Dawn: Rush of Blood was
absolutely being developed for PlayStation VR. The difference is that
it was never going to be a DLC for the base game: It was a
stand-alone. Technically, no lie was ever spoken, as the claim that
“no DLC” was being developed was completely true. Still, rather
than just reveal that game's existence, both Sony and Supermassive
Games deliberately tried to obfuscate the truth of the matter. In the
similar case of premature release of the PS4 Slim, Sony took the less
egregious path of just declining comment.
Denying the story
isn't the only thing publishers are viable to do in response.
Occasionally, punitive actions are taken against the outlet who
released the information. Historically, this comes in the form of
blacklisting said source, refusing to answer inquiries from them
and/or give them pre-release product for the purpose of review.
Kotaku has famously been the victim of several such orders, with
Bethesda as a result of their Fallout 4 leak and Ubisoft after
Assassin's Creed: Victory (later Syndicate) details were disclosed
prior to the game's official announcement. Laura Dale faced similar
stonewalling from Nintendo after uncovering the existence of the
Switch. While these companies are obviously within their rights to
refuse requests for comment, deny rumors, or to hand out review
copies, it frequently comes across as needlessly combative.
Which brings us back
to Wizards. Shortly after the Dominaria spoilers came to light,
translated within days after its release, WotC wrote a blog post on
their website about it. Rather than pretend it didn’t happen and
sweep it under the rug, they publicly acknowledged the existence of
the information. In order to avoid potential confusion,
mistranslation, and idle speculation, their team opted to provide
official copies of the leak's contents in various languages. This
isn't to say that they were happy it happened, and even in their
acknowledgment WotC says they are disappointed in how this
information came out, but they were able to roll with the punches.
There were even plans to accelerate the pace of the reveal until the
fans themselves said that while they were excited: They still wanted
something similar to the “usual” hype that surrounds a new set
being released.
Admittedly, I and
many of my friends who play Magic would not have heard about these
leaks without Wizards official acknowledgment of them. That said,
most of us had our own separate reactions to it. Scouring through
list of new cards, I was already starting to plan new decks, and
modifications to decks I had already built. I and one of my
co-workers began to talk about how some of the new rule changes could
impact the games we play over lunch. Some of my gender-nonconformist
friends latched onto the fact that “he or she” would be replaced
with “they”, both reducing the wordiness of card text and subtly
acknowledging the existence of the gender spectrum. There was a lot
to talk about, and almost all of it was positive. Despite the way it
came out, it was still cool to have the “hype train” start a
little early, and all of us were excited to see what else would come.
My point isn't that
game publishers necessarily have to go public and admit the full
details of every project that gets leaked. WotC didn't even do that.
They kept more than a few details, like the art for the cards, secret
so they still had something to surprise their audience with. That
said, this incident clearly shows that there is room to handle these
kinds of disclosures tactfully. What Wizards did that the game
industry rarely does is seamlessly transformed it into part of their
marketing. It didn't even require them to make any actual changes to
their official release schedule. As someone who watches the game
industry struggle to deny and rebuke information that is so obvious
to the rest of us, it was more than a little refreshing to have a
major corporation go “Yeah, it's a real leak, and it sucks. That
said, it could be worse.” Leaks happen, and the industry at large
could learn a thing or two from WotC about how to handle themselves
when they do.
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