Before Brink was released, there was an insane amount of hype surrounding the game.

Everywhere I turned, I heard about Brink. It was always near the top of various "Most Anticipated Games" lists. All my gaming friends, even those that didn't really play FPSs, knew about it. When the game launched, the user population was well over 200,000, something a lot of games never achieve.

How did Brink get SO much hype before launch? (especially considering it was a new franchise)

Was it Bethesda's publishing power?
The FPS industry just needing something fresh and new?
Splash Damage's marketing campaign with things like GET SMART?

I'm sure there is more than just one reason, but a number of different factors working together in concert.

Your thoughts?

Marketing campaign and us naive consumers that thought we'd be receiving the product as advertised.

That awesome trailer. well, at least for me...

For me, I just thought it would be something a bit different, they seemed to have a lot of good ideas, and from the Container City stuff it looked pretty fun.

Well there are allot of reasons

When it was origionally meant to come out years ago SD were hyping it up themselves non stop and released gameplay videos which looked pretty amazing and for allot of people [although I and others may like it more the style now] looked better compared to the way it is now and was technicly allot better too.[on the consoles]

It had a big show at E3 in 2010 or 2009 cant remember which and looked pretty amazing and got a good response from many [again the old build of the game]

Bethesda advertising more than anygame I have ever seen before, and spending money and making an amazing [the most amazing trailer for a game I have ever seen] trailer which looked very very cool. [Consiquently showed and made a big deal out of lights running and killing with dual pistols looking sick, dual pistols that arent in the actual game :/ Ino its just a trailer but..... why]

Recently before the game released the gameplay videos and dev diaries from the old build of the game which to allot of people looked better and was technicly better than the finished retail game were pushed by SD/Bethesda [for example and still if you go on to the PS Store and search Brink download them very diaries showing nothing but the old build of the game that were released this year before launch and even have the 'Brink 2011' at the end of them put on by them themslevs..... even though the video's arent even of the retail game they are selling but an old build.......This has gone un noticed by allot of people but nnot me... dirty tactics.
These previews are also on the main Brink site promoting it... they are not even of the finished game they are the old build they should not be on there. Thus some people didnt get what they thought they was getting and were dissapointed.

Im sure theres other reasons I cant think of right now but yeh..

Basicly they built up huge hype, sneekily promoted videos of to allot of people a better looking and different game to what it actually is, Spent huge amounts of money and time on advertising and making amazing trailers instead of spending it on the game knowing that the game wasnt up to scratch and wouldnt sell itself so had to 'trick' people into pre ordering and buying it who wouldnt have otherwise.
Just dirty tactics and decieving really.

I was personally hoping for a game would revolutionize objectived based gameplay as that is all SD would talk about pre-release. Needless to say, we all know how that ended up.

Nigel, thank you! I knew they had a ton of marketing, but I didn't know any details of what happened when that resulted in all the hype we saw.

Thanks to all the others who have responded so far too. It's interesting to see what angle everyone fell into the Brink hype from. Like many others, it was the trailers that got me hooked on the idea of Brink.

I personally stayed away from the hype, picked up the game a few weeks ago and absolutely love it.

Unrealistically high expectations always leads to disappointment. Brink is a solid game. Very different from the other clones out there. I love it. I read the reviews, have looked for the issues and haven't really seen them. Bots are always dumb, but I still love playing against bots.

COD AI is horrid also yet it gets near perfect reviews cuz it's easy enough of a game for any 10 year old to pick it up and feel like their rambo.

Same here. Picked it up for about $20, an that was undeniably the best $20 I've ever spent.

Wonder what would happen if the game turned out better in the beginning...

If there is a solid game then Brink is certainetly not one. for you I am glad you dont know what a solid game is so you can think it is one. But its anything but.

I actually think Killzone 3's A.I. in bot mode is better than Brinks...actually feels like your playing with humans, like SD claimed would be the case with Brink..

Whatever. Yeah, we all know the bots could be better. But it's not unplayable. The actual shooter engine blows away any COD game and it is on par with the Battlefield series (minus destructible environments). SMART element is awesome - works near perfect and is fun!

There are fixes coming. SD has said that. They know we want better matchmaking/servers/lobbies, etc. so why not be patient instead of jumping on everyone's excitement for a good game? I've been on the forums for a short time now and you seem to respond to everyone's posts with some sort of negativity. Nice job.

I know! I think those first two weeks after release have left some bitter. Once the price drops I think popularity will pick up. Again, the game has only been out 2 months, so all hope isn't lost that it'll take off. MAG (on PS3) didn't do well inititally, but through awesome suppoert, patches and DLC the community really picked up for awhile. There's hope for Brink (as far as online game goes).

Personally, I don't really care...I love playing against the hilarious bots. Reminds me off the Star Wars Battlefront days....

Stupid BOTS FTW.

Seriously... your not comparing with COD that is technicly a 5 year old game.... It uses the ID engine 3 lol just updated each year, Brink uses the ID engine 4 which is still old and dated, the last game on consoles that used it was doom 3. Brink is not a solid game with all its problems an feels unfinished if you compare to many other actual solid games lol. ID 4 engine is dated and really in the case of brink which is poorly optimised is not on par with the frostbite engine, its old, so is the frostbite engine but not as dated as ID 4.... and is superior engine specialy comparing Brink which as I said is poorly optimised. The SMART element is a good idea and good when it works but just feels glitchy and more of a beta.
It is what it is.

The age of the engine isn't that important to me. Portal 2 is on an old engine, yet the game rocked and got good reviews.

I haven't seen any glitches with SMART. I can climb walls, slide under things, etc. haven't had any problems doing what they advertised it would do. I've never had it not work.

Hijacking threads FTW.

You said "The actual shooter engine blows away any COD game and it is on par with the Battlefield series (minus destructible environments). SMART element is awesome - works near perfect and is fun! "
I just said that your comparing it to an older version of the engine and technicly a 5 year old game with that of COD, and the engine and game on the consoles or PC is really not on par with battlfield BC2 technicaly in any way. And the source enigne is brilliant, didnt you know that already lol.
Yeh you may not know much about games but Brink runs abit choppy and glitchy, its good you dont know how good other games are though in a technicle apsect so you can think its better than it is. The movement isnt very smooth and like I said glichy, and when using smart shows it up more and sometimes things like wall jumping can be pretty glitchy, just feels like a beta.

At this point i guess many of us who genuinely enjoy Brink when it works have moved on from frustration and rage to amusemant. It's kind of like Obsidian and their comedy title updates.

I fail to see any of what you speak of, unless my game has a bad host. Even then, it's normally restricted to near the spawn point for a brief time. You either have an utterly terrible internet connection, your console/PC needs some work, or your disc is bad.

Ino, some people dont know about games and dont no what a solid/finished game is. Game runs perfectly, just the way the game is.

We did get the product as advertised. I don't know where people keep getting this ridiculous idea that we didn't. If you feel that you didn't receive the product as advertised it is because you lost your objectivity while viewing the marketing material. I know I looked at the same websites and saw the same trailers as everyone else and I was not the least bit surprised when I popped in the game and found that the single players was a deathmatch with bots. It was just like W:ET, which is not a bad thing I liked W:ET, a lot of people liked W:ET. Hell there are still servers running for people to play W:ET on. It should be no surprise that we got a W:ET like title from the same company that brought us ET:QW, an almost exact copy of the game play from W:ET , set in the Quake universe. I forget though that gamers are fickle little creatures most of them of an age that they don't do things like product research. They just watch all the commercials with the bright shiny movement and forget about any sort of consumer responsibility in the purchasing equation.

It took me all of five minutes to draw the connection between SD's other offerings, like Enemy Territory : Quake Wars, and Brink. If you look at game play trailers, the very ones they showed us, and look at ET:QW game play the only difference is the SMART system and the look. Other than that it's more or less the same objective gameplay. They even have a stopwatch mode, another carry over from W:ET. Next time you think about buying something maybe take a little time out of your day to take a look at the company, their product line, and ALL the information available about the product before drawing erroneous conclusions about the product. Splash Damage and Bethesda didn't lie or misrepresent anything, aside from the normal amount of hype given a new product, you allowed yourself to be mislead by seeing what you wanted to see and ignoring the obvious information presented to you.

All software is expected to have some launch bugs, even games. As far as I can tell the bugs have been fixed, for the most part. I'm not sure what sort of bugs Nigel keeps prattling on about but I do not see them in my game. As for the Id 4 Engine being dated technology...I don't know where to start on this one. Yes it is an older engine, but it is a solid platform that is easily modified and tweaked. To say that this game is inferior because it uses a modified and tweaked Id 4 Engine is like saying Linux is an inferior OS because it is twenty years old, nevermind the fact that the kernel can be modified and tweaked to perform better than any other OS available. That argument just doesn't hold water and shows that you need to take your own advice and bone up on the technical aspects of these games before shooting your mouth off. Newer isn't always better. Sometimes a good solid older platform with proven performance, given a few tweaks, is superior, both in cost effectiveness and functionality, to creating something brand new.

Despite the fact that you've convinced yourself that this isn't a finished game- IT IS FINISHED! It may not have much of a story line, but it sure is solid! PATCHING is a sign of improving on a FINISHED game! Read my sig for the last rant. I believe I have made my point, and will argue no further.

Maybe becasue of things like this;

"Bethesda advertising more than anygame I have ever seen before, and spending money and making an amazing [the most amazing trailer for a game I have ever seen] trailer which looked very very cool. [Consiquently showed and made a big deal out of lights running and killing with dual pistols looking sick, dual pistols that arent in the actual game :/ Ino its just a trailer but..... why]

Recently before the game released the gameplay videos and dev diaries from the old build of the game which to allot of people looked better and was technicly better than the finished retail game were pushed by SD/Bethesda [for example and still if you go on to the PS Store and search Brink download them very diaries showing nothing but the old build of the game that were released this year before launch and even have the 'Brink 2011' at the end of them put on by them themslevs..... even though the video's arent even of the retail game they are selling but an old build.......This has gone un noticed by allot of people but nnot me... dirty tactics.
These previews are also on the main Brink site promoting it... they are not even of the finished game they are the old build they should not be on there. Thus some people didnt get what they thought they was getting and were dissapointed."

They pushed them videos of a different game to what the retail game is. and yes they did push the videos becuase like i said [apart form them being on the main site leading people to think it was the actual game] they relased them on XBL and PS Store months before the release and it was all footage from 2009.... and even at the end of the video it says "BRINK 2011".... its not even the same game, sure its the same base but its a different build and looks and runs different, and technicly looked a hell of allot better on consoles. And like i said is one big reason people didnt get what they expected or saw beforehand. Wehter or not you like the game better as it is now [as do i] it is still allot different and too many looks better and is a different game, but does technicly look ALLOT better on consoles in these video's, allot of people got it on day one [specialy on consoels] and thought "wtf this is looks nothing like the game I thought I was buying....." Many people actually said that its well documented

Ok so I wanted to make doubly sure I wasn't remembering things through rose colored glasses and so I re-watched the videos, which to my knowledge haven't changed. I noticed they are almost all from the PC version of the game judging by the anti aliasing and the light sourcing. Now honestly do you expect the PC version to look the same as the graphically underpowered consoles? As for the dual pistols I saw that in one cinematic and never once, not once, new build or old, did they show it in game play footage. The only differences I noticed in game play footage were some cosmetic differences, which could be due to the fact that I play on PS3 and it renders textures worse than a PC, and a few routes which no longer exist, like the bypass above the side door in container city.

To expect a game to play like a cinematic trailer is like expecting your Scion TC to morph into multiple models as it goes along the road, or your Droid phone to transform because that's what it shows in the commercial. Come on. Take a little responsibility here. If you were disappointed it's YOUR fault, not Splash Damage, not Bethesda, YOU. I mean seriously the fact that the videos were all in third person, should have been a clue that this was not game play footage of a FPS. That dog don't hunt. I don't care if a thousand people were documented as saying that the game didn't look like what they thought they were purchasing. All that shows is that there are a thousand people out there that can't apply a little critical thinking and differentiate between game play footage and advertising cinematics.

Stop trying to blame people themselves.

Brink was popular prior to release due to it looking interesting. Except that on release almost everyone realized they dropped the ball and that the game just isn't that fun.

+1,000

Ok so people watch cinematics think it is game play. Who is at fault there? Not Splash Damage they labeled game play footage. People expected a robust single payer experience from what is basically a copy of W:ET gameplay. Splash Damage never said there would be a robust single player experience. "Take your unique character online at any time you choose. Brink allows you to seamlessly move between single player, co-op with friends, and intense multiplayer action. Multiplayer takes the story online where you can play with up to seven other people (or AI characters) cooperatively as you take on the opposing faction or with up to 16 players competitively." That quote comes directly from the Brink Website, has been there since day one. What part of that don't people get? Online is the same as offline. I'd say they delivered. Offline gameplay is just like Online except with AI and go figure AI is present in every single player FPS campaign, unless you believe magical gnomes live in your PS3 and play the enemy characters when you pop in CoD. If people are disappointed it is, in point of fact, their fault for not reading, for not thinking critically and not researching the product thoroughly before purchasing. That is the CONSUMER'S responsibility. It always has been. Stop trying to take the responsibility off yourselves and man up.