Do Superlatives work on you any more?

[Vraille Darkfang]

I mean really.

Every Movie, Book, RPG that comes out is now THE GREATEST, BEST, MOST EXCITING whatever EVER. This si the BEST MOVIE IN TEH HISTORY OF ALL TIME. Until next week's release.

I've found I'm now less likely to buy somthing if the ad campaign includes Best Ever, Must See, Will Revolutionize gaming forever... etc.

I mean, Fast Forward used that & their product was crap. Watch trailers for movies (esp the sucky ones). Everything describes itself as the best ever.

So that means the crap calls itself the EXACT same thing as the real gems. I'm already sick of hearing about Ptlous because I'm hearing the exact same buzzwords Mongoose used for Ultimate Monster 1.

At this point telling me how your product is the single most important advancement in human history just makes me gag.

Are you tired of the obviously over-inflated blurbs they use to describe everything nowdays?

(Not just the RPG industry, but it's there too).

In fact, I've stopped buying ANYTHING based on the blurbs on the back. Im fact, I've put more than one RPG book back on the shelf just for using words like MUST HAVE, GREATEST, INDESPINSIBLE.

If everyone uses the same adjectives, they sort of lose their effectivness don't they?

 

[Crothian]

I got burned out on this stuff years ago, well beofred20 ever came around. As a reviewerr I read a lot of press releases and advertisements to get a good over view of what is going on in the industry and it can really get old. I just scream at the computer "Just give me some facts!!"

 

[Psionicist]

There's a Firefox plugin named Greasemonkey that makes it very easy to customize the web pages you visit. I used to use Greasemonkey to remove marketroid speech and strike propaganda words on certain sites. Perhaps you want to do the same? Unfortunately I haven't updated my scripts to work with the latest version so I can't paste it here.

For example, on a tech news site the following text:

our world-class state-of-the-art anti theft solution

would be printed as:

our anti theft product.

A bit silly, but I have to read computer news hours per day and it is very annoying.

 

[Mark CMG]

You won't be getting any of that "greatest" nonsense from Creative Mountain Games...

 

[Darkness]

Heh. I'm not sure they ever worked on me, generally speaking.

 

[tetsujin28]

I'm super! Thanks for asking!

 

[Dragonhelm]

"Extreme" is one that got me at one point. It seemed like everywhere I turned, that word was there.

The thing is that, whether or not those words hit you on a conscious level, they stick with you on a subconscious level.

I was once told by a friend in the biz that there's a secret to RPGs. The only necessary products are the core books. RPG companies try to make you think that you can't live without having their products, but in reality, that's not the case.

 

[MadMaxim]

"Extreme" is one that got me at one point. It seemed like everywhere I turned, that word was there.

Like the Extreme Explorer prestige class from the Eberron Campaign Setting? I've always felt that was the worst and most unimaginative name ever for a prestige class.

Back to the topic: Well, I don't really think any of those superlatives worked for me. Every product has to advertise itself as something cool, otherwise nobody will ever take notice, so I can't really blame anyone for using those words. If it isn't the most revolutionizing title to date then why would the company ever make it, if they just advertised something along the lines: "This book may be useful for DMs, if they're into alternative magic systems. Otherwise, you should just go find another product. We're not even trying anymore, okay!"

 

[Psion]

Not often. I have hype resistance 25!

 

[Nifft]

Best. Thread. Evar.

-- N