Most beta-testers seem to agree – The Division is a very nice-looking game on PC and console. It just doesn’t look quite as nice as the pre-release images suggest. Yes, Ubisoft has once again subjected us to our old friend the bullshot – originally defined as a screenshot doctored to look better than actual game footage. Maybe it’s been gussied up with a photo editor or taken from an impossible angle, but either way, it’s a fishy, fishy beast. It’s also a beast whose time has come. Bullshots are not only unnecessary in gaming today, they might be doing more harm than good to the companies that produce them.
Today’s bullshots are so much more than simply still images gussied up with fancy filters. They’re full-length preview videos played on monster PCs. I’ve been to presentations where companies do their best to make it look like they’re demonstrating a game on a console, using PlayStation 4 controllers and hiding the actual box behind the booth wall. Make no mistake, that box is not a PlayStation 4, and it’s running a version of the code that isn’t optimized for a realistic consumer machine. It’s an old tactic meant to make game previewers ooh and ah, but nowadays the footage ends up on the internet, and it becomes very obvious that it’s all a sham once the actual game comes out and players can compare footage.
Ubisoft may be the worst offender, as I’ve seen some righteous bullshotting both in stills and videos for most of its modern games, but it certainly isn’t the only culprit. The Witcher 3 , another absolutely gorgeous game in its own right, looked even better in its E3 demonstrations. In this case, it appears that CD Projekt wasn’t aiming to deceive. Its team honestly expected to reach that level of graphical fidelity, but fell short and had to reduce the shinies when it came to optimizing the game. We’ll never know why bigger, less communicative publishers like Ubisoft decide to bullshot, since they’ll never tell us. That leaves us to assume that they intended to deceive.
No matter who is doing the bullshotting, I’m puzzled why they even bother anymore. Today’s games look amazing! Sure, they could always look a little better in a bullshot that lets you see the sun glint off every link in a suit of chain mail, but all those bullshots do are make people disappointed when the final product doesn’t measure up. Why take that risk when you could show off fantastic images in the realm of actual reality? That would still get the fans excited, but without the risk of angering them when they finally get the game in their hands.
Bullshots worked a lot better in the pre-internet days, when you’d have to hold a gaming mag up next to your screen to scrutinize the differece between PR shots and the final product. You’d never be able to do a direct comparison between E3 promo videos and the game, because those promo videos only existed in your memory. The internet, on the other hand, is forever. Everybody can go back over old footage, and inevitably somebody does so… with a fine-toothed comb. Bullshotting too heavily can harm sales, a lesson that Ubisoft should have learned when the graphics in Watch_Dogs were a major downer compared to the pre-release footage. That was a scandal that was heard all over the ‘net, yet Ubisoft keeps on bullshotting. They’ll probably only get away with it for The Division because there’s less of a quality difference thanks to the game only being released on current-gen consoles.
It’s time to let the gorgeous graphics in modern games stand on their own. Bullshotting today only leads to disappointment and, when done too clumsily, scandal. If a game gets a reputation for having “bad graphics” compared to expectations, that can lead to lost sales. Companies need to be more careful now that everything they release sticks around on the internet forever. Let’s give the bullshot a ceremonial burial and celebrate our games for the beauties that they actually are.