14 DAY TRIAL // This week, we were forced to endure yet another April 1, a 24-hour period when the world believes that it is OK to prank colleagues, readers, players, other audience groups, despite the fact that nothing good comes out of such actions.
April Fools might have been a good idea when humanity was still in its infancy and needed one day during the year when it could express itself without being limited by social custom, but for the modern man, it’s just a day when news becomes hard to trust and often the best idea is to stay secluded and cut off from all information sources.
The situation is even worse in the gaming news, where plenty of big companies see it like their duty to make an official sounding announcement about a coming product or feature that is actually entirely made up.
The headlines often sound legitimate enough and one needs to actually read the press releases and the blog posts before it becomes clear that a hoax is being played.
Let’s take, for example, Blizzard’s decision to announce that the next expansion for Starcraft II would be called Herald of the Stars.
It’s a nice play on words and the studio at least has the decency to mock itself in the coming article, but it does not serve any actual purpose.
True fans of the game already know the long-term plans that Blizzard has for its real-time strategy games and will probably only read the new info in order to get a chuckle before returning to their streams and multiplayer matches.
The more casual Starcraft II players might get confused for a while and will probably lose some time, precious for the modern gamer, before they see that the company was just using April Fools in order to create an elaborate deception.
A minority might be amused, but most will probably only be a little annoyed before moving on with their lives.
The average age of a video game hobbyist at the moment is over 30, which means that we are no longer kids easily amused by tricks and hoaxes, especially when they are linked with the series and universes that we actually care about.
Sure, game developers have all the right to create special April Fools’ events in the games they are making, as long as the community participates and enjoys them, but I would like to see the day become a normal one when it comes to actual announcements and information drops.