Everyone is excited to get their hands on Cyberpunk 2077. I’m sure a lot of people have their suspicions that it might not be all that it’s been built up to be. I know I do. After delays, a few reviews for PC that revealed some bugs, and other elements that might impact you individually, we’re yet again faced with a hyped-up game failing to meet expectations. I want to note, I have not played Cyberpunk 2077 yet. It’s not for me to say if it’s good or bad yet, but we’ve seen this sort of thing before.

Think back to any game you were really excited about. Didn’t a little part of you feel like the excitement outweighed the actual impact of the game? I think of things like Fallout 4 or Final Fantasy VII Remake that just didn’t scratch the itch I spent years creating. It’s not just internal hype either, everyone talks about these big-ticket games and we all collectively build them up in our minds. Then, when they finally release, we talk about how disappointing they are in relation to unfair expectations.

There’s actually a communications theory I think explains this phenomenon well. In the Uses and Gratifications Theory, we say that media is meant to fulfill something we perceive as an individual need. As gamers, our need for the gaming media is entertainment, a fun challenge, or just a place to socialize with others. Now, let’s say we perceive that we want Cyberpunk 2077 to release to fulfill this need in our lives. We don’t even know what it’s like to play yet, but we’ve already seen others and ourselves call it the game of the year.

How is that fair to the game? Or ourselves? It’s like we’re setting ourselves up with an expectation that we can’t even identify. We know it’s supposed to be a great game and a huge 8-year payoff in the making, but what if it isn’t? Plenty of games don’t blow our minds, but the difference is that we’ve decided we need this game to be great. Online forums and articles told us Cyberpunk would possibly be the game of the console generation. Now here we are, surrounded by good scores but not great scores, wondering how CD Projekt Red messed up.

They didn’t mess up, we did. We talked about this game like it was life-changing and now even if it’s exceptional, anything short of a masterpiece will get the game, its developers, and the publisher unearned scrutiny. We can be better by keeping this in mind for the next AAA blockbuster. My gut says we probably won’t, however. We do this every time as a community, and hopefully, you can still find space in your brain to consume this game as an individual.

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