I do a lot of copywriting about games, and it's an ok way of making your ends meet. It's not very lucrative work and you rarely get your name shown anywhere. Most of the weeks and months go rewriting same stuff all over again while pretending to be enthusiastic about a new feature of a long-running game franchise.
This month started the same way. I'm going through the upcoming titles of this month. I check gameplay videos and read what other copywriters have written. Then I see something that makes me feel the pain of my colleague.
F1 2016 is coming out this month, and this is what their latest post is about (read the full post from Steam here).
“With the re-introduction of the Safety Car as well as the addition of the Virtual Safety Car for the very first time, we are creating the most complete F1™ experience ever. This, combined with several features that are yet to be announced, should excite fans of the game and FORMULA ONE™.”
The upcoming F1 2016 is probably the best Formula One game since the F1 2015. You get the full roster of the 2016 season, all the teams are correct, they have career modes and you probably can even microengineer your car's bolts individually. But when you are updating the same game every year to be a little better - understandably your main selling points turn into obscure details.
You tend to expect the best from every FIFA, NHL, and MADDEN title, and when the best selling points become something to be expected, something weird happens.
Virtual Safety Car is the reason to buy the latest installment of the virtual Formula One games. If the stakes are these high, what can the audience expect from next year? Will there be a scratch-and-smell stamps sent with the pre-orders so you can smell the rubber just before your F1 rocket ignites from 0 to 170 mph in four seconds?
Virtual Safety Car is the same to the Formula One world as the entrance of the teams in every FIFA and NHL game - Important for the atmosphere, but not the thing you want to play.
When writing every year selling points to the same games I might fall into that trap myself. So, here is my FIFA 2017 selling point:
"As we re-introduce the sock colours of all the individual teams, we give the players the chance to change the model and colour of an individual player's socks. For the very first time we will give the players the experience of individual players deciding to use different socks than the other team players. Be the badass of the your team. This combined with several other features that have not yet been announced, we guarantee that this will be the best FIFA experience the players have ever enjoyed.