A lot of things I see in modern game advertising and promotion is the use of the studio’s name as a factor of persuasion to get consumers to buy its games.
Within the past few years, games like Fallout 76, Cyberpunk 2077, and Back 4 Blood were released. These solely relied on both their brand recognition and the studio’s past output to sell their games to their audiences.

Fallout 76 (2018)was sold as an “online Fallout experience” but ultimately fell short by 1,000 miles after releasing with an overabundance of game-breaking bugs and glitches.
Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) was mainly sold on the good name and status of the studio CD PROJEKT RED after their last release, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) which broke records being the most-awarded game of all time until 2020’s The Last of Us Part 2, and recently reached 50 million copies sold.
Back 4 Blood (2021) was released, and throughout its press releases and advertising campaigns, the developers heavily insisted that it was a callback and return to form the studio’s previous work on the notorious Left 4 Dead series.
Each of these games’ demise is rooted in the fans’ expectation for a game delivered by a beloved developer to reach a higher expectation.
This way of thinking, to me, is hurting everyone involved.
The matter of the fact is: game studios change, a lot. This isn’t always made clear by the developers, which leads to them “abusing” the name of their studio to sell their games.

The most recent game that relied on its past output to assure its quality is Redfall (2023), developed by Arkane Austin. Arkane has made some of my own personal favorite games of all time, including Prey (2017) which has developed a small but expanding fanbase and is considered underrated throughout the gaming community. The director of that game however, Raphael Colantonio left the studio, and the quality of direction for the studio’s games showed a noticeable shift.
I feel if gamers held up their standards more individually, this kind of disappointment could have been avoided.
With films, we do exactly what I feel we should do for video games. I don’t care when the next Warner Bros., Syncopy, or Paramount film is happening. I want to see the next Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg, or Martin Scorsese film.
Right now, only a few game devs have the level of recognition that goes beyond the studios they work for: Hideo Kojima, Josef Fares and Neil Druckmann are current examples of game devs whose quality of product are rightfully connected to their name.

If we did this more often and actually recognized the talent behind these games, the constant flow of disappointments can be avoided, and hype can be generated for the games and developers that deserve it.