It’s easy to get caught in the headlights. After all, E3 is out to impress you. Unexpected announcements, fancy presentations, the biggest triptych you’re ever likely to see – it’s all part of the most effective hype-machine in the world, running at full steam. It can be overwhelming, and that’s sort of the point.

Nowhere is this feeling more concentrated than the first time you see a new game in motion. Whether it’s a polished trailer or a beguiling demo, it can genuinely feel like you’re peering into the future. Sadly, for all this intense excitement, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. But it doesn’t appear until months or even years later, when the game is finally released. The finished article might look different to how you remember it. Sometimes entire sections of gameplay, which we’ve watched and re-watched over the months, salivated over, evaporate. What we end up playing feels diluted.

You're Just Too Good To Be True

There’s been scores of notable offenders, major and minor, over the years. Watch Dogs is the most recent, taking a lot of heat for the disparity between its E3 2012 debut and the game now in stores – a lot of which is really unfair in my opinion, but we’ll get to that in minute. And it’s by no means alone. There are many, many more: that infamous Killzone 2 debut, Motorstorm has never looked that good, Ryse: Son of Rome just last year, even Uncharted – one of the best looking series around – has looked prettier when it's turned up at E3.

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Some consumers find the whole experience disappointing, while others experience more powerful emotions – they get angry, even outraged, as if some kind of promise has been broken or they’ve been intentionally duped.

The reaction is undeniable, clogging up hundreds message boards, but I think the more interesting question is whether such a violent response is justifiable. Should we really feel deceived? I’m not so convinced; I even suspect we’re part of the problem. So, with E3 2014 just around the corner, it’s important to understand what it is we’re actually being shown.

Can I Interest You in a Vertical Slice?

Specifically we need to discuss something the industry refers to as a ‘vertical slice’. Although it sounds like business speak (it is), the vertical slice is arguably the most important milestone in a game’s development. Usually, it marks the first time a section can be played through as if it was part of a finished game. It’s wheeled out, presented to producers, publishers, and potential investors in order to convince them the project is viable, conceptually and commercially.

What’s really important to stress – the crux of this entire problem – is that a vertical slice is not representative of the final game. How can it be, when in many cases the rest of the game hasn't yet been made? It's the embodiment of a developer’s ambition and future intentions.

“ It's the embodiment of a developer’s ambition and future intentions."

The problem is that vertical slices have become public spectacle. They’re no longer confined to boardrooms, shown to a board of people who know the rules; they’re paraded at E3 to a packed convention centre and a worldwide audience of millions, tuning in to be impressed.

Lost in Presentation

E3 is the best environment for creating unreasonable expectations that I can imagine. It’s the only place on earth where Usher becomes the warm-up act for a vertical slice.

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You have a publisher that’s invested heavily and is desperate to impress, an audience that’s eager to be impressed, and in the vertical slice, you have a piece of code that’s express purpose is to impress others. It’s the perfect storm for generation hysteria and false hope.

“ E3 is the best environment for creating unreasonable expectations that I can imagine."

It’s happened with many games over the years, and I think Watch Dogs was particularly unfortunate due to the peculiar circumstances of its E3 showing. It was effectively the next-gen reveal in a year when the next-gen consoles forgot to turn up. It was burdened with all of that accumulated hype. And it even extends beyond vertical slices. Trailers, tech demos, polished screenshots – it all melds together to create fuzzy expectations. Direct feed and CG renders become indistinct.

So who’s to blame in all of this? Is there someone to point the finger at? There’s definitely a breakdown in communication occurring, and some of it is is intentional, I'm sure. Publishers aren’t going to preface their main attraction with caveats about how this footage isn’t representative of the final game. Instead, they’ll remain tactically mute, hoping that you assume it is. Naughty, naughty.

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Meanwhile, developers are perhaps guilty of over-promising when it comes to crafting the vertical slice itself, but I find it really difficult to apportion blame here. They want to get their game funded, and don’t build these experiences with E3 in mind. They know better than anyone how the game will undergo changes during development.

And lastly, there’s us, the people who watch the conferences and eventually buy these games, the public and media alike. As much as we might wish to point fingers elsewhere, we’re definitely complicit in the deception. While the majority of people won’t know the function of a vertical slice, they also weren’t born yesterday. Is it really all that scandalous or surprising that a final game doesn’t look like the footage shown three years ago? (Incidentally, Game of Thrones apparently had a god-awful pilot.) Yet people get sucked in, time and time again. Maybe it’s because enthusiasm is a more intoxicating state than cynicism. Maybe it’s because we have short memories. Or maybe, we just want to believe.

The End of the Beginning

“ The truth isn’t all that sexy or scandalous, and I suspect that’s why it's so frequently overlooked."

Frankly, the truth isn’t all that sexy or scandalous, and I suspect that’s why it's so frequently overlooked. It can’t compete with the idea that we’ve been duped or are the victims of corporate propaganda. The reason for differences we see between an E3 demo and the final disc sold at retailers is much duller: it’s down to logistics. It’s really, really difficult to make triple-A games, and it’s nigh-on impossible to meet deadlines, manage budgets, and overcome bureaucracy without ever having to admit compromise. Hell, by the end, you might even be embracing it on a daily basis.

There are creative reasons, too. While the vertical slice might have the appearance of a finished game, remember that it's all just artifice. The game hasn't yet been made. In fact, the developers I spoke to regard the it as the beginning. One even went so far as to say, “It's really the first point in a AAA dev cycle where you get to see what the game will become.” Years of experimentation still need to take place before the final game comes together.

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BioShock Infinite is a great example of a game that had a brilliantly strong, well-realised world and aesthetic, but didn’t know how to translate them into gameplay straight out of the gate. Early footage showed Elizabeth using her quantum powers in rather beautiful and elaborate ways – she ripped massive holes into alternate realities, even bringing horses momentarily back to life. In the final game, this was dramatically scaled back into something more practical – she could make turrets appear – and manageable. The idea is still preserved, but it’s been refined. The execution is different because the idea hadn’t yet been fully explored or tested.

“You don’t do a game, you redo it,” says Philippe Morin, who formerly worked on such triple-A titles as Uncharted and Assassin’s Creed and recently made Outlast. “It’s an iterative process… Sometimes, you strongly believe you’re gonna be able to make it work, but reality catches up and you have to settle for less than you promised.”

So in a year or two, if it turns out that you can’t close that car door in The Division, that’s okay. It was a nice idea.

Won't Be Fooled Again

Having said all that, having put forward all sides of the argument forward that I can see, I still understand the indignation. I do. I’d rather play the version of Watch Dogs I saw at E3 2012, who wouldn’t? Go watch it. It still looks amazing, but ultimately I just can’t feel that aggrieved, because the footage of Watch Dogs shown at E3 2012 not only represents the game we all wanted to play, it also represented the game the developers of Watch Dogs wanted to make.

“All developers start with the best intentions,” Morin tells me, and I genuinely believe that. Customers can’t be fooled. There are multiple platforms on which disgruntled players can post footage and screenshot comparison – the truth will out, if genuine deception is at work. Publishers know this. Look at what happened with Aliens: Colonial Marines. There’s more justification for genuine outrage if there’s disparity between the final game and footage released in the run up to launch, not years before.

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The reality behind all of this, as I’ve said, is much more mundane. Game production at this level is a Herculean task, demanding the coordination of large, increasingly international teams, working to an unrealistic deadline under the pressure of a weighty budget. Ambition will always bend the knee at some point, but – to steal a line – I think a person’s reach should always exceed their grasp. If you’re not aiming to do something that lies beyond your present capabilities, then why even bother?

I think we should feel angry and let down only when we see something that doesn’t look implausibly good. It’ll mean developers and publishers have given up and settled for what’s easy, for what’s feasible, and you know what, I have no real interest in playing that.

Daniel is IGN's UK Games Editor. He sometimes writes about movies, too. You can be part of the world's most embarrassing cult by following him on IGN and Twitter