Slashdot Mirror
Blogs, Games and Advertising
bippy writes "Video game companies have found a way around the natural distrust we all have of advertising and it's called the blog, RedAssedBaboon reports. The article points to a recent story by the Chicago Tribune about blogs as ads, and then talks about the Beta-7 and ILoveBees campaigns. RAB argues that gaming companies are starting to understand the potential of blogs, giving them their full support but also using them to get at the gamer. It raises some interesting questions about ethics, game journalism and advertising."
I've seen a number of "stories" here on Slashdot that look a lot like ads.
Weren't blogs used for advertising for a long time now?
... we're going to see: Nothing for you to see here. Please move along.
Companies get good publicity through blogs because we tend to trust them... Well, there have been quite a few Slashdot "stories" lately from posters with something to gain - such as the editor from Wired magazine.
It's not necessarily the fault of Slashdot or its editors, but one of those classic guerilla marketing tools is to create publicity (good or bad) around your product, service, etc. It works because it's not always recognizable as marketing, but it ends up being effective as such.
Why would I trust a fictional blog meant to increase sales of Halo 2? This is even worse than regular advertising.
</sarcasm>
Anyone else notice how strangly the ilovebees blog has been handled? At first, it was a scared "character" in the story. Now it's taking on the role of some of the ilovebees wikis, in that the "character" has full knowledge of the game and is detailing the story and mysteries.
Aside from all this, the whole ilovebees story has so little in common with Halo 2 it's amazing. I know the AI game was equally separated, but shouldn't a marketing effort like this be bolstering the story? I showed ilovebees to some fellow gamers, and while they thought some of it was cool, they had a hard time figuring out what the revealed "stories" had to do with Halo.
Did they just use ethics and advertising in the same sentence? /sigh
Look Ma! a new way to push our product at consumers!
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
Best deals: Games
One of these things is not like the others.
money, money, money, money, money!
You know, the guy who's always plugging his ad-supported blog on Slashdot by turning press releases into Slashdot stories.
but I never really "got" the whole ILoveBees.com thing. Went there once or twice, said, "what the hell?" and forgot about it. What exactly does it have to do with Halo 2, or for that matter, anything?
Love the Third Amendment?
Blogs are great because people attribute them to being by "average" people like you or me. I think this will change since a lot of famous people are now blogging, but for now that is still the perception.
So you get an average schmo who tries this product and raves about it for weeks on his blog and it seems a lot more truthful than the usual advertisements which we are used to being full of BS. I remember the first blog ad I saw was for one of those penis-enlargement schemes. The guy went through the product for 6 weeks. It was very well detailed about when and how it helped him. They even did the smart thing by having him doubt that the product was going to work and then completely wowed when it did work. Now testimonials are nothing new in advertising, but I like said we are USED to it in commercials and other ads. We are NOT used to it in blogs so it rings true. This will eventually change.
(and no, I didn't get the penis enlargement thing. and pure curiousity would be the answer for those questions as to how I saw it in the first place :p. I drive a toyota camry so I'm fine with my family jewels. No need for hummers here!)
What is it about blogs anyway that makes more people trustworthy of them? Personally, I'll read them, but if I had to use a site like Gamespot or IGN, or a blog as my only source of info, it'd be one of the bigger sites hands-down. Do people trust them because they perceieve them as one of us, or what?
As mentioned in the article, it comes down to the ethics of journalism, not present in blogs, but are in the bigger sites. And now with advertisers catching on to blogging, there's really no advantage to them.
Hey, its original and entertaining... unlike most all other forms of advertising.
Aren't blogs about gaming "experiences" about as close to the fringe of what traditionally gets counted as "experience" as its possible to get? Excluding blogs about the technical aspects of the game-playing experience (e.g. how the code runs on various types of hardware) the whole thrust of a blog directed in the manner of the Blair Witch Project is to tout the authenticity of the gaming experience as compared with other less authentic varieties. Is the subjective portion of the gaming experience --- however authentic --- significant mainly for its demoralizing and addictive negation of actual experiences, including connections to actual friends, meaningful work, etc.? That sort of immersion in the world-of-pretend *could* signify a Matrix-ish dystopian symptom of political disengagement. But, on the other hand, whose to say its not just another example of great entertainment and inspiring marketing moxie in the esteemed tradition of Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio telecast?
I'm laughing at clouds.
BioWare seems to hate blogs. There are so few of us blogging Neverwinter Nights, yet they give us zero support. They support the industry sites like IGN and the others, but for bloggers, nothing.
We're too unpredictable. We say things that if they were said in their forums, the topic would be locked.
Blogging is overrated anyway. I don't know why I do it other than an overdeveloped sense of trying to help out other people, even though my help is probably not appreciated by but a handful of people.
I'm sure I just picked the wrong game to blog about. Now, if I would have blogged about Final Fantasy or Silent Hill or something....
Anyway, it's more likely our blog is just too eclectic to be let into the club (they actually have a club of fansites, but they won't let us in it because we don't rate) and when I say eclectic others surely would define that as "suckage". But it's our little blog and we enjoy it and we're not going to stop just because the game company hates us.
All the more reason to go on, really.
Love,
Hanna
If a blog mentions a product and has not ceased and desisted after 2 days, it's an ad.
Lets face it blogs are getting bigger everyday with more and more readers. It was only a matter of time before companys started their own "blogs" for advertising. Sad but true. :(
roamingfeet
I can feel the pain of advertisers to a degree.. their most important target audience no longer gives them the time of day.
However, this is by far one of the most deceptive solutions to that problem. You play on the consumer's idea of trust and take advantage of it, instead of working within its bounds. Granted, this is how a lot of advertising works, but pretending to be a "news source" is downright immoral and really makes me think twice as a consumer.
You know, Burger King's "Subservient Chicken" campaign featured a lot of the benefits of these campaigns without going to the depths of pretending to be a reliable source. I would hate to think our potential trust of blogs could disappear because we can't trust the messenger to be what they say they are.
You're advertisers; tell us that's what you are, and if you don't plan on doing that, don't pretend that you're something you're not.
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
In the print media, an advertisement disguised as a legitimate story usually has a warning at the top: something like 'advertisement'. I don't know if this is a legal requirement but it should be everywhere.
The movie industry has been doing this for years, paying people to create fake "fan-sites" for movies, generating their own grass-roots buzz.
Despite what anyone might want to think, a blog isn't new. It's a webpage, it's just easier to post to, because you don't need to know HTML, really. So why is anyone surprised that this concept has extended to blogs?
Interesting that the given example of blog-based advertising seems to employ reverse psychology:
On it's surface the Beta-7 blog was the mental meanderings of a beta tester ranting about Sega's ESPN NFL 2K5. He claimed the game made him suffer blackouts and uncontrollable fits of violence. After battling the gamemaker through online diatribes for four months, he disappeared.
It gives you seizures and blackouts?
Why, then it must be good! See also how copies of Manhunt are "flying off the shelves" after some youth who happened to have played the game killed someone. Is it just the case of media being so saturated with advertising messages that all publicity becomes good, or is there something antisocial in video games after all? Methinks, a bit of both.
Someone should start a group like Consumers Union that publishes Consumer Reports. Non-profit group that takes donations of money/games plus subscriptions, and writes actual unbiased reviews. No need to worry about pleasing advertisers, rather your subscribers.
Remember when infomercials were new and people trusted them and mistook them for real shows? The new format was "trustworthy" because people felt like they were watching some sort of impartial investigative reporting show . . . a legal but obviously deceitful sham that we all learned to identify over time.
Perhaps the trusty blog is soon to be spoiled with "infomercial" blogs that resemble real blogs but are written up specifically to create a sense of trust while pushing a specific product. For example, a trusty blog about FPS games is written for a few months as an inpartial and insightful site. Then suddenly it starts endorsing a newly released game as the best of the best . . .
Unscrupulous advertisers could undermine the blog by turning it into a vehicle for infomercials.
The predator will follow its prey wherever it goes.
'Lupus est homo homini'--an eternal truth, perhaps, but news? Advertisers have been raping the Internet since the 1990s.
Just wait until they start spraying on organic LEDs to display advertisements inside the stalls of public restrooms. That will be news.
I wouldn't say companies are just using blogs, I'd say they're using the Internet to it's full potential right now. The Ilovebees.com example is a good one, but another more recent one is definatly the Nintendo DS; there are a number of images and videos crawling the web that are meant to give the advertising campaign a "darker" edge while promoting the use of the wireless networking capabilities.
Although of course you get the pranks, i.e. the $350 price tag of the Sony PSP.
...what makes me think I should trust anyone else not to?
This is not a big deal and will ultimately not succeed much, although I won't say it will totally fail.
Blogs are "pull". You have to choose to read them, and thanks to the wonders of RSS and newsreaders, the majority of most blog's readerships are recurring, from the smallest ones to the largest ones. That is to say, blog readers rapidly get to know the blog, where it is coming from, etc., and make decisions based on that.
If you try to start an astroturfing blog, you'd better have something more substantial than "rah rah rah, product X is great", or people won't subscribe or visit for long. Blogs as pure astroturfing degenerate into astroturfing web pages, and they just don't work.
If you have something more substantial, then you may acquire an audience, but it'll be mostly for the substantial stuff, not the rah rah rah. In fact I know of many blogs that are largely product advocacy blogs, or can be interpreted as such, but are still fascinating because of the beef they have. An example I've been working through lately: The Old New Thing, written by Raymond Chen, an important Windows developer and guru. On the one hand, you could read it as Windows advocacy (though I truly believe it is not intended as such directly), but there is so, so, so much meat there that it is irrelevant. My blog hasn't got a huge readership, but I know the ones I have are there for the substance, because I don't offer much else.
Like I said, astroturfing may not "fail", but it'll be just preaching to the choir, which isn't terribly effective. (The majority of political blogs already boil down to this, although they aren't necessarily intended to be astroturfing.) Nothing to worry about here, just corporate hipsters who aren't.
Well, the blogs don't differ much from other web content. For example hardware review sites. There are trustworthy ones, there are not, and there are some in between. So the same with blogs. Just another format. Trustworthy/informative gane acceptance (with some luck) other (hopefully) wither away. Nothing new here really. Just my opinion.
It's a good thing the movie industry hasn't tried exploiting weblogs.
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
The primary use of blogs is shameless self promotion. The chronological format is not the best format for developing interconnected ideas (the wiki design is better for that).
It is extremely difficult to find worthwile information in brain fart type blogs. Such blogs might provide info on trends, but it takes a good web crawl to make sense of the trends.
For that matter, I got the impression that the main reason Google bought blogger was the wealth of links from the blogs.
BTW: politics is one of the richest areas for blogging. People pointing to candidates and articles they like end up building a topology of links that help the candidates who are making an impression get noticed. The motives of all political blogs is questionable.
Good point. I am a full-disclosure advocate, too. There is one aspect that hasn't been mentioned yet. Blogs are not only a semi-instantenous form of spreading information, they also work both ways.
When you post a review on a big blog site, you can pretty much expect a certain percentage of your readership to post comments. Sometimes, those comments consist of nothing more than "right on" or "way to go" and are meant to encourage the author to blog more. Sometimes, people post about their experiences, maybe even at length. Heck, your blog article might even be picked up by a major site like Slashdot or Fark and spark discussion there.
And in my book, that (ie. discussion) is a good thing. If your blog is nothing more than a paid-for pretend-fanboy ad, people will eventually find out and post about it.
Now, if you're taking all of this to the next level and have PR actually run fake blog sites or pay real cash for good reviews there's a certain obligation on part of the reviewer involved. He probably is interested in return business. Hence, he'll make sure those readers who disagree with him have their comments deleted. When that happens, I think it's safe to assume that that blog has jumped the proverbial shark.
I only hope that fake blog sites eventually get exposed (remember the stories about the paid-for movie reviews a few months ago) and that the potential public backlash and PR nightmare that would surely ensue is enough to keep companies from doing this.
That people would assume blogs are honest and ads are not, as there are laws in place to hold corporations accountable for being at least truthful in their advertising while no such regulations are in place to hold anyone accountable for remarks that might be found in someone's blog, since by their nature such remarks are only an opinion (which can be at least just as biased and one sided as anything else might be, and at most be patently false).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Yes. And Slashdot.org too.
If you count my signature, and that guy for autopr0n.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Is it just that Sims is receiving kick-backs or are Michael and 'Roland' really one-and-the-same?
Whatever the case, Michael (and to a lesser extent Timothy) have pretty much destroyed Slashdot as a relevent and useful site, and that's a darn shame.
But then I guess after seeing his disgusting behavior regarding the Censorware project we shouldn't be at all surprised.
What you describe seems like the worse case description of any industry. There has to be good with the bad. Aren't you only looking at one side of it?
Looks like Roland got some mod points today.
I trust the penny arcade blogs, I don't know why tho :/
Starbucks, Harbuckle of Breath.
slashdot is a front for the Cuban communist party, working to destablize the western capitalistic powers.
ads, editorials and any other "information with an adgenda" will take you in unless you are already well informed and view all things with a healthy dose of skepticism. Is anybody here really surprised that blogs are sometimes plugs?
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
That people would assume blogs are honest and ads are not, as there are laws in place to hold corporations accountable for being at least truthful in their advertising
This is beside the point as there are an infinite number of ways to get the viewer to believe a falsehood without breaking laws. For example: "number one in national taste tests". Ask 15 people in five states -- boom, there's your national test. The advertiser just omits some crucial details.
The difference is that with the blogs, you know it's supposed to be an opinion from the start. The problem is when an advertiser users this to hide an ad in plain sight. Basically suggesting that somebody came to a conclusion on their own, even though this is a complete fabrication.
- Scott
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Anyone remember viral marketing? Where companies would pay teenagers to go write their web address on the bathroom wall of a hot club or put up stickers or something so folks would think it was word of mouth instead of coming from some other orifice? I think it worked for maybe three months. This is almost identical. Blogs and forums are the bathroom wall of the Internet.
The problem with astroturfing (not only in blogs, but also "I playd it, it rocks" posts on forums by paid employees) is that it's basically pollution. Not only for games, point taken.
But it's again a case of unethical companies plundering a valuable communication resource to line their pocket. Treating it like the buccanneers treated the sea lanes. And leaving it a stinky, poluted and useless mess.
I can only compare it with spam. In 1998 or so I was actually glad to receive email from strangers, and (for example) answer questions about my walkthrough. If it had an attachment (well, not an exe), I used to actually open it. Could be someone's screenshot of where they got stuck, you know.
Nowadays wading though a spammed inbox is a chore I'd rather avoid, and emails from strangers are more likely than not just deleted on sight. What was once a valuable communication resource, has now basically been polluted and destroyed by a bunch of fucks for their own profit.
That's what's wrong with this astroturfing too.
The fact that we'd all rather trust Joe Average than the big sites, is already a testimony of how their buying the reviews is backfiring. Decades of ads thinly disguised as reviews have just got me to no longer read the review sites. I'd rather trust Joe Average, who may not be a professional reviewer, and may even be a troll, but hopefully isn't paid to lie to me either.
Now all this astroturfing is basically preying on this trust and polluting that resource. What was a valuable communication resource, is being slowly turned into yet another stinky mess that's not worth touching with a 10 ft pole.
In the case of blogs, it has an even bigger potential for pollution, in that it costs buggerall to set up whole link farms and game Google. Already if you search for anything that was ever mentioned in a game, the first 20 pages (before starting excluding words and such) are just tons of retarded clan pages linking to each other.
And already if you search for anything even vaguely related to politics, you just get a gazillion retards' blogs linkin to each other. He may have a room-temperature IQ (in Celsius!), he may speak out of his butt, he may not even be able to spell "journalism", but by Jove, he's gonna shove his illiterate uninformed opinion down your throat nevertheless. If it's the last thing he does.
So when you throw blogs in the mix, it has the potential to get _scary_. An unethical company can basically _saturate_ Google with their thinly disguised ads, without actually paying a cent to Google itself.
Yet another valuable resource which is being plundered by unethical fucks, eh?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Here is an ads for a game a friend has invented : the Gounki.
It's an abstract strategy game, you can play online or against the computer.
http://gounki.org/