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."

Comments

There are no ethics in gaming journalism

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a brief stint as a journalist in the industry, and there are no ethics whatsoever. Here are just a few of my experiences:

• Had my scores raised when I scored something "too low". (I could only score something "too low" for a major company, usually one who was a big advertiser.)
  
• Never had my scores lowered. There was no such thing as too high a score.
  
• Editors will say that PR people do not control content. Not directly, no, but there is an unwritten rule that the editors have to make the PR people happy.
  
• Editors will say there is no conflict of interest in going to a big gaming PR event (such as flying an F-16 or racing an F-1 car) because they always hand the game review off to a freelancer in these cases. But since the freelancer's scores are raised an lowered at will, that doesn't mean much, does it?
  
• PR people say that holding events like letting game journalists fly F-16s allows them to review the game by comparing the experiences. Since this review is a complete conflict of interest, it usually goes to a freelancer...who didn't get to fly in an F-16.
  
• Some PR people have taken game journalists to strip clubs and on some occasions, purchased prostitutes for them.
  
• VERY FEW of the game "journalists" in the industry have journalism backgrounds and practically none of them have any ethics when it comes to their jobs and serving the reader's interest. They all say they do, but their actions are different. When Ubisoft holds a PR event in Hawaii and allows the staff of IGN to invite their wives and/or girlfriends, the end reader never gets to hear about that. And it's not on IGN's dime at all.
  
• Therefore, you can never, ever trust a game review you read from a major publisher. And if they are starting to penetrate blogs, that's quite disheartening, as you never know if that's the person's real opinion or not. Sad.
  

The new Informercial?

[StateOfTheUnion]

Are blogs to become the infomericals of the internet?

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.

Re:The new Informercial?

[MagicDude]

I think blogs are the public access channel of the internet. Everyone has their opinion on one thing or another, so people start a blog to rant and rave about stuff. People know that when you read someone's blog (or watch someone's public access show), you're getting their specific opinion. If it was truly objective and neutral, he'd be writing for a magazine or something. Peter Jennings has his own opinions on stuff, but we take him to represent things relatively neutrally because ABC is legitamizing his claims. There is no system in place to check what some guy states on his blog. The problem with infomercials was that people inherantly believed that ABC automatically endoreced everything on their channel because there's no reason to believe that they didn't unless you watched the first 10 seconds of the show where ABC denied all association with the show. People will realize that blogs like public access are just guys spouting their own agenda.

Lupus est homo homini

[nietzsche_freak]

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.

Games and the Internet.

[Eeknay]

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.

Re:Let's not damage the value of blogs, advertiser

[igrp]

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.

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.

no matter how they are disguised,

[museumpeace]

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?

just more worthless viral marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.