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Blogs, Games and Advertising

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the getting-in-bed-together dept.

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."

1 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. There are no ethics in gaming journalism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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.