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

Tell me about it

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen a number of "stories" here on Slashdot that look a lot like ads.

A bit Ironic

[lukewarmfusion]

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.

Re:A bit Ironic

[Gherald]

Two words: full disclosure

The editor from Wired magazine was open about linking to one of his own stories, so it was perfectly fine. It was a good story, too.

Not disclosing your relationship to a product you are promoting, however, is extremely low, much like astroturfing.

Ethics, journalism, advertising.

[An ominous Cow art]

One of these things is not like the others.

Re:Ethics, journalism, advertising.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, ethics has nothing to do with journalism or advertising.

Yepp

[Hypharse]

As stated by others this is far from being a new idea and is definitely not restricted to games.

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!)

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.
  

No big deal; blogs are "pull"

[Jerf]

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.