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Infinium to Infiltrate Gamer Forums
Opposable Thumbs, over at Ars Technica, points out something we have have overlooked last week when Infinium Labs opened its books. Besides dropping the Phantom in favour of getting the keyboard to market, one of their business plans calls for the company to "infiltrate best-in-class video game communities with simple, easy to understand message and seeding on tech blogs, gaming sites and on-line player forums with compelling imagery and links to lapboard eye candy." Because that's sure to net them some goodwill and customer loyalty.
In related news, I'm willing to sell my slashdot account to infinium. A 5 year old account with 2K comments and Excellent karma. All for the low, low price of $1 million US dollars. I believe this price is perfectly in line with their priorities, given their marketing budget is 10x their design budget.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I frequent one of these "best-in-class" forums (BeyondUnreal), and we get the "HAY CHEK OUT MY SITE" posts all of the time. They usually get banned and culled within five minutes as the community mocks them mercilessly.
Thing is, these are probably not the paid shills. The real shills, you don't even know about.
It is true that companies occasionally get caught for this - it happened to Midway pretty publicly on Usenet about 5-6 years ago, for example. But take it from someone who used to both do it and recruit others to do it as part of my job; you don't know who's shilling and who isn't. Good shills are undetectable, and *every* game developer with a half-decent understanding of the internet and viral marketing does it.
I've been posting stuff on BBS's, blogs, usenet newsgroups and web forums for probably 20 years. So I know the etiquette. And I post on a whole bunch of different topics. When I was tasked with promoting games through forums for the company I worked for, it was with the stipulation that I would continue posting (both positively and negatively) about other subjects - including other games - just as I always did. I might write a post just like this as part of my job. (I could be shilling right now for all you know.) Then five minutes later I'd write another reply somewhere else that subtlely promotes my company's game. If you went back and looked at my posting history, you'd have no idea that I was a company plant.
I have zero doubt that a not insignificant percentage of the top posters on all of the most popular gaming-related web forums are "online street team" members. Sometimes they're obvious, although they don't usually get called out as company shills, just as fanboys. It's very hard to really unmask even the most blatant shill; it's not like you get to see anyone's paychecks. But those who are the best at it aren't even obvious fanboys; their job is simply to plant ideas, not to constantly hawk their company's games. My company kept a really careful watch on street team members, because if the company got caught, they knew it'd be a PR nightmare. It was way more important for street team members to stay anonymous than it was for them to constantly be hawking the company's wares.
And I guarantee that this happens all the time and you don't even know it. Because I used to be one of the people doing it, and I never got called out for it.
A skilled manipulator can make you desire a feature(set) without mentioning any products by name or company. I can mention my desire for an on-demand on-line game distribution service because it would free me from physical game media, without saying that such a product is a good thing, nor mentioning that any particular console product claims to be able to give me that benefit.
Did you assume that I was talking about Infinium?
There are 1.1... kinds of people.