archive.ph

ampersandrew, do games w Sweet Baby employees incite harassment campaign against Steam curator
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

Boy, what a dishonest title for what happened here.

Eyck_of_denesle,

You do work in sweet Inc don’t you

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@kbin.social avatar

No, I just live in reality.

MolochAlter, do games w Sweet Baby employees incite harassment campaign against Steam curator

Looking at the curator list, whatever the intent, it’s actually a very handy list of titles with mid to astoundingly poor writing, a lot of which apparently even SBI seems to disown, since they’re not on their website (but they are credited by the games themselves).

So yeah, I don’t think I need it cause I already didn’t waste my money on any of those on their own merits, but it’s funny to see there’s a common thread.

atrielienz, do games w Sweet Baby employees incite harassment campaign against Steam curator

Not gonna lie. It sounds like Sweet Baby should be putting their name on things they work on. Their reputation should reflect their body of work. If their poor writing is the reason people are disappointed in games, then people have a right to know. The problem is that it sounds like what they actually do isn’t writing, it’s some sort of EO QC. From what I have been able to find online, it seems like they get hired by game developers to sanitize games in a way that would appear (to some people) to be inclusive ways. However, just because you’re not a fan of their choice to make a male character female or vice versa, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a bigot. This sounds like the same sort of thing WoTC is doing with their own IP by trying to change Drow etc. I don’t agree that Drow are problematic.

I don’t intend to spend money on new IP made products that seem to want to change lore and such with the intent of “being more inclusive” or less problematic.

Specifically because I feel like this wasn’t a conversation people were having until some people who are not negatively effected by the black = evil stereotype in media have all the sudden decided to white knight a movement against it in the most ham fisted way possible and it’s often pretty insulting.

I have said repeatedly that inclusivity works when the differences aren’t highlighted and there is a successful and not forced way to make that a part of most media, but making it the singular feature of a character in any media (that their existence is there just to fill a quota) is just tokenism.

Eyck_of_denesle,

They also write. But regardless of what they do, it doesn’t directly go into the game. Developers still gave the final say. A lot of gamers are missing this. But if I was a game developer I wouldn’t want to work with a consultancy company created by a racist/sexist. Hopefully the company makes changes or developers choose a better firm.

Plavatos, do games w Sweet Baby employees incite harassment campaign against Steam curator

They really put the Streisand effect to good use here, huh? Nichegamers screenshot showed 9,000ish followers and they’re at 87,000 at the time of this comment.

hal_5700X,
@hal_5700X@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah. Funny is it.

turkishdelight, do games w Sweet Baby employees incite harassment campaign against Steam curator

some people need education on the Streisand effect :)

theangriestbird, do gaming w Roblox’s Pedophile Problem

strangely-relevant meme that crossed my feed after posting this:

https://beehaw.org/pictrs/image/9f9c6fc3-b727-4c36-9dad-d51edac0571b.webp

onlinepersona, do gaming w Roblox’s Pedophile Problem

No wonder I never played anything on Roblox - it’s for kids. I feel like parents have a lot of blame to shoulder in this case too. They should be preparing their kids for these situations, but seemingly thousands fail.

Anti Commercial-AI license

theangriestbird,

You should see how excited some kids are about Roblox. I used to work in public schools around like 2017, and even then I met kids who were OBSESSED.

And I think you’re 100% right - parents are responsible for this just as much as Roblox themselves. But the point is that Roblox could absolutely be doing more.

Mischala,

I mean, an open and seemingly poorly censored market place of assets and “experiences” targetted at children sounds like a recipe for disaster to begin with. Many parents aren’t technologically adept enough to look past the website, seeing it’s marketed at children and going “must be fine”.

This isn’t a defence, but the world gets more and more complicated every day and people are just asked to deal with it… Seems like many governments have just given up trying to regulate anything, and therefore there’s no incentive for trash companies like Roblox to put in any protections.

Aliktren, do games w How Ubisoft spent $2.1M on influencers to secure the launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows

You could cry couldnt you, what a colossal waste of money. Just make a good game, spend the cash there, word will get around.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

The industry is full of dead studios that made good games. Marketing does work and is necessary, but I’m not sure much you can say this marketing campaign was successful given the heavy lifting Assassin’s Creed as a brand was already doing.

duchess,

Really good games flopped before because they weren’t marketed well. Marketing is budgeted for productions of any size, and influencer marketing in general is very effective for something like videogames. Larger amounts were spent on TV ads, or printing campaigns.

Aquila,

Such as…?

DoucheBagMcSwag,

Prey (2017)

duchess,

I guess modern examples are Psychonauts or Prey (2017). Hundreds of games are released every week. There will be some gems, we’ll just never know. Among Us was one of those games before it got successfull by pure chance.

AstralPath,

I really don’t think Ubisoft needs to advertise a new Assassins Creed game beyond a few ads here and there, and chatting with some journalists. Spending a ton of money to allow people to play it ahead of time on stream just dilutes the experience for anyone that intends on buying the game.

Seriously, the last thing I want is for the start of a new game to be spoiled for me by some streamer.

duchess,

Then avoid the streamers? I’m sure the marketing experts employed by Ubi know what they’re doing. I’m also done defending that crappy company.

innocentpixels,

I agree! I mean why would coke still produce ads if they weren’t working. Everyone knows about coke, but they still have ads everywhere

ZeroHora,
@ZeroHora@lemmy.ml avatar

Good games can still fail, great games can have the luxury of let people do the marketing for them.

jonathan,

Given the vitriol against Ubisoft (I’m not commenting on how justified it is), obviously they need to do something to counter it. The anti-woke crowd are an incredibly noisy minority.

sirico, do games w How Ubisoft spent $2.1M on influencers to secure the launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows
@sirico@feddit.uk avatar

Schedule 1 paid…

absquatulate, do games w How Ubisoft spent $2.1M on influencers to secure the launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows

I know it’s cool to hate on this game, especially with it being so mediocre, but to me the number is fairly meaningless by itself. I wonder how that 2 million budget compares to other large releases ( say Starfield, since it’s pretty clear that bethesda also pumped a lot of money into the “gaming press”)

Kelly,

I believe its production budget was pegged at between $250m and $350m.

So this particular item in the marketing budget is less than 1% of the development costs.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

I haven’t found a source for this number when I looked for it. The best I got was a finance blog saying “experts say” without saying that they were progenitors of the reporting or not. Valhalla had a budget about half of this, so it would surprise me if Shadows was that much more expensive.

spankmonkey, do games w How Ubisoft spent $2.1M on influencers to secure the launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows
@spankmonkey@lemmy.world avatar

So they spent advertising money on freelance shills. Ok, that is just another form of advertising like paying an advertising company to do advertising.

glimse,

Sponsoring streams isn’t even close to the same thing as hiring shills

spankmonkey,
@spankmonkey@lemmy.world avatar

Do streamers call themselves influencers?

glimse,

Plenty do, yeah. Though to the marketing team, all streamers are influencers

Auntievenim,

You do understand what a shill is, right?

glimse,

Yes, someone who promotes a product while hiding the fact that they’ve been paid to promote the product. Streamers generally say “this is a sponsored stream” to avoid lawsuits.

Lv_InSaNe_vL,

someone who promotes a product while hiding the fact that they’ve been paid

Streamers generally say “this is a sponsored stream”

So by your own definition streamers are generally not shills?

glimse,

If someone starts off saying “this is a sponsores stream” then yes, that is correct. It’s illegal to not disclose when media is an advertisement in most of the world. I’m pretty sure it’s against the TOS of most streaming sites, too.

njm1314,

Isn’t it though? They’re being paid to promote a game right? That seems like a shill to me. I’m not sure I understand the difference to you.

glimse,

A shill doesn’t disclose that they’re being paid to promote a product. The secrecy is what makes them a shill

njm1314,

Well I’ve certainly never heard that before and that’s not what the definition of the word is from what I’m seeing but I guess I can understand using that as a distinction.

glimse,

A shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps or gives credibility to a person or organization without disclosing that they have a close relationship with said person or organization, or have been paid to do so.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shill

njm1314,

Shill verb

:to act as a spokesperson or promoter

Shill noun

:one who makes a sales pitch or serves as a promoter

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shill

glimse,

Shill has primarily been used as an insult for the past 50 years in the way I’m defining it here. I don’t believe you’ve never heard it used to mean that.

one who acts as a decoy (as for a pitchman or gambler)

Literally on that same page.

a person who poses as a customer in order to decoy others into participating, as at a gambling house, auction, confidence game, etc.

www.dictionary.com/browse/shill

a person who publicizes or praises something or someone for reasons of self-interest, personal profit, or friendship or loyalty

www.dictionary.com/browse/shill

someone who helps another person to persuade people to buy something, especially by pretending to be a satisfied customer

dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/…/shill?q=…

shill n informal, US (person planted to lure customers)

www.wordreference.com/es/translation.asp?tranword…

njm1314,

I think everything you quoted there would accurately describe influencers being paid to play a game. As to whether you believe me or not, don’t really care. Why you keep digging this hole for no reason whatsoever seems rather odd to me, as does being so unnecessarily hostile for no reason. Have a good one.

simple, do games w How Ubisoft spent $2.1M on influencers to secure the launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows

There are some confused people in the comments, it’s industry standard to sponsor streams/have brand collaboration/twitch drops. Every company does it, and 2 million dollars is not much at all. their advertising budget is at least 20x that much, probably more.

Prox,

For real. EA spent north of $10M on streamer sponsorships for the Apex Legends launch and that was like 7 years ago.

EncryptKeeper,

This is true, but one thing I noticed with AC Shadows is that there were a LOT of no-name streamers posting reels with fake hype over the game. It was a little egregious and came off as more than a little desperate.

Lv_InSaNe_vL,

My buddy is a little streamer (gets maybe a few dozen viewers) and he got early access to it as well. Although he doesn’t add any fake hype, he’s just a very good hype man.

XeroxCool,

Without seeing what you’ve seen, that honestly sounds more like a symptom of the platform, current internet trends, and algorithm gaming than it sounds like a cheesy viral marketing campaign

Quetzalcutlass,

Or just excitement at getting “exclusive” early access as a small streamer. If you don’t know there are thousands of others, it’d feel like an opportunity to make it big.

EncryptKeeper,

Generally speaking, algorithms on these sites don’t serve me a ton of videos with no views from creators with no followers, en masse. With AC shadows, I was suddenly inundated with these videos, on multiple sites, without ever having looked anything up about it, exclusively by streamers that nobody is watching.

Fiivemacs, do games w How Ubisoft spent $2.1M on influencers to secure the launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows

I just wish companies would stop releasing games to streamers only. It does nothing but piss me off when I see someone playing a game, find it interesting then find out it doesn’t even exist to buy yet … no demos, no test play versions no nothing…just coming soon.

Makes me not want to play it anymore

KingThrillgore, do games w How Ubisoft spent $2.1M on influencers to secure the launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

Money well spent: Grummz got told the fuck off on twitter lol


I think the only influencers that would matter in terms of direct sales would be Streamers and VTubers

mox, do games w How Ubisoft spent $2.1M on influencers to secure the launch of Assassin's Creed Shadows
  • Wszystkie
  • Subskrybowane
  • Moderowane
  • Ulubione
  • rowery
  • test1
  • esport
  • Technologia
  • FromSilesiaToPolesia
  • fediversum
  • ERP
  • krakow
  • muzyka
  • shophiajons
  • NomadOffgrid
  • informasi
  • retro
  • Travel
  • Spoleczenstwo
  • gurgaonproperty
  • Psychologia
  • Gaming
  • slask
  • nauka
  • sport
  • niusy
  • antywykop
  • Blogi
  • lieratura
  • motoryzacja
  • giereczkowo
  • warnersteve
  • Wszystkie magazyny