margot

@margot

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margot
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jeffgerstmann
@jeffgerstmann
Uppercaseccc
@Uppercaseccc asked:

Jeff I feel like I am going crazy seeing the responses to that Mike Rose thread being "influencers should be paid to cover your game fucko" and everyone agreeing with that vs if someone said that about any outlet people would be having a freak/going we we right

Well, I agree with what they're saying, the people who clearly have a rate that they charge for creating sponsored content should be paid that rate to create sponsored content. And for that money the company paying it perhaps gets some say in how the video goes, things to say/not say, and so on.

It's an ad. Ads cost money.

Influencers are not the media and the notion that people who essentially produce infomercials for games are to be trusted for their opinions about games is fuckin' stupid, even if they also do unpaid content because the existence of the paid content creates too many conflicts of interest.

If a game launches and there isn't a lot of "unpaid" coverage out there, I'd look more at the PR efforts and what was done to get it on the radar of whatever actual editorial press is left, regardless of platform. There are a billion games coming out every day, getting a new release on someone's radar is harder all the time.

This is, of course, anecdotal, but the first I heard of the game was this thread. A quick look at my Steam friends list shows that only one person has the game... most higher-profile indie releases get codes out in a way that usually results in me having 3-4 Steam friends who have it. Might also measure the scale of outreach by looking at my inbox, which shows one mention of the game and that comes from an automated mailing I'm on that lists every id@xbox game released that week. I don't know, maybe I'm not the target for a game like that, but considering I get a zillion emails for a zillion games I've never heard of all the time, it does make me wonder what they did pre-release to get the game out there.

margot
@margot

its really a key concept for media literacy in today's environment to realize that influencers occupy a space closer to advertisers and marketers than journalists

EDIT: i elaborated more of my feelings in the comments, if anyone is curious

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in reply to @jeffgerstmann's post:

ltsquigs
@ltsquigs

I agree people should be paid for their work and any expectation that people do it for free for no reason is unreasonable. I also totally agree that influencers are not the Media and they shouldn't be treated like the Media and should be treated as essentially as freelance PR.

My only worry is that I don't know if regular people actually do treat them like that. I think there are a lot of people who treat influencer opinions as their honest opinions even when they are paid to present specific thing. Not because they are stupid or anything, but because that's sort of the whole game. The whole thing of being an influencer is that you create a community that feels like they are getting Access to your Honest Thoughts, and then selling your image for PR is sort of cashing in on that.

It also doesn't help that many influencers also try to hide what they are being paid for and what they aren't. For example there has been a recent spate of streamers only indicating what they are doing is a #ad through obscure chat commands or through whatever perceived minimum compliance for disclosure there is, which they have an incentive to do because if someone knows a stream is sponsored they get less viewers.

Sometimes I think publishers also blur the line as well. Just today I saw a commercial for the new CoD where all the pull quotes were from influencers but presented in the same way that you would expect a review or Media quote to be.

It feels like there's a long overdue reckoning with the current influencer/marketing economy/system and regulation. There has been some dips into that arena by the FCC in the past, but it feels like there needs to be a more focus these days. Especially when you start to think beyond just like game influencers and more towards things like health influencers where the impact of shady stuff can be much more dire.

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LukeC
@LukeC

as a dev, paying an influencer for content feels… weird? sketchy? like I’m not even sure I want my game presented in that way. we had the good fortune of getting natural traction from streamers on our game, but I do understand it’s rather unusual (we did do a heavy PR push for it though). but whenever I watch sponsored content I can’t really say the performative, transparently trite nature of it has been enjoyable in any way, so I don’t know that I’d want my game associated in that light

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jeffgerstmann
@jeffgerstmann

Totally agree that it seems like a weird and sketchy practice. I'd be curious to know if it actually helps with sales or exposure or whatever, too. It's ancient info now, but I remember hearing that big publishers like EA were backing away from a lot of their influencer marketing because they weren't seeing any return on it.

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Xuelder
@Xuelder

Tangential, but there are a lot of eyes now on influencers post Gamestop stocks by Congress, the FCC and the FTC. Influencers are fracking with the money and now the powers that be are actually paying attention. I know a lot of old media heads are upset because the lack of regulations, especially with media getting close to payola/pay-to-play type of schemes in online video/audio. It doesn't help that game streaming/let's plays are in a gray area with fair use defenses that have never really been tested in case law. And this is just another gray area on top of that, this shade is getting pretty dark.

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UncreativeOpinions
@UncreativeOpinions

I think people are reading an intent to seek out advertising from influencers into his post that just isn't there.

I don't really see anything wrong with anything he said in this area. Except maybe that as a developer, I'd want my publisher to be a little (a lot) less naive about an area I'm paying them to deal with.

And have jumped on the "zero youtuber support" line as some sort of unrelated gotcha.

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in reply to @margot's post:

margot
@margot

i mean, i do think that someone who acts in an advertisement is still an actor; and a lot of influencers DO do journalism, its just that they don't necessarily see that as a core component of their work, so a lot of the rules that might apply to journalists don't apply to them.

i think the value of influencers comes from their ability to blur that line in such a way that it's difficult to tell where the journalism ends and the marketing begins, which is why there have been so many scandals about them and regulations to try and rein in some of the worst excesses.

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margot
@margot

haha fair! i don't exactly like the niche influencers have found for themselves and i do think their presence is a net negative, but i try to present this stuff as fairly as i can bc i feel like in the long run it makes my arguments against it stronger, if that makes sense?

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