After the big Fansite Beta Key Giveaway post by Bashiok went live, it was quickly announced on other gaming fan sites.

There was even a post on Diablo.incgamers.com, but it suddenly vanished shortly after going live:

Remember that question Bashiok had in twitter a while ago? The one where he asked you where you went for your Diablo 3 news? Well, it seems to have had some significance to the Fansite Giveaways they’re now holding on other sites.

It's gone now, but they had a special emphasis on "other sites". :)

In the past, fan sites were provided beta keys by Blizzard, but incgamers.com was mysteriously absent from the list. The Ghetto actually talked about why this was the case a couple weeks back, and I was waiting for an opportunity to make a post about it myself. I think this is a good opportunity.

The reason they didn't get any beta keys at the time, being as huge as they are, is because incgamers.com isn't exactly favored by Blizzard these days. Sixen (Blizzard appointed MVP) explains it best when he publicly and unprofessionally ridiculed incgamers.com for being permanently blacklisted by Blizzard.

At the time of his obviously joyful comment, he was the Site Administrator of incgamers.com's main competitor. I'm positive there was no loss of sleep over Blizzard's decision.

Remember when Bashiok had that Twitter contest where users were asked to submit their favorite sites? Apparently, the incgamers.com team were actually expecting something negative to happen.

Pretty sure Bashiok and the PR team have the word "incgamers" auto-delete. Lol.

What does he have against incgamers? He deleted my tweet from replies btw.

He deleted everybody's that says incgamers. Either PR has access to his account, or he deleted it himself. Probably the former, though. It wouldn't surprise me if there is a PR hootsuite account that has all BLizzard guys' accounts tapped in.

Rushster, the Site Admin explained the issue as being related to their old SC site:

This is not correct. They didn't want to include us because of something that happened on our old StarCraft site with a news post by a new staff member whose first language was not English and he used the word 'Exploit' instead of 'Bug'. They wanted it changed so we did. Blizzard also started to ask we change the way we write about StarCraft 2 and stop being so critical (even though they were not critical unless it was justified and had merit).

This site has never done anything wrong and we thought it best not to change the way we write about Blizzard games because that would not be beneficial to the readership, and fans of Diablo are very important to us as we are all massive fans too :)

It's definitely concerning that Blizzard tells gaming fansites and blogs what to write. The same sort of problem has happened many times with gaming reviews in the past.

I have been told by an anonymous user that the team from incgamers.com aren't even invited to any of the press events or Blizzcons anymore, and if they go, they're either hidden or they were possibly blacklisted as "normal visitors" (since no one ever sees them at the events.)

They also went on to explain how Blizzard is very strict about questions and you need to stick to their own script. If you ask questions that deviate from their rules, they're told "question time is over." In one particular case, the individual who asked the wrong question was not invited back to followup Blizzcons. It sounds like Blizzard PR is very controlling over every aspect of events, fansites, and information.. and it was quite scary to hear.

How To Get On Blizzard's Good Side (and Get Beta Keys)

Thanks to Bashiok's post, we now know which blogs are "preferred" or "Authorized Fansites" for Blizzard (BlizzPlanet, D3DB, D3Sanc, DiabloFans, Force Strategy Gaming) and which ones aren't.

You can see a tremendous difference in their blog posts too. DiabloFans, for example, just re-posts the official news announcements directly from Blizzard.. no original thought, no questions, only following orders. Diablo.incgamers.com, on the other hand, might be critical or snarky and post interesting topics that DFans and the other sites would never dare write about.

It's interesting to see that D3Sanc managed to obtain 400 beta keys. If you're familiar with the site, you'll know that they're very small and have very little traffic. It's a well designed site, don't get me wrong, but the forum has been sitting on like 1 thread and 4 total replies for several months now (19 total members). They don't have a lot of traffic, but they are a "Blizzard preferred" site.

A couple weeks ago, I knew they were going to get beta keys, but I didn't think they would get so many due to their smaller size. If you wanted to make a "preferred site" yourself, get beta keys, and be invited to press events, D3Sanc is the perfect model that you need to emulate.

You only need to stick to a short list of rules: only post Blizzard's official announcements, keep everything positive and supporting Blizzard, control forum posts, and moderate every facet of the website so that Blizzard is only painted in a positive light.

Remember when D3Sanc heavily modified and edited an old Bashiok Battle.net Forum post to make it positive? This is the sort of stuff you should be doing if you want a successful website, even if you don't agree with it yourself.

If you really want to get on Blizzard's good side, take it beyond typical propaganda sites like Diablofans, and turn it into a crazy fanatical "Dear Leader" style website. You need to GLORIFY Blizzard is every decision they make, retroactively edit all of your old posts if they can cause any negative harm, stick to the company line, only post official announcements, put all of the employees high up on pedestals, and brag about how great the team is. Defend them every chance you get, and talk about how Bashiok is just misunderstood but he's truly an amazing person. He donated one of his kidneys to a dying kitten, that sort of stuff.. it will get you a lot of blue brownie points.

This is how you get a successful website and get special treatment. Doing it this way might even get you access to exclusive press events and information. If you ever wanted to do this, you could even run two simultaneous websites. Your main "Worship Blizzard" blog, but then you can anonymously run a smaller blog or unofficial site that's more critical (using exclusive information obtained from your official site.)

Luckily, I have already had beta access for several months now and the topics I discuss don't require any special treatment or exclusive information from Blizzard. :)

The thought of a propaganda website really interests me though.. I would go totally overboard with it, and I think most fanboys would believe it's legit.

* UPDATE:

Incgamers.com should be handed beta keys given the size of their fanbase and it would be pretty foolish for Blizzard to leave them excluded in such a massive and public giveaway. Bashiok has stated that they have only passed out keys for NA, and EU is still to come. Even though half the other sites are NA/EU fansites, just like Incgamers, you could still consider Incgamers a "UK fansite".

So, there's still a chance they'll get keys. And we'll see for ourselves how flexible Blizzard's blacklist is.

I think incgamers.com wasn't expecting any keys, though, given the post that suddenly disappeared from the front page and their past experiences. :)

Awesome! It looks like there has been more traction on the Wasteland front.

Here's what Brian Fargo had to say during a recent IGN Interview:

He doesn't know if it'd be straight up called Wasteland 2, but he repeatedly emphasized that, despite having thought about it for only 48 hours, it wouldn't be a crazy genre change up. Wasteland, whatever its called, will be "100% faithful to its roots." This means a Wasteland game that "would be focusing on top-down, probably isometric, party based, skill based -- where if you'd just finished playing Wasteland and moved onto this you'd feel comfortable."

When I first announced it, I just called it "Wasteland 2" for effect, but I'm actually hoping he keeps it as the original name. It will need a new story though, not a revamp of the original.

Perhaps even as a prequel to the original Wasteland during the initial formation of the Desert Rangers or the technologically advanced, but xenophobic Guardian Citadel. Or maybe the inception of the killer robot army. :)

Here's what else they had to say about this project:

The big thing Fargo emphasizes, that the fans are often missing, is that "this process means we don't have to do it like the publisher wants." Fans on the boards are worried that the project will start out looking like a hardcore, old-school Wasteland title, but eventually turn into something more "mainstream." Fargo says that they don't have to worry about "will [the audience] get this or get that," they can just be "more like the old days...totally creative."

Fargo has only been working on the project for a mere 48 hours, and he and the rest of inXile are currently working on a production schedule to see if its feasible. But he does think that it'd take at least a million dollars, and hopes that the Kickstarter will go live in the next month.

His twitter account has grown from 128 to 187 followers so far. I'm a huge Wasteland fan, and it would be very cool if my suggestion played a small part in getting Wasteland finally developed. I'm not sure if he was originally considering it before I recommended it, though, so I'll have to ask. :)

* UPDATE:

I got a response:

I was only lightly considering it but no specific project until a few fans like yourself started sending me messages.

I guess you could say I "kickstarted" the Wasteland 2 Kickstarter. :)

Earlier today, a reader had asked if I was an investor (because of all of the company research and prediction posts.) As usual, my response ended up getting pretty long, so I just converted it into a full post. :)

If you ask me some interesting questions, sometimes you'll get some interesting answers. One of my other recent posts ("Playing the Long Con") also came out as a result of a reader question.

This post might really interest some of you, especially if have a stockbroker or you're looking for a way to predict stock changes.

So, to be clear, I'm not an investor and I haven't done any investing. I'm not involved in it because I don't know anything about how to do it.. probably like many of you. If I had a broker that could move fast, or I personally knew how to short sell stocks myself, it's something I would actually do. ("Selling short", by the way, is basically a way to benefit financially when a stock loses value.. so you're betting that a company will do poorly in the future. You might have heard the term "bear market" before, it's the same sort of field.)

I do recognize, though, that the kind of stuff I research or analyze does have in some cases a strong correlation with stock price changes. I'll give you a real world example of something that actually happened last year.

It's something that can be theoretically useful again in the future.

So, here's the investment tip: leaked video games. :)

If you know ahead of time that a game is going to get really bad reviews, you therefore know that it's going to have bad sales and you will know this ahead of other investors. When the first day sales come, the stock prices will react to the bad reviews and sales figures.

THQ's Homefront leaked publicly online two weeks early, and if you had played the game (or saw the reviews) you knew it was going to be TERRIBLE. At the time, I would have actually shorted the stock (if I had the tools and knowledge) knowing that THQ had invested a lot of money in this project and they were depending on it for the future.

Here's what happened to the THQ stock after the game launched on March 15, 2011. Remember.. two weeks prior to this, the stock hardly budged even though the game was leaked and gamers found it horrible.

This was a perfect opportunity to short the stock, because you would have known sales would be very poor. It was so bad, in fact, that the stock continued to tumble until they were even threatened to be delisted.

This also tells me that not a lot of investors follow these leaked games, or even play them themselves, which is a huge disadvantage for them. They invest in something that they don't understand, and probably rely on investment advice from others.

This isn't possible with all companies though. EA and Activision are hard to predict, so I would skip those. But, the more volatile companies are easy to predict. For example, THQ, Take Two, Namco Bandai.. they release less titles, have less regular income (like subscription based games) and they rely more on major titles.

A major title means major investment, and it means they're counting on it's financial success. If something goes bad, their stock cannot recover as easily.

(I would have loved to include Bethesda in that list, based on the RAGE leak, but they're a privately traded company so I don't know what happened internally.. I assume it was fairly negative though.)

When a game leaks, here are the signs to look for in the company:

• If it's a major title they're highly dependent on. This makes it a volatile release, which is what you want.
• It's being released in the absence of other major titles.
• If it's a new franchise and they intend on future growth for it.
• Hype of the game demonstrates high expectations.
• Look for high sales expectations especially from industry specialists since investors follow their advice.

You also need to be prepared yourself.

You never know when a game is going to be leaked, or how long before the game is officially released. Sometimes if the street date is broken, you might only have 2-3 days to make a decision.

If you can obtain the game, you need to be well familiar with the genre to know if it's going to do well or not. Don't bother guessing the success of a RTS game if you've never played one before. You also need to be a well discerning individual who can rush through and properly judge the game content as quickly as possible. There are a lot of factors to consider, like graphics, story, ease of use, and game length. Game length especially! With that in mind, you should always have a memory editing tool (like Cheat Engine) handy so that you can cheat through the game and experience as much as possible to make a quick but informed decision. (Trainers and in-game cheat modes won't be available when the game is leaked, so you have to do it yourself.)

Some of you might be thinking "Well, this is all just hindsight and there's no proof that you would have done this at the time." So, how about we do this for another future game leak? :) I'll make a prediction and we'll see what happens. From what I can tell, the next best potentials will be Max Payne 3 and BioShock Infinite. We have to see if any of those get leaked (or the street date broken), and I can make an educated guess how the stock will react. The other option is Guild Wars 2 (or another MMO).. these require beta-tester reviews. Only problem is, I believe they're protected under NDA.

So, this brings me to a concern. What I don't know is if there's anything illegal about doing any of this? If a street date is broken, or a game is leaked publicly, and there are public reviews about the game.. if you act on that information, is it considered insider trading since you have access to materials that aren't supposed to be public yet? If you are (or know) an investment broker, I'd like to know if it's legal to act on this sort of information.

There's always other public information to act on though. If you recall, for a long time, I had been saying to expect a release date announcement during the 3 days before the Q4 2011 shareholders meeting. There was a 80% chance that it would be made on the Monday (the most logical choice), but the chances would drop considerably as the call approached, and by then it would mean that the game would be delayed to Q2. (I put my faith in Blizzard though and trusted their "promise" of Q1.) After the call, ATVI's stock immediately tumbled 30 cents. Their stock is always fluctuating, though, so it's hard to say if it will recover or how soon. This is why I prefer other companies who put all of their eggs in one basket though.