Defining Manipulation
Yesterday, I was talking about how easily users or news media can be easily manipulated. "Manipulated" is such a harsh word, though. I meant it in it's harshest sense yesterday, but there's also another kind of manipulation that happens all the time that most don't view as manipulation.
It's the kind of manipulation you've grown accustomed to in television, billboard, radio, or internet advertising; sex in beer ads, Photoshopped women in magazines, survival or fear inducing advertisements that get you to buy a security system or gun, mood changing music, disturbing imagery to encourage charitable donations, or anything else that can manipulate your baser instincts.
You're manipulated into what you should buy or what brands you should trust. News media manipulate you with click-bait news reports about "Africanized Killer Bees" to get you watching their stations. (I'm still waiting for those killer bees that were supposed to wipe out the US.)
We are all being manipulated through very subtle means, but it's still manipulation.
Video games companies are no different. It started out as just groups of friends making fun games and selling them. The only marketing they were concerned with were retail box aesthetics, and where to advertise. But, as businesses evolved so did marketing.
These days, video game corporations employ scientists and psychologists who are experts in market research, analytics, consumer behavior and psychology, demographics, and purchasing patterns. And all of this is backed up even further by decades of marketing and gambling research performed in other fields of business. Even smaller video game companies, if they can't afford psychologists, will use marketing techniques from research studies that have been tempered over the decades.
So, when I use the word "manipulated", I mean it within a strategic marketing context.
Blizzard's Gentle Nudging Towards Titan
Now that I've gotten that out of the way.. did you know that Blizzard fans are being manipulated as we speak?
They're being prepared for "something" and most people won't even realize the plan until after fruition (if they even find out at all). But, I've always found it fun to see the plan from the beginning, watch as it unfolds around you, and see how users are being manipulated without even knowing it.
Their Next Gen MMO has been in the works for a while now, but they also have a lot of future features and services planned for release or post. There are many scheduled activities, and they don't just happen because of "last minute brainstorms", but rather they are planned YEARS in advance. Some things need to happen first, too, before the game comes out.
We're being prepared for Titan right now, and one thing that needs to happen is gamer acceptance.
Blizzard's revenue generators are changing, and with subscriptions becoming less and less acceptable (there are more AAA games with free subscriptions, and players are beginning to realize the true, extremely cheap, operating costs of these services), Blizzard needs to create new ways to generate revenue.. and players aren't going to like them.
It's going to be one of those "removing the band aid slowly" versus "ripping it off" type approaches. :)
The Real Money Auction House
This is one of the items that should be most obvious.
Blizzard needs the RMAH system to be more accepted by their existing consumers so that they're prepared for future similar changes to new (and possibly even existing) games.
There are promises of wealth and they're going after our greed needs just like lottery tickets.
Jay Wilson, Diablo 3 Game Director, is even hoping that Diablo 3 will be "the greatest slot machine ever made." (I knew that IGN quote would come in handy one day!)
I don't believe myself that the original concept (or multiple iterations) of Diablo 3 ever had a RMAH planned.. I think it was something that came out within the past 1-2 years, and it only came about after Titan brainstorming discussions. I think it's a way to make these systems more acceptable for Blizzard games, get player's feet wet, and get them prepared for Titan.
Even if the RMAH fails (meaning that it still generates revenue, but not within their expectations), they still have something else planned that's going to be huge.
Real ID 2.0
Have you noticed that over the past year, Blizzard has really been pushing their customers to start using Facebook? They're targeting players in all of their franchises: SC2, WOW and D3.
Starting with Starcraft 2, they even integrated Facebook features within Battle.net, and are integrating Battle.net features within Facebook. They also have plans on implementing even more "Facebook-related features on Battle.net" that will "be announced at a later date." These are all just the initial steps of a larger long term plan.
They're also having major contests through Facebook now, where you MUST have a legitimate Facebook account in order to be eligible for participation.
Hmm.. that's interesting. They're pushing Blizzard gamers for Real IDentities. Wait a minute! Didn't they just try that in Battle.net? Blizzard is pushing "Real ID" again, but indirectly. This time, though, there's no fuss, no outrage, no uproar, and no one's complaining.. interesting. :)
Don't be surprised if Blizzard creates new ways to push Facebook signups and utilization even further:
- There will be heavy advertising and promotions (especially as Titan gets closer) to attract Blizzard users to Facebook.
- Gamers will be encouraged to share with friends through Facebook.
- Existing FB users can invite friends for special bonuses through FB.
- Special bonuses or features for users who already have FB accounts. Virtual items like tabards, pets, or achievements for FB users only.
- Using FB "Likes" to unlock certain FB pages, videos or images (which forces more users to sign up on FB.)
- Videos or information that are only available through FB pages.
- Sweepstakes or mini-games that can only be played on Facebook.
(Make note too how a lot of these movements started in 2010.)
How Is Real ID 2.0 Useful Though?
So Blizzard is heavily pushing Facebook use, Facebook is integrated with Battle.net, and Facebook contains real player information and details about their life, interests, profession, what they like, and what they dislike.
Real ID through Battle.net was completely unacceptable because of privacy concerns. But, Blizzard just integrated your personal Facebook details with Battle.net and you apparently found that completely acceptable.. or you just never realized the connection. :)
Remember.. FB applications and this new B.Net integration have no boundaries. Battle.net now has complete access to all of your personal details that you think are only restricted to your close friends and family. (Real ID is still active, mind you, but it's just not mandatory. It can still be used internally by Blizzard for targeting, especially if combined with other databases.)
So, what was the purpose of Real ID in the first place?
Targeted advertising.
Back in July 2010, Blizzard had planned targeted advertising within Starcraft 2. They entered into a contract with Microsoft's Massive Inc. to deliver in-game advertisements within Starcraft 2.
Coincidentally, this was also around the same time that REAL ID was announced. :)
Real ID caused a scandal and it failed, and then within about a month, Blizzard cancelled their contract and pulled the plug on their Microsoft partnership and SC2 in-game advertising.
It's almost as if in-game (targeted) advertising was dependent on the Real ID system. :)
Having a constant flow of 10-20 million players per day and access to a very sophisticated targeting advertising platform, Blizzard can reap a MASSIVE amount of profit by entering into the advertising business. (Targeted advertising is bigger than most people realize. It's where Google's immense wealth came from.)
Their first in-game advertising attempt failed due to Real ID "1.0". But, now they have Real ID 2.0, and a new monster to deliver in-game advertising.
In-Game Advertising
I'm adding this quick entry to the list of "items needing gamer acceptance."
It's not that big of a deal as most gamers are okay with it (as long as it's not obtrusive or annoying). But, with their (failed) attempt at in-game advertising within Starcraft 2, Blizzard made their intentions clear that this is something they want, it's important, and they're trying to get our "feet wet" for more future implementations.
Battle.net 3.0
While we're on the subject of getting players "feet wet", according to the most recent Blizzcon Survey, Blizzard might also allow Virtual Ticket holders to play games remotely.
This sounds a lot like Battle.net 3.0. :)
Titan is supposed to have a wider audience and more "broad appeal", and it was theorized that that the Next Gen MMO could accomplish this through a gaming on demand service where it could be played on a large number of platforms:
It would fit in very well with their Battle.net services and would definitely work well with their new "Next Gen" MMO. Maybe the "Next Gen" bit isn't just about new consoles, but rather opening up their games for many platforms regardless of age? With live streaming services, you don't have to worry too much about processor speed, video card performance, memory, or harddrive capacity.If it's feasible, gamers could have high end graphics but on low end PCs.
Blizzard would just need to test it out, see if it's possible, how much of a reach the streaming service has (distance limitations), and acceptable performance. Blizzcon 2012 might be a good time for some initial testing. :)
How This All Relates To Titan
It's not just Titan though. Other Blizzard games could have any number of these features implemented, depending on how successful they are (and other factors).
Since Blizzard now has a new Real ID system, it will be perfect for targeted advertising within future games. But, it's not possible within all genres of video games. Advertisements could be used in Diablo chat rooms, for example, and on Starcraft 2 in-game billboards. But, they're not appropriate within the Diablo world itself.
A certain type of game would be needed to accommodate in-game ads. Something that matches our real world more closely; a modern world, with virtual billboards, radio, and TV. And that brings us to Titan.
Titan is rumored to be similar to Second Life, it will have a lot of characters (NPCs) within it, there are a large number of environments, and it might have more of a real (or modern) world feel to it. If so, a world like this would be perfect for in-game ads and linking real world items with in-game purchases or vice versa. (RL ads to get you buying virtual items, and in-game ads getting you to buy RL items.)
A lot of this can be done through a Real Money Auction House, which you can bet will be implemented in Titan if the D3 testing is successful. Titan would be perfect for a large quantity of items, homes, or furnishings that can be created or sold. Personally, I don't think there will be houses or land for sale, but I do think there will be a large number of vanity items that can be crafted or sold for real money.
(Even if there are multiple environments, like the historical and ancient cities that have been hinted at, advertising would still be possible whether they're at a certain hub, meeting place, or even in these environments depending on suitability.)
The Titan RMAH might also go under some (currently planned) changes.. for example, Blizzard selling virtual items like how the TF2 store is run. Blizzard doesn't want to offend any players right now by selling items directly themselves, so they're getting users familiar with the new system first before moving into their next phase. (Much like "Real ID 2.0", they're playing it cool and doing it smart).
Right now, they're targeting existing Blizzard customers and getting more of them to start using Facebook. Eventually, they'll target FB users (who are not Blizzard customers or MMO gamers) to become Blizzard regulars.
Of course, all of this could just be something as simple as using socialization to increase recognition, chatter, and new consumers. The failure of mandatory Real ID and the subsequent cancellation of their in-game advertisements could have been a sheer coincidence. But, I always found it strange that they wanted Real ID in the first place.. their reasoning never made any sense.
All of their pushes have been Facebook specific as well. When it comes to "pushing users", they're ignoring all of the other social platforms and advertising mediums. When was the last Twitter-specific contest? Twitter is just used to link back to Facebook.
They've talked a lot of Battle.net monetization and finding new ways to generate revenue. Subscription based games are slowly going away, with advertising or taking cuts from real money transactions making a great replacement.
I think it's all part of a greater plan. Like Blizzard said, Titan is their most ambitious project ever. And all of these systems or strategies are very easy to implement, they're practical, and they're highly lucrative.
It's just going to take a few years of nudging players into the right direction and adjusting their personal level of acceptance. You can call it "manipulation" if you want.. the description is apt.
tl;dr; Blizzard slowly entering into the advertising business. Titan will be subscription free, have more real life connections, have real money transactions, and have in-game advertising.
Last week, Gamespot made a post about Telltale Game employees feeding perfect 10 scores into Metacritic.
Quite a bold statement. So, what exactly was their investigative technique to confirm this with 100% reliability?
The reviews had above-average grammar, and their aliases (e.g. "TANTRAD") happened to match the aliases of Telltale employees. Yep, that was it.
Between the reviewers' constant lionizing of Telltale Games, complete sentences, proper punctuation, and paucity of spelling errors, we began to suspect that the user reviews were not the product of actual players, but of Telltale representatives. Sure enough, a cursory Google search on the reviewers' user names backed up our suspicions. One of the reviewers was a user interface artist at Telltale; another was a cinematic artist. According to their LinkedIn profiles, both were relatively new to the studio, but they should have more than enough experience in the industry to understand this was a bad idea.(Funny.. I didn't see a ton of other gaming blogs attacking and scrutinizing them for their investigation process.)
I really liked this part of their article:
But if the goal was to drag those individuals over the coals, you'd see their names and LinkedIn profiles here.They said this after they gave all of their readers the means to find it out themselves:
1. A link to the Metacritic page
2. Told everyone it was a perfect 10 score
3. Told everyone it's the oldest score on the page (Nov 15, 2011)
4. You can use Metacritic to sort of by date on the positive reviews
5. Grammar is above average
6. A cursory Google search of their alias and "Telltale"
7. On his LinkedIn profile he's new and a User Interface Artist
This actually reminds me of that Facebook investigation. I'm showing you how they probably came to that conclusion, or how they most likely investigated, and I'm probably right. Maybe I'll be scrutinized for this post.. "you're jumping to conclusions", "LinkedIn Profiles are unreliable, I can't believe you use them to confirm if they work for companies", "FAKE NEWS!!"
The Point
What's most scary about this whole thing is that Gamespot is probably 100% correct and that they came to the conclusion through a very simple investigation.
This is a point I've been trying to make for a long time.. there is a ton of information on the internet that most people think are unreliable or useless, but they're not. For the most part, people are very open, honest, and not very careful about what they type on the internet.
In cases like this, though, look at what happened. Gamespot went by on online alias (unable to confirm who actually owned the alias), posted it as undisputed evidence, caused rage, which resulted in a substantial number of negative reviews from users who never actually played the game but were just angry about the situation.
Can you see how both users and media organizations (or internet "journalists") could have been easily manipulated in this situation?
This is why I show as many sources as I do, and proof to backup every claim. I see what happens on these other sites (like Gamespot, who just made the claim and did not provide their sources and proof that the Metacritic alias was indeed used by the employee), and I want to show how I came to a conclusion so that people can come to their own.. I may be right or wrong, and sometimes there is no way to be 100% positive. I can only guess that this case is probably correct given the evidence, probability, and past trends.
Let's go back to how just Gamespot investigated the incident:
If I was a competitor, and I really wanted to ruin the reputation of a game, why not just create multiple aliases of employees and give it a glowing review? And then, give negative reviews for my own games?
It wouldn't take long for blog/gaming sites to pick up on these, investigate (reverse alias search on Google), put 2 and 2 together, and report incorrect information resulting in sympathy for my own company and negative reviews for my competitor. I wouldn't be surprised if something like this has already happened.
A disgruntled employee could even do it to their own company, or targeting another employee they don't like. A disgruntled fan could do it.. anyone can do this and it would be perfectly legal to use your own alias (even if it happens to be used by another person) and make a review, but it would be the news sites or blogs that create the rumor or make the libel post in the end.
Former Activision employees Dusty Welch and Chris Archer have created a new company called U4ia ("Euphoria") and their first game will be an "online-only, hardcore freemium, first-person social" game released in 2012.
Dusty was previously "SVP and Head of Publishing" at Activision for 13 years, and his last day on the job was during March 2011. That puts him at the same time of the 500 person layoff within Activision Blizzard on March 31 of this year. Apparently, that ~500 person layoff isn't considered a "mass layoff" by the WARN Act though. :)
They haven't released the game title yet, but they did register two trademarks (excluding their business name.) The first was the phrase "FIRST PERSON SOCIAL" and the other was "TW!TCH", which could be a game name or a protected phrase/process (e.g. mobile and social twitch based combat.)
First person social... eek.
I wanted to remind everyone that this coming November 30th is Diablo's 15th Anniversary which is a pretty big milestone for the franchise.
As you might have noticed, Blizzard has been doing a lot of "celebratory" activities recently. They've had a lot of interesting things prepared for their 20th Anniversary, and even though they have minor Anniversary activities within the World of Warcraft, they reserve special bonuses for more notable milestones.
We plan to reserve this sort of celebratory bonus for the most notable milestones or events in the future.(FYI: World of Warcraft was released on November 23, 2004, which was the 10th Anniversary of the Warcraft franchise.)
I don't think that the game will be released (or the release date announced) on November 30th of course. They still haven't tested the RMAH yet and technical stress testing is far from completion. And, they still need a major ramp up of beta testers too due to the high attrition rates associated with the short beta gameplay.
The 15th is still a big deal though, and there will be something for all Diablo fans.. it won't just be limited to beta testers like how the WoW Anniversary is limited to WoW subscribers only.
There might be a minor announcement (a major beta wave sometime after Dec 12th), but I'm expecting some kind of information release like more lore, loot details, D3 art galleries, maybe a retrospective video, music, "making of" videos, etc. Simple stuff to keep Diablo fans busy until the release date.
(* UPDATE: There is a "Diablo 15th Anniversary Music CD" available in the Blizzard Store.)
The "Book of Cain" is also rumored to have moved it's arrival date up from Dec 15 to Nov 30 coincidentally as well. :)
November 30th would be a great time to announce the Diablo 3 release date though. It could be used as the "big bang" to finally close up the whole Blizzard 20th Anniversary celebration that has been going on over the past several months. After all, they had originally planned on a surprise D3 release announcement at Blizzcon 2011 which no one knew about (except one person/blog) and Nov 30 is awfully close to their originally planned release date (Nov 24).
Now that I mention it.. you know, it's funny that the individuals who scrutinized TOD's old March post conveniently forgot about something rather important. During the Q4 2010 (Feb 2011) Quarterly Earnings Call, Blizzard stated that they would not be releasing any games during 2011. It made the majority of gaming sites.. "no releases in 2011". That was the firm belief of everyone.
And then on March 23 2011, Daeity said that they were actually intending on releasing Diablo 3 in 2011 before Christmas, that there would be a surprise at Blizzcon, and there was a "mid-Jan backup date". Whether you originally read it in March, or in August when the site was brought back up, people were still saying no releases in 2011.. but TOD was saying the opposite.
Then suddenly, Blizzard announced on September 23 2011 that "'Soon' Was Too Soon -- Diablo III to Arrive in Early 2012" and D3 had been pushed back to 2012. They revealed publicly that they were fully intending on releasing D3 before Christmas. This is the first time Blizzard ever announced anything like this, and apologized.. that's just how big of a deal it really was. They had already announced "no releases in 2011" so there was absolutely no need to ever make this post since 2012 was already the target like everyone knew. That apology ended up confirming why TOD kept saying that it was going to be a "big surprise" at Blizzcon 2011.. they've never done anything like that before, it was a very big deal. No one else was reporting this, it was just one person, and it turned out to be true just like everything else.
On a side note, while I was looking over that old Q4 2010 post, there was also this interesting piece:
* UPDATE:This further confirms what I was writing about earlier regarding the "mass layoff" WARN notification system. Apparently, the 200 employees were reported to the WARN system.. but there were another 500 employees who were laid off, but it wasn't reported in the WARN system. Interesting.. apparently a "mass layoff" can be 1 to 5 employees, but 500 employees isn't considered a "mass layoff". :)
Confirmation regarding lay-offs. Both Vicarious Visions and Freestyle Games have been hit with notices shortly after the meeting. According to Activision Blizzard's 8-K, they'll be getting rid of approx. 500 employees. The decision was made Feb. 3, and will be taking place on March 31 for the staff.
This same time last year, they laid off approx. 200 people. Apparently, February is the time of month when the non-performing studios need to start worrying.