The Escapist Reveals an Infiltrator: Online Guerilla Marketer |
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For some people, gaming isn't an escape. It's infiltration and warfare. In a recent article from the Escapist, we find out that this is the life of online guerrilla marketers, and you can bet that you've probably already met some of them online.
"Jack" is an expert in a unique kind of online fraud. Jack spends weeks trying to infiltrate online communities and gaining the trust of others. Maybe he's spent weeks giving fair, unbiased advice. Then he inserts a recommendation: buy this game. And everybody believes good old unbiased Jack. And nobody suspects that Jack has been hired by the game's publisher or developer to pimp the game. Nobody suspects that they are being controlled.
And "Jack" is good at what he does. If the community is mostly young 15-year olds, he blends in. He says that his personalities range from a 10-year-old girl to a 78-year-old man across different ethnicities, stereotypes, and ages. "It's evil," he says. "I'm evil."
"I will make you buy this commercial item or visit some site using any means necessary."
According to our official QJ Dictionary of Mental Health, escapism is avoiding reality by indulging in an entertaining or imaginative activities. So, whenever you don't do your errands because you are busy playing video games, Dr. Phil and Oprah would call that escapism.
So there's a very sick betrayal there: we enjoy video games because they let us escape reality; we become somebody else in another world where we have big guns or swords or muscles and it's perfectly healthy to blow up your enemies and it's easy to tell who the "good guys" and "bad guys" are (yes, we sometimes bring in reality and have huge arguments about consoles or whatever, but for the most part, we just live to play).
We are escapists. And in the end, we fall prey to the advice of people who are only pretending to be escapists like us; people who have studied us, pretended to be our friends, know too much about us, and know very well which products are paying them for real.
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Comments
FIRST POST!
Intresting, I wonder if jack goes to this site and says hello... did you happen to see the new screens for Death Jr? the look good... lol, good to know... but thats life, people are persuasive
wow that is very very true.
im so gullable anyways, yeah..so what if they convince me to buy their game, a game is a game and eiether way im entertained even if they have to go to the lowest extremes to get people
Thanks for sharing QJ.net.
so let me get this right, companies pay this guy to groom kids to do his bidding..
who here is trying to do this? can i trust anyone? bah im scared!, j/k i would never fall prey to them anyway cuase i always go to gamespot look at the main review then at the player reveiws (the good and the bad) and see if the game thats been all the hype for the past month is really what it's cracked up to be
"Jack" is a fictional character. It's not just one person doing this for everyone one, it's just putting a name to the type of person, and there are tonnes of them. That kind of person would be useless around here. "Jack" - hey you should go check out the new Nascar game "Average qj-er" ok, I'll go download it for free ROFL
there's a nascar game i havent downloaded? thanks for mentioning that!
Personally I'm too cheap to spend money on a game someone recommends that I haven't even played the demo first. Not to mention being too lazy to check websites that are also recommended. If you played the game first or did your own research then you are a smart consumer. Relying on other peoples opinions usually leads to wasted money. Then again, we are being "advertized" to death in "Reality" as well. No place is safe except your dreams... for now. -V
Just pirate everything u play, so jack is *****ed :D
the least trustworthy source of 'information' in this universe is the internet... as far as i can tell anyone could be telling a lie at any time. i don't believe all that the internet says, i certainly won't spend money based solely on some internet person's spiel, and i don't think anyone else should. the internet is evil! just watch tv (now there's a trusty source of facts!) all the bad guys use the internet for something... this stuff doesn't surprise me, you know you can simply role play from day to day... there's absolutely no reason to do right. it's enough to make you sad really - being lied to constantly, never knowing whether this person who you think is your friend is in fact manipulating you... and so i will return to my real life, where actions have consequences and people are real. (mostly)
Jack doesn't give S___H___I___T!!
PS3 sucks! buy a WII instead
nice graphic.
"jack" dosnt just come out and say not to get a ps3 and get a Wii, I think hes smart and will tell us to get both, saying that we dont have the option to get either just yet... so we all can be open minded on what to get untell there avalable, because only jack *paid by his investers* really know... and im sure Sony and Ninetendo have there own jacks.... *this was a shout out to "jimmy"*
This does not surprise me, the lengths advertisers go to just to try to make us buy their products are quite alarming and I will be surprised if there is any form of media or communication that has not been infiltrated by advertisers. Anyway, people like that have always had a reverse effect on me. The more hype there is behind a game or product the more skeptical I am about purchasing it. Games that are generally not well known usually tend to be every bit as good as the popular games and often tend to be cheaper.
i think jack is #14
We have all talked about the games we enjoy online to others. The more we talk about the games the more we're helping game sales. Just signing into xbl with a brand new game peaks interest in friends on our friends lists. Most times you'll get msg's from friends asking you what you think of the game as you play it for the first time. No matter what game you play online there will always be discussion about a game that isn't out yet and how awsome it's going to be. While playing RB6 3 all everyone talked about was halo 2. Playing halo 2 everyone talks about halo 3 and gears of war etc. It never ends, no matter how good the game you're playing is, everyone talks about the NEXT game to buy. Maybe I've surrounded myself with guerrilla marketers. Sometimes it does seem like that. I'm not suprised game companies hire people to drop hints and push gamers in a certian direction. Is it evil? No. We as gamers online help shape and mold the gaming habits of others. I'm not saying I'd buy Over G fighters if all of a sudden 8-10 people on my friends list started to play it non-stop. But It would spark my interest. I'd think "hmm why are they playing that game? Maybe I should buy it and join them. They've all been playing it for about 6 hours they must be having fun. I should but it!" Pushing bad games on impressionable kids does seem like a bad thing. But I was an impressionable kid once, before all this online gaming. I bought my share of crappy games all becuase store clerks would tell me how amazing games like Total recall for Nes were. That's all I'm gonna say.
don't buy it, pirate.
I don't do that......anyways buy rengoku for the psp , it's an awesome 10/10 game!
Jack this. Jack that. What about Jill?
If you just listen to other peoples recomendatios then you should expect things like this to happen. It's not much different then everyone picking on the ps3 because it compete's with thier favorite system. You should discover your own games, you'll enjoy the experience much more.
isnt escaping from reality the whole point of video games? and movies too? LMAO escapism a mental diesiese? haha thats funny
boy, this article sure is entertaining to read...when it was first posted on penny arcade about a year ago. and i hate penny arcade.
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