Infinium to Infiltrate Gamer Forums 91
Opposable Thumbs, over at Ars Technica, points out something we have have overlooked last week when Infinium Labs opened its books. Besides dropping the Phantom in favour of getting the keyboard to market, one of their business plans calls for the company to "infiltrate best-in-class video game communities with simple, easy to understand message and seeding on tech blogs, gaming sites and on-line player forums with compelling imagery and links to lapboard eye candy." Because that's sure to net them some goodwill and customer loyalty.
Yeah. We love those people. (Score:1)
Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:1)
by definition, any skillful and artful attempts will go unnoticed, while the crass and inept ones will be quickly identified (that is, a shill is only skillful and artful *if* he/she goes undetected)
I also think that the crass ones decrease the visibility of the sneaky shills/infiltraters...especially if the skilled ones themselves denounce the inept spammers.Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:1)
Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:3, Insightful)
Thing is, these are probably not the paid shills. The real shills, you don't even know about.
It is true that companies occasionally get caught for this - it happened to Midway pretty publicly on Usenet about 5-6 years ago, for example. But take it from someone who used to both do it and rec
Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:2)
Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:2, Insightful)
Did you assume that I was talking about Infinium?
Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:1)
Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:2)
Because honestly, no offense, but if you get paid a decent amount for it, the companies should be spending that money on better developers to improve their (largely shitty, nowadays) games.
Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:2)
The main purpose of marketing is to let you know about a product and drive demand. Of course, many times marketers use ma
Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:2)
Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:2)
Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:2)
I was looking at someone like stardock, in particular the fact that they have basically built a game based on what they would want (from the beginning with GalCiv for OS/2)
Obviously, they've supported themselves with other projects in the meantime, but it looks very likely
Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:2)
Of course, things have changed in the past 10 years since M59 came out. This is another aspect of marketing, to let people know that the product is "New and Improved!" We've poured a lot of new content into the game, rebalanced things, even got a new rendering engine [meridian59.com] as an alternative to the old software renderer. Of course, it's still the same game that focuses on character advancement and PvP combat, but even
Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:2)
Re:Yeah. We love those people. (Score:2)
Unfortunately, that also makes it difficult to get past people's internal turf-filters in order to express honest appreciation for stuff. There are certainly people here who look askance at the prevalence of Nintendo support here, but I conside
Wow! (Score:1)
Seriously though, havn't people been accusing companies of this for awhile now?
Re:Wow! (Score:3, Interesting)
I cropped the pic and blew up a section, so you can see it easily.
http://img226.imageshack.us/img226/8233/phantomwir ed1ft.jpg [imageshack.us]
What a joke, even their Press Pic don't jive with the product they're selling.
Re:Wow! (Score:1)
First of all, I'm still completely convinced it is all a hoax, and second of all, I'm really having trouble wrapping my brain around that lapboard thingy. How the hell is that going to be any good, I just don't get it. I mean, is the lower part in front or below and where does the lap goe ann uhh
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
Lord knows why there's a seam there, but I'm pretty sure it's not a wire.
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2006/news
blow it up, play with the gamma settings and then hit the picture with a contrast enhance. That wire stands out very nicely.
Tweak the original pic & decide for yourself. Recompressing jpegs usually introduces noise.
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
I fail to see what the big deal is.
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
Lord knows why there's a seam there, but I'm pretty sure it's not a wire.
No, it's not a seam. I think it's an halibut.
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Re:Wow! (Score:2)
Typing at an angle does look really awkward though, especially for a keyboard that's going to be on your knees. My right wrist hurts just looking at it.
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
Re:Wow! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wow! (Score:2)
Ha! (Score:3, Informative)
Forum administrators hate it when people go into their forum and start shilling for some company.
For their ad campaign to work, they're going to have to subvert members of the forum who have some credibility. A new account full of "this is teh c00l" posts is going to be ignored.
Re:Ha! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ha! (Score:3, Funny)
Haven't you been paying attention? $1 million US dollars? That's way too low. In order for them to take you seriously you're going to have to at least ask for 10 million.
Re:Ha! (Score:2)
Re:Ha! (Score:2)
Re:Ha! (Score:2)
And my UID is *way* lower than the parent's!
Re:Ha! (Score:3, Funny)
(cheap, too)
hawk
Re:Ha! (Score:2)
P.S.
Chech out teh awesom website! [infiniumlabs.com] W00T there it is!
W00T there it is!
W00T there it is!
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Re:Ha! (Score:2, Interesting)
Reliable source, n.: The guy you just met.
You don't understand PR, grasshopper (Score:2)
PR is a very insidious thing. They don't release outright ads, which people are already deveolopping a resistance too. They release stuff looking like genuine news, or like genuine buyer reviews.
E.g., one such PR hack discussed on Slashdot was the _flood_ of news pieces saying that the suit is back, that
The best part... (Score:1)
Way to shoot yourself in the foot...
Re:The best part... (Score:2)
Marketing Suggestion (Score:1)
Well... (Score:1)
But not Infinium Labs.
Well, gotta go. Time to go get ready to be influenced positively by the image-bombardment of 1-post members on my favorite gaming communities' forums!
Re:Typical slashdot bias (Score:2)
Re:Typical slashdot bias (Score:2)
Re:Typical slashdot bias (Score:1)
Just more evidence of 100% glitz, 0% substance, on the path that this company has always been taking. Links to eye candy and imagery, indeed.
Vapor-Infiltration (Score:2)
Re:Vapor-Infiltration (Score:1)
Given its track record, when will we see the infiltration happening?
It's probably occurring right now, given the number of die-hard Phantom phans I see on certain forums.Re:Vapor-Infiltration (Score:1)
You see, its all in a gamers best interests to relax and have fun, if you rush anything you might injure yourself.
I did notice whilst finding out about all this that lots of couch gamers get RSI, this is mainly due to trying to use their desktop keyboard and mouse whilst reclining in the easychair.
Did you know you can stop this instantly with just a simple addition?
Take a look at some pictures [google.co.uk]and you will see for yourself.
Re:Vapor-Infiltration (Score:1)
Re:Vapor-Infiltration (Score:1)
HEH (Score:2)
Oh well guess those employees finally have to DO something after all this time....
Funny thing is after all this, they have enough name recognition that it would probably sell itself if it's half as good as they think
Re:HEH (Score:1)
This isn't a new thing (Score:1)
Re:I just had a glass of Hershey's Chocolate Milk (Score:2)
Re:I just had a glass of Hershey's Chocolate Milk (Score:1)
Infinim Lab is an excellent company! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Infinim Lab is an excellent company! (Score:2)
-B
Re:Infinim Lab is an excellent company! (Score:2)
Seeing the googlefight site brings up a question... why do they have links to the http://www.mozbot.com/ [mozbot.com] search engine?
Business model... (Score:1)
I was thinking maybe they could do the same thing by announcing a cool product and then selling it sometime shortly after that.
Re:Business model... (Score:1)
Now marketing classes weren't my fave, but don't you actually need a product and customers before building customer loyalty ?
And it happens... (Score:2)
Re:And it happens... (Score:2)
A wonderful notion, except that allowing you to post 3-5 sentences about the product on a web site hardly qualifies as a review. Most of the reviews I se
Re:And it happens... (Score:1)
When looking through user reviews, I only look at the negatives for a clue on what you m
So... (Score:2)
Well.. (Score:2)
Negative Articles as Positive Advertising (Score:1)
I guess this means (Score:2)
Already happening... (Score:2)
I got one that was a little too obvious, but I'm guessing there are a few more who play the game better (and I'm s
You mean... (Score:1)
Unfortunately... (Score:2)
Sick of Astroturfing (Score:1)
Astroturfing is getting way too pervasive, take a look at the comments of people who LOVED "Date Movie" on IMDB:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0466342/usercomments?f ilter=love [imdb.com]
If you look at most of the users who gave it 10, that's the only comment they made... so you'd have to believe that coming out of that movie, they were so overwhelmed that they ran home, and joined IMDB to rave about only that movie.
The next step of course, is to make your astroturfing seem more realistic... over time give your co
Re:Sick of Astroturfing (Score:2)
I think they have already infiltrated movies. (Score:2)
http://www.producersonbroadway.com/ [producersonbroadway.com]
Replace the crappy play with the Phantom console and there you go
"Based on real events" is in the titles now.