March Mayhem: Turbine, Zynga, and Valve; and an ethical question.

[maddawg IAJI]

Well, I'm sore against Zynga because of the fact that I don't believe that they deserved that victory to begin with. They are not the better developer and in my opinon, the community should have picked the competitors of March Mayhem to start.

Turbine is a little back and forth with me. I'll happily vote for Turbine if I prefer their games over the other developer and Vice Versa. I'm not as upset with Turbine, they are a decent developer in my eyes.

Valve would be fine to me. I'm not gonna lie. I think they deserve to win and if the competition is gonna do it and if it calls for it, I wouldn't be mad.

 

[Irridium]

If Valve told me to vote, I would vote.

Plus Steam has roughly 1,422,500 people online right now. If even half of those people came, then Valve would win easy. Or the Escapist would crash and explode due to massive server overload.

Plus, Valve must win, or else the G-Man gets angry.

Spoiler: And he is always watching...

 

[Henrik Persson]

I have looked and I have looked but nowhere in the applications I checked (mafia wars and farmville, the two most popular ones) can I find anything about the March Mayhem. Zynga doesn't seem to advertise this at all, they may do it via some fan page, but I know Bioware and Bethesda does this as well. It's not Zynga, it's the fanbase. They're all addicted to facebook/myspace/whatever so they'll come out in scores in any internet poll. Don't blame Zynga for this, blame their fans.

 

[soapyshooter]

Zynga fucking SOLD CUSTOMER INFO! FFS. this is such fucking bullshit. I guess thats why is called "Mayhem" Internet poker and Farmville over Call of Duty 1,2 and 4? really? FUCK!

 

[tomservo4prezident]

Zynga's army of casual gamers are coming for the Escapist! RUN!

That image was supposed to be Nazi Zombies. Just so you know.

 

[Terry576]

I have looked and I have looked but nowhere in the applications I checked (mafia wars and farmville, the two most popular ones) can I find anything about the March Mayhem. Zynga doesn't seem to advertise this at all, they may do it via some fan page, but I know Bioware and Bethesda does this as well. It's not Zynga, it's the fanbase. They're all addicted to facebook/myspace/whatever so they'll come out in scores in any internet poll. Don't blame Zynga for this, blame their fans.

You mean the innocent people who are getting free viruses? I'll blame the company, thanks.

What Zynga does with games is kind of like if you installed a game, bought it with the box and everything, then realized said game was installing viruses. It's just mean. But Zynga's users don't know that they HAVE viruses. Because most FB users aren't geeks about computers, Hell, half of em don't know what a URL is.

 

[Zedzero]

Zynga is ass


That is all

This. They must have cheated. No self-respecting gamer would play their games!

 

[Henrik Persson]

I thought we were talking March Mayhem, not game ethics. They're not to blame for beating IW in March Mayhem, there are other threads where you can discuss their viruses (though I don't think they've ever done that, unless you're talking about the toolbar).

Basically I'm saying you should blame the innocent people who are getting free viruses for liking it.

 

[Souplex]

I personally don't like Valve because they have only one above average game (Sequel is coming soon yay!) yet PC gamers rally behind them for no adequately explored reason.

 

[Henrik Persson]

Zynga is ass


That is all

This. They must have cheated. No self-respecting gamer would play their games!

The problem is that you don't have to be a gamer to vote. You just need an internet connection. Zynga fans have internet connections.

 

[Zer_]

Campaigning has been the bane of award shows/contests for decades. Ever wondered why Shakespeare in Love beat out Saving Private Ryan for best picture? Same reason why The Reader got a best picture nomination, Hurt Locker beat Avatar, Inglorious Basterds, Up and District 9 this year and why Turbine is so surprisingly popular: the producers know how to campaign.

Um, you realize that the academy awards are only voted by people who are actually in the movie industry. For example, only directors are allowed to vote for Best Director.

 

[TechNoFear]

I could go on for ages about this, but I want to keep the discussion simple. In last year's March Mayhem Turbine was able to take out the top spot primarily due to the fact that they directly contacted the users of its games and asked them to vote in the competition. Other nominated studios did not do this; or at least did not do this to the same extent, and the fact that Turbine arguably used this method to win was a sore point among many within the community.

Lets be clear as well;

Last year many devs (over 20) put official notices in their forums (inc Blizzard, Bioware) and had reps promoting the contest on these forums and their own forums (Bioware).

So last year there was a slight difference in methods used between Turbine and 20 other devs.

This year Turbine has not put one offical word on the Turbine forums about MM but many others (inc Blizzard and Bioware) have offical posts about MM on their forums.

So why is Turbine still being trashed?

The Escapist communitity is OK with offical posts on the forums but considers a small advert in the game launcher (which is mostly ignored) as 'cheating' (even though the mods of the Escapist don't).

Why this minor distinction?
Considering the ad was placed at the request of Turbine fans and Valve, Blizzard, Cryptic, Mythic and Funcom could all have done the same.

Because a small, vocal section of the Escapist community has a differing idea as to the rules and ethics of this contest (compared to the organisers).

Because the organisers don't agree with these members interpretation of the rules, these members take it out on the fans of Turbine (and now Zynga).

I suggest these members take these differences in expectations to the organisers of the Escapist, instead of being rude to people that have been invited to participate and came to support their fav dev studio.

If Valve decided to send a message to every Steam user on login reqesting that they vote for Valve in the respective March Mayhem match up, would your response be the same as it currently is towards Zynga and/or Turbine?

IMO Valve would not get any ill feelings from the Escapist members if it used the same tactics.

IMO not many would bat an eyelid if Valve offered in game rewards for winning MM.

It is not using these tactics that are the problem, it is that the devs doing it are not popular with this (IMO rude,) vocal minority.

 

[Henrik Persson]

Why this minor distinction?
Considering the ad was placed at the request of Turbine fans and Valve, Blizzard, Cryptic, Mythic and Funcom could all have done the same.

Because a lot of developers couldn't (Bethesda, Bioware, etc). It gave Turbine an unfair advantage for being an online game.

 

[TechNoFear]

Because a lot of developers couldn't (Bethesda, Bioware, etc). It gave Turbine an unfair advantage for being an online game.

To be 'unfair' doesn't it have to be against the rules?

 

[Altorin]

The march madness competition is designed to get extra foot traffic to the site.

The Escapist promotes developers rallying their fanbases, because ad revenues and even just bragging rights for online sites like this are determined entirely by traffic.

If some developers (rightly) see this as just a popularity contest and are too busy making games to rally up their fanbase, then that's their prerogative. Unless they're cheating, like asking people to create multiple accounts to vote several times (and I'm sure the Escapist has some measurable way to track that sort of traffic) then alls fair in love and popularity contests.

If it's a point of pride to you that Zynga not finish, publicly support its competitors.. get people to vote against them... because Zynga has a humongous fanbase, and if you let them they will steamroll the whole thing..

and it will be marvelous. Don't get me wrong, they're gypsies tramps and thieves, but seeing them dethrone a huge developer using only the power of their gargantuan army of housewives... there's something wonderfully chaotic about that..

In the end, it's just a popularity contest.. the most popular will win. And if 10 million people who up to support Zynga.. they're clearly the most popular.

and hey, the site could use an influx of resident moms.

 

[Terry576]

I could go on for ages about this, but I want to keep the discussion simple. In last year's March Mayhem Turbine was able to take out the top spot primarily due to the fact that they directly contacted the users of its games and asked them to vote in the competition. Other nominated studios did not do this; or at least did not do this to the same extent, and the fact that Turbine arguably used this method to win was a sore point among many within the community.

Let's be clear as well;

Last year many developers (over 20) put official notices in their forums (inc Blizzard, Bioware) and had representatives promoting the contest on these forums and their own forums (Bioware).

So last year there was a slight difference in methods used between Turbine and 20 other developers.

This year Turbine has not put one official word on the Turbine forums about March Mayhem but many others (inc Blizzard and Bioware) have official posts about March Mayhem on their forums.

So why is Turbine still being trashed?

The Escapist communitity is OK with official posts on the forums but considers a small advertisement in the game launcher (which is mostly ignored) as 'cheating' (even though the moderators of the Escapist don't).

Why this minor distinction?
Considering the advertisement was placed at the request of Turbine fans and Valve, Blizzard, Cryptic, Mythic and Funcom could all have done the same.

Because a small, vocal section of the Escapist community has a differing idea as to the rules and ethics of this contest (compared to the organizers).

Because the organizers don't agree with these members interpretation of the rules, these members take it out on the fans of Turbine (and now Zynga).

I suggest these members take these differences in expectations to the organizers of the Escapist, instead of being rude to people that have been invited to participate and came to support their favorite developer studio.

If Valve decided to send a message to every Steam user on login reqesting that they vote for Valve in the respective March Mayhem match up, would your response be the same as it currently is towards Zynga and/or Turbine?

In My Opinion Valve would not get any ill feelings from the Escapist members if it used the same tactics.

In My Opinion not many would bat an eyelid if Valve offered in game rewards for winning March Madness.

It is not using these tactics that are the problem, it is that the developers doing it are not popular with this (In My Opinion rude,) vocal minority.

I'm sorry miss, but you are also part of this community. Of course, you seem to be a rigorous psycho. You tried to write a logical, well written post, and did a damned good job. But, you forgot one thing:

If you're gonna write well thought out posts, you've gotta either go all chatspeak, or all grammatically correct. You can't go halfway dear.

Okay Miss. Go tell me you like Zynga, you love them, they make the best games ever. Tell me that Zynga has made a single good game, truly deserves to be in this contest, and likes their customers. I'll be happy to direct you to several links proving you wrong.

Shall we?

 

[Altorin]

Okay Miss. Go tell me you like Zynga, you love them, they make the best games ever. Tell me that Zynga has made a single good game, truly deserves to be in this contest, and likes their customers. I'll be happy to direct you to several links proving you wrong.

Shall we?

All we are...

Is dust in the wind dude...

*drops sand* Dust..

*blows through fingers* Wind..

*Pokes chest* Dude.

 

[Terry576]

Does that mean we don't have opinions?

Hell, according to Dunbar's Number, we can only live with 150 people in our lives. Therefore, the CEO at these companies couldn't care less without adding a bunch of unnecessary stress to themselves. Technically, we are merely dust in the wind, but fortunately I have a haiku for this occassion:

Lives Without Meaning,
Screw You You God-damned Asshole,
I'm Still A Human

:>

 

[Daefaron]

No, I would not have any problems with Valve posting such a message that would show up upon Steam login. In fact, I would welcome such competition.

 

[TechNoFear]

I'm sorry miss, but you are also part of this community. Of course, you seem to be a rigorous psychopath. You tried to write a logical, well written post, and did a damned good job. But, you forgot one thing:

If you're going to write well thought out posts, you've got to either go all chatspeak, or all grammatically correct. You can't go halfway dear.

Please try to at least keep your own advice....

I won't rise to the insults; they simply show you have no logical or valid points to rebut with and have to resort to the lowest form of argument.