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

[Ehra]

Hopefully now that Valve has done the same thing we won't see people throwing a fit over it next year.



Pff, who am i kidding?

 

[Flamestorm06]

Competitions like these have always been, and always will be popularity contests. I figure Zynga advertising for itself is the same as putting up flyers around your school for someone running for student council.

Too be honest, a lot of things are. Even down to who runs the country, it's a popularity contest which is increasingly turning into a "who looks the best when deceiving their country". So it's only fair to find out who is the most popular developer within a selected community, instead of across selected fan-bases.

However, I think it would be a somewhat ethical problem to tell people to vote as they log in as then you're not asking The Escapist any more what their favourite developer is, but now you're just asking The Escapist and X developer's fan base what their favourite developer is, which for obvious reasons isn't a true reflection of the most popular and well liked developer. Sure the developer can advertise on their forum and tell people to vote for them at a competition, but everyone's doing it so it's fine, plus it's more of an off-hand thing than "GO VOTE NOW, AND MAKE SURE IT'S FOR US!". It's only if they start forcing people to vote for them that ethical boundaries are being broken.

But think about it, that's how it works with politicians as well. In American a big part of the reason we're mostly a two party system is because no one can raise enough money to compete with the Republican and Democratic parties, so those are the only ones we see advertisements about, and get told to go vote for. Though I agree that this years competition very much resembled how many people can Zynga get to click three times to vote.