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and the word for the day is ....."Shill"
Hairysun
Member UncommonPosts: 1,059
I'll just post some of my favorite definitions from various sources around the interwebs....
- A shill, also called a plant or a stooge, is a person who publicly helps a person or organization without disclosing he has a close relationship with the person or organization.
- Shill, a person engaged in covert advertising. The shill attempts to spread buzz by personally endorsing the product in public forums.
- To act as a spokesperson or promoter.
- A decoy who acts as an enthusiastic customer in order to stimulate the participation of others
- One who poses as a satisfied customer or an enthusiastic gambler to dupe bystanders into participating in a swindle.
- a confidence trickster's assistant, esp a person who poses as an ordinary customer, gambler, etc., in order to entice others to participate.
I do realize that quoting from wikipedia and urban dictionary are generally considered bad form. They just caught the essence of the word so well in their description.
Do you think The developers of Camelot Unchained use forum shills?
If not, why not? (KickStarter is big bucks, games are big business, wouldn't you?)
If so, then to what extent? (Paid employees, friends and family, in-game bonuses .... etc)
~Hairysun
Comments
Frankly every company probably uses shills/viral marketers in some capacity.
I know for certain there are services out there to write reviews on metcritic/amazon.com for authors/publishers/whoever to raise their score and recently there was an article (cracked.com?) that delved into the issue.
-Polictical parties and even nations are filled with "shills"- The CIA has a program used to "alter pubic opinion using social media".
So...Yes. They probably do. Truthfully , if I had a stake in a game or book or political party- I would as well.
Hey did you hear about that guy Vynxe Vainglory?
What a crazy bastard! But his youtube channel is dope!!!
Whaaaaaat!!
http://www.youtube.com/user/VynxeVainglory
http://www.twitch.tv/vynxe_vainglory
I completely agree with you. Seeing as they are just starting development and havn't funded on KS, I doubt there are any shills involved at this point.
Also, given the people just chomping at the bit to play this game, I doubt they'll ever really need to pay for one. They way they are keeping everybody updated, with development is really helping keeping people interested. I know I keep heading back to their KS page to see if anymore updates have been added. Also, I like to check how much money they've made towards their goal. :-D
- - "What if the hokey pokey really is what it's all about?" - -
Actually, I think your use of the urban dictionary is quite appropriate, because I believe that largely shills as you described them are more "urban legend" than actual reality.
So no, I don't think Mark has hired any shills to promote his title or this kickstarter, by and large almost all the people you see here are promotiing it because they are excited to do so.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
really? You dont think viral marketing and "shills" exist?
I assure you they do- Not to say this game uses them (I know nothing about this game) but classes are even taught to edit wikipedia to promote political agendas and they have been broadcast on the news (granted they are spun in a positive light- As in 'getting the truth acriss")
Seriveses exist to write fake revviews and gain facebook "likes" for a product- Some comapnies have actual 24/7 Viral marketing department s (Viral marketing is essentially being a "shill" as you engadge in Forums and never reveal that you work for sdaid company)
A Shill was recently outed on a certain Forum by tracing the IP back to the source.
-Its no urban legend and honestly its a great marketing strategy. Do a bit of searching on google as there are a plethora of articles about this practice.
Shills are by no means an urban legend. We sometimes take them for granted, thats true, but in the internet era they have become as commonplace as the man who phones a stranger to sell him something (that one was also unthinkable 40 years ago) The recently deceased hugo chavez is credited to have a staff of 200 persons participating in social media of all kinds , from twitter to newspaper forums.However, I agree that perhaps the whole phenomenom is a bit overrated in the mmo genre. The golden rule is that shills cost money. If you dont have money, you probably dont have shills as well.
I think it's rude to speculate (the mods around here used to issue warnings for doing so).
But does the casual obsever see typical fanboiism, or paranoid conspiracy fantasies?
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
I think its generally fanboyism- Especially with Kickstart and folks backing games before they are out (they have a vested interest)
-But there ARE shills. Generally I take all product reviews with a grain of salt as I know there are services out there to write fake reviews (like I said, I read a recent article and the company was making Millions of dollars a year writing fake amazon and 'good read" reviews)-
Being skepticle is often confused as paranoia and conspiracies can and do exist. Those who label others "conspiracy theorit's" often believe everything they are told- I think being skeptical and aware is healthy.
EDIT: Those who bought the "Watergate" incident were at first falesly labeled "conspiracy theorists" and Looney because we all know only low level people (never Politicians and Rich floks like the Hunt family) conspire.
James T. Kirk: All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?
What's worse, getting paid in one form or another to hype up a product or idea, or foolishly parroting things around for free?
Whole lot of unwitting parrots flying about these days.
PigEye McNasty
DFOUW NA
Hi
1. Yes
2. all of the above
Way too much obvious astroturfing. A game with nothing to show, from a non-established game company can'tgenerate that much attention without external help.
Also see for reference : guerilla marketing. Also popular with asian distributor titles
Someone suggested to Mark Jacobs that he should do some paid advertising and he shut that down immediately.
Obviously a lot of people want to see the game funded because it sounds like such a great concept. To PvE players, it may sound like a nightmare but I'd say those that aren't a big fan of the concept, wait a couple years. And the fact that there isn't an official forum yet, led a lot of people here. Once the forums are up, it'll be much quieter here.
Hairysun is obviously a shill, trying to alert more people to the existence of this Kickstarter by starting a controvertial discussion about it.
Anyway, while shills exist, I think that most of the accusations I see of people being shills come from people who are unable to understand that it's possible for others to like something that they don't like themselves.
and the daily dose of Gw2 threads suspiciously died out when the CU campaign started.
What a coincidence.
Not a coincidence at all, the reason the GW2 threads faded out is because all of you angry, disparate little haters came to this forum instead.
Hi
Looney?
Conspiracy theories aren't necessarily rational, you are correct. Nor necessarily irrational.
But on a forum, electronic anonymous medium, the only possible ways to collect data (not hunch, not speculation, not paranoia, not anecdote) involve IP tracking and such, not typically available to individual users.
So it's a leveled accusation without any possible support.
Begging the question, loaded question, presupposition: "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?"
Regardless of how the respondent answers, he can't possibly defend himself.
Speculation is thus completely valueless.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
No. I think you and I are in total agreement. I think I misunderstood your original post (multi-tasking at the moment)
Over the course of a couple months the concept of the game has been 'unveiled' to its target audience and the concept has moved to a month long Kickstarter. The Kickstarter is constantly releasing updates and providing more information/demo. Additionally, Mark and Andrew have posted in the forums answering people's questions and keeping enthusiasm building.
If nothing else, this period is when we would expect to see the most 'blind' support. Why would they bother paying shills when they have over 7000 backers of their Kickstarter who seem more then happy to spread the word.
As for viral marketing, this came up in another thread and I think CSE hasn't really hidden any information on that front: http://camelotunchained.com/en/curious/.
Sometimes the simplest answer is the right one.
Edit: listing of services provided for CU by CF: http://www.cf-publishing.com/international/
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
You do not believe they exist when they have been well documented? Take this for example: http://blogs.wsj.com/wallet/2009/07/09/delonghis-strange-brew-tracking-down-fake-amazon-raves/
http://chroniclesofthenerds.com/nerdfight/
Y U NO FLIP TABLE?!?!?!