1706: Bug Me and I Leave You

Given the ubiquity of technology these days, there’s a lot more competition between apps and online services than there ever was in the past. This means that all of them have to stoop to increasingly low levels in order to get people to “engage” with them, leading to a situation we’ve simply not had prior to the last few years.

That situation comes in the form of apps and services begging you to use them. It’s obnoxious, obtrusive and, more to the point, makes me disinclined to make use of that app or service ever again. In fact, in most cases, if an app or service begs me to use it or come back, I will simply uninstall it or unsubscribe from their mailing list.

The most egregious example I can think of recently was an app called TuneIn Radio. I was recommended this as a good means of listening to both streaming Internet radio and podcasts, but was dismayed to discover after firing it up just once that it then insisted on reminding me of its own existence at least once a day via a push notification that was usually recommending something I had absolutely no interest in whatsoever. (“Listen to TalkSport!” Oh, how little you know me.) However good the app is, notifications bug me enough at the best of times, so in the bin it went.

I’m still getting email messages from services I had to sign up for when I was reviewing endless reams of shitty mobile-social apps for Inside Mobile Apps, too. Eventually I simply registered for these services with an email address I don’t use any more, and this mitigated the problem somewhat, but there are still times where there are services that I haven’t touched for a year or more feel the need to email me and remind me that they exist.

Worse, when you unsubscribe from these mailing lists you inevitably end up signed up to, you’re often questioned as to why you’d ever want to stop your inbox being cluttered up with this meaningless crap. I had one email the other day from a service called AppData, a ludicrously expensive analytics service that was attached to the Inside Social Games and Inside Mobile Apps sites I used to write for, which asked whether I had unsubscribed “by mistake”. Seriously. Look.

The sheer arrogance of this is absolutely astonishing. “Oh, no, whoops, I unsubscribed from your marketing spam by mistake. I actually do want you to try and sell me things! Sign me back up, quick!” Or, indeed, “oh no, the pointless marketing spam I forwarded on to my friend [who does this?] annoyed them so much that they tried to unsubscribe themselves and instead unsubscribed me! Sign me back up, quick!”

I kind of understand why this happens. As I said at the beginning, the sheer amount of competition between mobile app and online service providers these days is ridiculous, so they have to resort to ever more drastic measures to retain their users, and hopefully convert them into paying customers — or at least people who will click on ads.

I can’t say I feel much sympathy, though. Surely having to resort to this is not a signal that you should market harder. Surely having to resort to this is, instead, a sign that there is far too much pointless, useless crap on the market, and maybe you should try a bit harder to come up with an idea that is actually innovative and helpful to people rather than a rehash of other things people already use? Harsh as it may sound, these days I find myself smiling a little with every email I receive that informs me a pointless, stupid mobile-social service that I reviewed a year or more ago is closing down. I’m glad; there’s too much noise in our lives anyway even with just the well-established services like Twitter and Facebook, so stop adding to it.

1006: Far, Far Away

It may be shocking to some to hear this given how much of a massive nerd I am in almost every other respect, but I’ll just come out and say it: I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve never really cared for Star Wars.

I’m sorry. I just don’t. I’ve seen all of them several times — including the original trilogy in their original, un-messed-around-with incarnations — and I just struggle to get excited about it. I never wanted to be Luke Skywalker, I don’t give a shit whether Han shot first or not and I always preferred Wing Commander over X-Wing.

Of course, these days it’s not uncommon to not give a shit about Star Wars due to the massive oversaturation of the market perpetuated by the Lucas empire, but I’m pretty sure I’ve felt this way even since before the prequels came out. I’m not sure what it is — whether it’s just the fact that it’s so pervasive in geek culture that I’m just sick of it, or if I actively dislike it. For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s the latter; I think it’s more a sense of indifference and not really feeling like it’s worth all the fuss.

Oh, I get why it was a big deal on its original release, of course. I can appreciate that the original trilogy are good films — they’re well-structured, reasonably well-paced (they are quite long, though) and stuffed with memorable characters — and I can see what an impact it’s had on modern sci-fi. I just can’t get excited about the prospect of anything Star Wars-related these days.

It doesn’t help, of course, that aspects of the franchise get continually co-opted for completely inappropriate purposes. I knew that I was completely over Star Wars when Yoda started advertising for Vodafone, though I had my suspicions when he appeared in one of the Soul Calibur games. The moment that the marketing people get hold of something that enjoys mainstream (or even niche) popularity, it dies a death. Whatever soul it once had is gone, replaced by that cold-hearted capitalist desire to make cash.

In fact, my only really fond memories of Star Wars include the amateur video production called Yoda’s Bar my school friends made with a bunch of Star Wars figures, and the drunken evening I spent after one of our school leaving days sleeping on the floor next to my friend Woody, who was doing what he called “Emperor Farts”, which consisted of him doing an impression of Emperor Palpatine and then letting rip with some of the most thunderous flatulence I’d ever heard. (He managed to keep this up for well over an hour; I am still surprised to this day that he didn’t shit himself.)

I digress.

I think it’s largely the oversaturation issue that gets to me in situations like this, because it’s not just Star Wars that I feel this way about. I find myself instinctively starting to dislike anything which I’m constantly bombarded with. It’s an automatic response now — I start to see so much of something that I just feel utterly sick of the sight of it, and thus want to take myself as far away as possible from it. Recent things I have felt this way about include Call Me Maybe, Gangnam Style, anything to do with Batman, and the video game Dishonored. The more I see of a thing, the less I want to see of it. Marketing through constant “brand visibility” evidently doesn’t work on me.

This instinctive behaviour that I have picked up from somewhere probably accounts for my changing tastes in media consumption — my present fascination with anime, Japanese games and related media falls firmly into the “niche interests” category and consequently is not prone to the “JUST SHUT UP ABOUT IT FOR FIVE MINUTES!” problem that I’m describing here. Ironically, of course, I’m happy to talk about all of the above things with like-minded people for hours on end and never get sick of them.

I don’t particularly think that feeling this way is a problem per se — everyone should be free to pursue their own tastes and interests — but as I posted the other day, it can sometimes lead to feelings of isolation. I occasionally think I should make more of an effort to try and engage with things that are otherwise popular, but then I just think to myself “no, why should I? I have plenty of things that I’m interested in to keep me busy and entertained; I don’t need the stuff that everyone else is talking about.”

I just end up with fewer people to talk about my interests with. But eh. ‘Twas ever thus for those mysterious creatures known as geeks, nerds, whatever you want to call us. And the fortunate side-effect of the smaller numbers of people who are into more “niche” things is that the people who are into those things are, more often than not, infinitely more passionate about their interests than those who are following the herd. I’ll take passion and enthusiasm over conformity any day.

#oneaday Day 765: Social Overload

It may be simply my “over 30s” grumpiness starting to show, but I’m starting to find “brands'” use of social media to be immensely irritating. And even more irritating is the fact that their techniques seem to work — which, of course, perpetuates the whole hideous cycle until someone snaps and goes on a mad katana rampage.

I’m talking primarily about that faux cheerfulness that pretty much every brand page out there shows when addressing its audience. “Hey [insert collective noun here that is tangentially related to being a fan of the product in question]! [exclamation mark is important to show enthusiasm] We thought it’d be a great idea to [adopt some out of date Internet meme/take goofy photos of our office/make a cringeworthy video] so we did! And here’s the proof! [insert link to photo/video/blog post]”.

Getting your audience to engage with you is one thing. Getting them to engage with you on a meaningful level is an altogether different thing. I genuinely once saw the The Sims 3 Facebook page ask the community what their favourite colour was. Nearly a thousand people replied. I “Unliked” them shortly after that.

As I’m writing this, I’m trying to pin down exactly what it is that riles me so about this sort of thing. After all, the very fact that nearly a thousand people wanted to tell the faceless Sims 3 page that their favourite colour was, in fact, blue shows that it’s a system that seems to work. But does it have any value whatsoever? Does feeling like a brand is someone you can “talk to” help you feel any more fondness towards the product in question, or is it simply a novelty and a means of building community?

It depends on how you handle it, of course. If a question posed by a brand page is the start of a larger discussion which representatives of the brand then participate in, then it’s a good thing, in my opinion. However, for the most part in my experience, these sort of posts tend to just be “post something that lots of people won’t be able to resist replying to or Liking, light the blue touch paper and stand back”. After the initial question is posted, the brand steps back and doesn’t participate in the discussion any further, leaving the community to fight each other over whether or not the man who said pink was his favourite colour is gay or not.

The side-effect of all this relentless posturing by brands is that it leads to a feeling of saturation. By way of example, I’ve been so bombarded with teaser videos, images, exhortations to “celebrate FemShep Friday” and numerous other pieces of detritus that I’ve, ironically, lost any enthusiasm I may have had for Mass Effect 3 and probably won’t be buying it.

“Ignore it,” you may say. “Unlike it. Unfollow it.”

Believe me, I have. But sometimes you need to venture on to those pages to find out useful pieces of information — like, say, release dates — and end up having to mine your way through pages and pages of completely, utterly worthless nonsense in order to find anything relevant. That, surely, isn’t how it’s supposed to work. Or perhaps it is, and that’s why I don’t work as a “social media guru” or whatever.

On the flipside to all this, companies seem to be a lot better at using Twitter in a manner which doesn’t infuriate me. The very way in which Twitter works — you don’t see replies from people/brands you are following that are directed to people you aren’t following yourself — means that a lot of this unnecessary noise is filtered out. And the fact that tweets are, by their very nature, somewhat transient means that there’s no means for a 1,000-post comment thread discussion on favourite colours to take place. This is a Good Thing.

The best brands on Twitter do one of two things: post relevant information at a steady pace for you to check out at your leisure (see: feeds from websites or companies that have regularly-updating news) or use Twitter for one of its primary functions — as a means of communication.

In the former case, what you essentially get is a bit like an RSS feed relating to the product or company you’re interested in. In the latter case, you get some of the most helpful customer support I’ve ever had the pleasure to experience.

Take the poor souls over on the XboxSupport Twitter account, for example. These absolute saints have to deal with bombardments of questions every day, and somehow they still manage to remain polite, professional and — most importantly — get straight to the point. Ask them a question and they’ll do their best to answer you in a single tweet, and often very quickly, too. What you don’t get from them is vapid crowd-baiting questions or upselling suggestions to check out/buy additional products.

A lot of other companies have cottoned on to this in the last couple of years. I was particularly impressed with Orange’s support Twitter account, which helpfully resolved an issue I had tried (and failed) on several occasions to sort out over the phone. Xbox Support, too, have been great, and I’m sure there’s plenty of other examples out there.

I suppose there’s a lesson in all this somewhere. I should probably resist that inviting-looking Like button at the top of Facebook pages I can see are filled with vapid nonsense, and stick to only following things that actually provide useful information. Otherwise all that ends up happening is you feel completely burned out by the multisensory marketing bombardment you experience on a daily basis — and you end up hating things that you formerly liked. (Sorry, Mass Effect. It’s not you, it’s me.)

#oneaday Day 562: If We Haven’t Announced It, It Doesn’t Exist

I don’t agree with everything Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera writes, but he was right on the money with this piece right here. Marketing plans are starting to rule the world, and not just in the games industry — though given my intimate familiarity with it, that’s what I’ll be particularly focusing on here.

I remember the early days of gaming. There were no carefully-orchestrated reveals, no countdown websites (largely because there were no websites) and no pre-order incentives. And it was good. Sometimes you’d hear through a magazine that developer X had just had a great idea for a new game, and it sounded interesting, but they didn’t have anything to show yet because it was just an idea. That was cool — it gave you an insight into the creative process and didn’t always come to anything. That was cool, too — cancelled games passed into the stuff of legend and became myths.

I’ve been trying to pin down exactly what it is that bugs me about all this, and I think it’s the whole element of “you can’t talk about this until we say so”. Embargoes are the bane of the games journalist, particularly when, as in some cases, you find yourself seeing a game literally months before you’re allowed to publish anything about it. There is absolutely no reason for this to happen in an online world of immediate information — particularly with the growing number of leaks that spring from developers presumably frustrated with the shackles that PR firms place around their necks.

The problem with the whole thing is perhaps best summed up by Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford stating “if we haven’t announced it, it doesn’t exist.” Why on Earth should that be the case? What a way to disrespect your development team, who are probably quite proud of what they’re working on. What a way to insult the intelligence of the public. And what a pointless exercise — in this case it was less than a day between Eurogamer breaking the story that Borderlands 2 was “probably” on the way and Take-Two announcing that Borderlands 2 was on the way. Pitchford called this “shoddy journalism” when in fact it was the exact opposite — reporters should go off-piste from time to time, as they’re not PR mouthpieces — PR mouthpieces are!

As one who reports on the news in the industry, I come face to face with this sort of thing every day. Don’t get me wrong — I very much enjoy reporting on new announcements and helping drum up excitement for new products. There is always something going on in the industry, whether it’s a small developer putting out an interesting-looking iPhone game or a massive publisher announcing a new means through which they’re attempting to bum-burgle used game customers.

I know why it happens of course — it’s so competitors don’t get to find out their awesome new features and then put out a better version. But in all seriousness, there’s a whole load of generic military shooters out there already — keeping the fact that New York gets attacked in one/both/all of them isn’t going to change that fact. Ironically, the most original titles are often the ones who are most open and humble about their innovations.

As a consumer, the constant parade of cock-teasers is inordinately frustrating and is causing me to shy further and further away from mainstream entertainment in my own free time. In recent years, the titles I’ve got most excited about are the ones that weren’t embargoed, the ones where developers were open about what they were up to and the ones where I could find out things about the game at my own pace by doing some research and trawling through developer websites — not by following some schedule that the marketing department had dreamed up. Recettear, Chantelise, Groove Coaster, Pocket Academy, Breath of Death VII, Cthulhu Saves the World, Dungeons of Dredmor, Minecraft — these are the games I’m excited about and it’s perhaps no coincidence that most of them are independently developed and published titles. All of them either suddenly appeared out of nowhere without months of cock-teasing, or were extensively documented by their creators during development. I can only imagine how satisfying it will be for Notch and his team when Minecraft is finally released to the public and they have a complete and public record of the entire development process which they can look back on and think “Yes. We did that.”

The only exception to this rule in my case is Catherine, which Atlus carefully drip-fed information out to the public about, but, notably, didn’t stop people talking about the Japanese version which had come out some months earlier — including a playable demo. By the time the reviews for the game came out, I’d already made up my mind — I wanted to play that game, and a review wasn’t going to change my mind. I’d played the Japanese demo and was intrigued by it. I was interested in seeing what the Persona team made of adult relationships, and I liked the idea of the story being married to something other than a typical JRPG. I felt like I was making an informed choice, not the choice that PR wanted me to make. Even then, as a European I still have to wait until Deep Silver bring the game over — by which time most of my American buddies will have played and beaten the game and will have already discussed it.

It’s difficult to say whether this situation will continue — it seems that most weeks I see journalist friends suffering some sort of embargo frustration, or gamer friends fed up with the constant prick-teasing of countdown sites and “exclusive reveals” during sports events they weren’t going to watch anyway. But it must at least be having an effect because it seems to be the model to follow these days.

I miss the days of bedroom programmers selling cassette tapes at car boot sales and type-in listings from magazines. Can we have those days back, please?

#oneaday, Day 176: Real-World Spam

A while back, when I was feeling rather more positive and “I can do anything!” I was hoping to support myself through a combination of freelance writing, music teaching and computer tuition. As such, I set up some websites, I took out some adverts with Yell, Thomson and the like and waited for the customers to come rolling in.

No-one did. I got one pupil for some GCSE tuition and a couple of timewasters on the music front, and nothing at all on the computer tuition front.

Actually, that’s not quite true. I have got one thing out it all. MASSES AND MASSES OF FUCKING HARASSMENT FROM TWATS.

I had no idea that advertising one’s services on Yell would lead to such a bombardment of crap from people who obviously haven’t read your advert. Every single day, I get a ton of identical bullshit through my letterbox, all informing me that “recruiting a new salesman is difficult” and that I should clearly defer to their superior judgement. The bizarre thing is that all these “salesman finding specialists”, or whatever the hell they are, seem to have written the exact same letter. And none of them have considered the fact that someone offering “IT tuition” probably doesn’t need a salesman, because he probably isn’t selling anything.

It didn’t stop there, either. The phone calls! Jesus Christ, the phone calls. One woman from Yell phoned me regularly. The first time, I woke up to her phone call on the sofa the morning after my wife and I had split. Not recognising the number, not thinking particularly straight and hoping it might be something job-related, I answered it. I was immediately embroiled in one of those sales pitches that it’s impossible to escape from, or get a word in edgeways. I placated her with a promise that I’d “think about it”. Foolish. I should have just said “no”. Because “I’ll think about it” translated to “Please phone me! A lot!”. Funny thing about a five-year relationship coming to a sudden and unexpected end; you don’t think particularly straight immediately after it has happened. (Or months afterward, as it happens. At least if you’re me.)

Then there was “Nathan”. Nathan represented some local school who was nowhere near my potential “catchment area” for music pupils. He wanted me to pay him £200 for two years’ exposure in the school’s brochure. Said exposure would take the form of a tiny little advert that was, as I say, only visible to a select group of people who were nowhere near me. But Nathan wouldn’t take no for an answer. Nor would he give up after two weeks of me not answering the phone at all. I dialed “1571” to check my messages one day, and there were ten new ones, all from Nathan, all starting in the exact same way. Get the hint.

In some ways, the tenacity of these people is admirable. But it’s also extremely irritating. You can be a good marketer without pissing people off. These people failed miserably.

So the moral of this story is twofold. 1) Don’t advertise anything with “IT” in its title unless you want to be bombarded with mail from pricks who don’t read your ads. 2) Say “no” when you mean “no”.