Blizzard’s ‘Diablo 4’ Q&A With Fans Got Real Weird, Real Fast
from the a-failure-to-communicate dept
Usually when we’re talking about companies engaging in astroturfing, it takes the form of companies or industry groups inputting comments supposedly from “the public” to support whatever thing they’re trying to accomplish. Utility groups creating a shell advocate organization to stifle reforms. Telecom companies employing astroturfers to smear an FCC nominee. Amazon cosplaying as a series of small businesses pretending to advocate against antitrust reforms. These are the types of things you think about when we talk about astroturfing.
But a video game media outlet accidentally (?) astroturfing its own Q&A that was supposed to answer fan’s questions about a game? Well, that appears to be what happened when Future Game Show on YouTube hosted a Q&A for Diablo 4, having stated that the questions came from fans. That’s when things got strange.
Last week a video was released featuring two senior developers working on Diablo IV: Associate Game Director Joseph Piepiora and Art Director John Mueller. In the clip the pair were presented with a series of questions from “fans”, which they answer at length, but it didn’t take long for some digging to find that the questions were… oddly specific.
Philtacular was watching and was among those who thought the questions were a little weird, though, and with the Future Game Show so helpfully providing each question-asker’s social media information, they looked up each one.
And what he, and others, found is that every account associated with the questions from the video was either a wildly old account with few tweets or followers, or else a brand new account that also had little in the way of engagement. And not just Twitter accounts, but Reddit accounts too, which don’t show any history as having asked anything like the questions they were supposed to have asked.
This has of course led to allegations that the questions were fabricated, a ruse that could at least partially be explained by the fact the FGS asked for community questions for a Diablo IV interview back on May 13 and…didn’t receive a single reply.
So what happened here? Well, Blizzard is washing its hands of the whole thing, stating that the media outlet, The Future Game Show channel on YouTube, was responsible for gathering the questions, per the reference to the tweet above. When FGS finally bothered to comment on the matter, it… kind of admitted it did something it shouldn’t have? In a way that… maybe you believe?
The intent of the video was for Diablo IV developers to react to and answer questions from the community. However, the questions we asked the developers were a mix of questions sourced from the Diablo 4 fanbase and from members of the FGS editorial team. Some of the community users (and our team members) that submitted these questions requested to be made anonymous and so had their usernames – and the platforms they were submitted on – changed for the purposes of this video.
The new user names were randomly generated, but on further investigation some of these relate to real accounts (albeit inactive accounts with very few posts or followers) that had nothing to do with the creation of this video.
That statement comes with a promise to make it more clear where questions are coming from in the future. Now, you’ll have to decide on our own if you buy that explanation from FGS. For what it’s worth, I find it all to be remarkably coincidental.
But if nothing else, you just can’t torpedo your own credibility like this if you’re a small media outlet.
Filed Under: astroturfing, diablo 4, future game show, q&a
Companies: activision blizzard
Comments on “Blizzard’s ‘Diablo 4’ Q&A With Fans Got Real Weird, Real Fast”
'Screwed up and owned it' is a lot better rep than 'screwed up and lied'
Some of the community users (and our team members) that submitted these questions requested to be made anonymous and so had their usernames – and the platforms they were submitted on – changed for the purposes of this video.
The new user names were randomly generated, but on further investigation some of these relate to real accounts (albeit inactive accounts with very few posts or followers) that had nothing to do with the creation of this video.
‘It was a complete coincidence that the questions from fans came from real people that we masked with randomly generated names that just so happened to tie to extremely old or extremely new dead social media accounts’.
Lying 101: Unless you’re trying to go the ‘that’s so crazy they can’t be lying’ route you should at least try to make your lies believable.
If they wanted to make the questions anonymous(which I’d be willing to believe) then they could have just changed the names to ‘Anonymous’. ‘Randomly’ generating names that tied to real accounts that were either old and dead or brand new just screams ‘we made the questions up and tried to make them look legitimate’.
Re:
This, exactly.
Who the heck is Future Game Show?
I’ve never even heard of them before, let alone that they were hosting a D4 Q&A, so there’s zero chance I’d have submitted any questions – and I did have a few about the game.
FGS
Maybe this article will generate more views for FGS.
*FGS, nor any of it’s affiliates (associates, and/or subordinates) is not responsible for this comment – nor any financial gain (either directly, indirectly) thereunto from now until the end of time.