games-and-social-media-blog

[games-and-social-media-blog]

The Digital Suicide of Digital Homicide

By n9462716

Social Media can often be a double-edged sword. It has incredible potential to be used to market a product or service, to build a community and a loyal fanbase that can be directly interacted on a personal level that was simply not possible two decades ago. Followers on social media can then be turned into consumers and even be convinced to invite their friends. On the other hand, companies are often under far more scrutiny and even a poorly worded tweet can have disastrous effects on their reputation.

This case study will be focusing on a blunder made by Digital Homicide. For those not familiar, Digital Homicide is an Indie Video Game Developer/Publisher (also previously known as Imminent Uprising), and once had many released games on Steam, a popular PC game distribution platform. When popular youtuber, Jim Sterling, uploaded a video criticising their game, The Slaughtering Grounds, Digital Homicide were none too pleased and decided to strike back. In his video, Sterling criticised the quality of the game, claiming it had poorly implemented mechanics, confusing controls, and a lack of coherent art direction, whilst gameplay footage provided evidence for his points. He expressed his outrage that a game could be sold in such a state, and called it a ‘total failure’ (Sterling, 2014). Digital Homicide followed up this with a review of his ‘review’, which was simply Sterling’s video, but with text overlayed on top of it, written in the first person pretending to speak as him, and making many disparaging comments and even insulting his person, calling him a “f*cking idiot”, and blaming him for not playing the game correctly. The developer also changed the name of their steam account to “JimFnSterlingSon”. Sterling responded by reviewing their review of his video, and going through and addressing the comments they made (Sterling, 2014). Digital Homicide followed that up by reuploading Sterling’s review of their review of his ‘review’, this time just as text with the audio of his voice, and this time claimed that Sterling and other reviewers are leeches, and contribute nothing to the community. Both of Digital Homicide’s videos have since been deleted, but the second has been reuploaded by Sterling on his youtube (Digital Homicide, 2014).

Fig1. The video that started it all (Sterling, 2014)

Eventually Digital Homicide decided to simply issue a DMCA takedown notice on Sterling’s original video, to have it removed from youtube. They defended the move in a Steam post that has now been deleted, but has been archived here (Mannion, 2014). Sterling managed to get his video reinstated after two weeks.

The back-and-forth continued for some time, until eventually Digital Homicide filed a civil lawsuit against Sterling, claiming ten counts of libel (Cosimano, 2016). From here the story becomes even more convoluted, as they also attempted to sue 100 anonymous steam users for leaving negative comments on their games and forums, and threatened Valve, the creators of Steam, after they removed Digital Homicide and all their games from their platform in response (Good, 2016).  

Fig2. This video by Sterling explains all the events that led up to and including the lawsuit against him (Sterling, 2017)

Now while this is all horrible, today we’re just going to focus on their earlier transgressions, and outline where they really went wrong. Video games, like any other works of art, are often subjected to harsh critique. Sterling’s was only a 10 minute, first impressions video and no true critique, as he stated multiple times, yet Digital Homicide still claimed his ‘review’ was an unfair attack. There have been many cases where other developers have been called out for releasing games that have been flawed, and in some cases in a broken state, and when those problems aren’t legitimately addressed, developers generally have more sense than to defend and argue for them. In the case of Mass Effect Andromeda which released with numerous bugs and animation glitches, Bioware released a blogpost outlining how they would fix the game and what changes players could expect in the future (Flynn, 2017). Digital Homicide decided instead to lash out at the offending party, throwing childish insults and sarcastic comments. Not only that but they did so very publicly, changing their public steam name to mock Sterling and admitting on that page that they were behind the original response video.

Fig3. Bioware’s response after they received for Mass Effect Andromeda (Flynn, 2017)

Crisis Management is a very important concept that many fledgling companies seem to struggle with, but Digital Homicide failed spectacularly at this. When dealing with a crisis or aggressive users (which it is important to note, was not quite the case here), the basic steps that should be followed are: Acknowledge the problem; Respond to concerns in a way that is transparent and specific; Apologise and never argue back; avoid referral to offline channels; Outline any steps that will be taken in the future, and create a crisis FAQ (Cassidy, 2017).

Digital Homicide failed each of these. Never once did they acknowledge the problem, insisting that Sterling was at fault. They responded to concerns, but did so in a way to further the conflict and not settle it. They refused to apologise, and indeed demanded they be apologised to in court should they win the lawsuit. And as they never truly intended to ‘manage’ this crisis, they never reached the final two steps. Worse still was their insistence on pushing their view. By showing the community that they were steadfast in their stance, and refusing to back down, accept their mistake, and take responsibility for their game or their actions afterwards, they completely botched the first three steps of crisis management, and cemented themselves in pop-culture. Countless popular youtubers all covered the topic, especially as the lawsuit broke out, seeing it as a case that could potentially change the entire YouTube landscape for better or worse depending on the outcome. Eventually it was discovered by some that the game used copyrighted assets in the logo, and that the blood textures that covered the screen in game to signify low health, were ripped straight from Google Images and poorly edited to remove the white background (Jones, 2014).

Fig4. The image from Google Images (left) and the blood textures from in game (right)

This built up distrust and dislike within the community, and turned many against Digital Homicide when before they would simply not have cared, and drew much negative attention towards them. By stepping into the public sphere and creating this less than savoury image for themselves, and allowing the virality of a ‘Developer gone mad’ to take hold of the community, Digital Homicide did far more damage to themselves than Sterling ever did.

But let’s quickly talk why the brothers at Digital Homicide may have acted the way they did. It's entirely possible the company being family run might have had something to do with their reaction. Both brothers attacked Sterling personally, and seemed to take any criticisms personally in turn. Presence Bleed is a concept that affects many workers, and is due to a blurring between a person’s personal and professional life, resulting in them being unable to separate the two, and sometimes becoming overly attached to aspects of their professional life in a personal way. Melissa Gregg stats that Presence Bleed occurs when “firm boundaries between personal and professional identities no longer apply” (Gregg, 2013). Maintaining a strict work/life balance is integral to maintaining a functioning professional career, and both brothers in this case seemed to fail to follow such a balance, thus potentially resulting in their professional life bleeding into their private life, and causing them to view their game through rose-tinted glasses.

Fig5. The Romine Brother’s very clearly became very attached to their work

Now let’s consider how Digital Homicide should have approached this situation. Some might argue that simply remaining silent would have been the better solution, and indeed compared to the actions they had taken, it would be. But coming infront of the situation would give them the ability to turn negative publicity into positive publicity. By following the rules of Crisis Management as detailed by Cassidy, the first step would be for acknowledge the problem and respond transparently with specifics. A blog post, a post on the steam forums, or even a youtube video would work well for this. A blog post would be easier to get through and share, but a video could show increased dedication, especially if you unveil the person working behind the games. The post would be apologetic in nature, would address and acknowledge the problem, and would outline steps that would be taken to rectify some, if not all, key issues. By being honest and upfront in this manner, the public perception would be changed from a company that makes bad games, to a company that cares about its products and its consumers, which could greatly impact future sales and reception. Of course this would have to be followed by legitimate efforts to fix the game and make it better, which Digital Homicide seemed unwilling to do, but without it, any words would eventually fall on deaf ears as consumers realised that they just words, with no action behind them.

This has been a deep insight into Digital Homicide, but it’s clear that the entire situation was made far worse than it had to be, due to blunders made by the studio in how they tackled criticism, and their unwillingness to see things differently. Had they approached the criticism openly and addressed their problems, the result might have been far different for them.

References

Sterling, J. (2014). SLAUGHTERING GROUNDS - New 'Worst Game Of 2014' Contender. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfI7pAaOH9c

Sterling, J. (2014). SLAUGHTERING GROUNDS DEVELOPER MELTDOWN INCEPTION SPECIAL. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WT0GSPxf0vw

Digital Homicide. (2014). Digital Homicide's second response to Jim Sterling. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXcPiy9g4UQ

Mannion, G. (2014). Game developer issues take down notice against Jim Sterling. Critical Hit. Retrieved 29 May 2017, from http://www.criticalhit.net/gaming/game-developer-issues-take-down-notice-against-jim-sterling/

Cosimano, M. (2016). Indie developer Digital Homicide sues Jim Sterling. Destructoid. Retrieved 28 May 2017, from https://www.destructoid.com/indie-developer-digital-homicide-sues-jim-sterling-349283.phtml

Good, O. (2016). Steam removes games of developer seeking subpoena for users' information (Correction). Polygon. Retrieved 28 May 2017, from https://www.polygon.com/2016/9/17/12951756/digital-homicide-lawsuit-jim-sterling-steam-users-valve

Sterling, J. (2017). When Jim Sterling Was Sued For $10 Million By Digital Homicide (The Jimquisition). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qS-LXvhy1Do

Cassidy, E. (2017). KCB206 Social Media, Self and Society: Lecture 8 [Slides]. Retrieved from https://blackboard.qut.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_133419_1&content_id=_6696662_1

Jones, B. (2014). You Might Want to Avoid ‘The Slaughtering Grounds’ Mess. Game Rant. Retrieved 30 May 2017, from https://gamerant.com/the-slaughtering-grounds-jim-sterling/

[games-and-social-media-blog]

A Society of Gamers

Social Media has radically changed the way we as people interact with the world, and each other. But it has also had a sizeable impact on businesses, giving them a way to instantly reach potentially millions of consumers with their message of ‘150 or less characters’. Today we will be focusing specifically on the impact social media has had on the Video Game Industry, and Game Developers.

Many companies nowadays have a social media division that manages social media accounts and interacts with customers, generally on platforms like twitter. Video Games Studios are no different, though strangely, Game Developers also often have some form of online presence. Sometimes a developer’s personal account simply gains popularity in the public sphere and becomes sort of an unofficial mouthpiece for the company and the game. Either way this often puts them at the forefront of the public image, and gives them a greater amount of control over how their company and game is viewed. Companies often present a very septic and clean image of themselves, but developer’s actively taking to social media reminds fans that there are real human people working behind the scenes. And in such a creatively driven field this is especially important, because it allows the consumers to relate to the creators and for the creators to learn about the consumers and better direct and market their product.

Take for example Bioware Creative Director for the Mass Effect series, Mac Walters. With 19.7k followers on his Twitter, he doesn’t have anywhere near the same reach as the official Mass Effect account which has 786k followers, but despite that he has created a very loyal community that hang on his every word and often get to interact with him directly, as he answers player’s questions, and addresses their concerns and critiques.

Fig 1. Walters replies to a fans question regarding problems with Bioware’s latest game Mass Effect Andromeda.

The sort of presence bleed between a developer’s personal identity online, and their role as a professional game developer can have potentially hazardous consequences, causing developers to have to maintain that level of professionalism and be available for their consumers online, even during their personal down time. However, this sort of relationship between developer and gamer would not have been possible 20 years ago, and now it allows them to get information out there on a more personal level to a community of interested individuals that can provide the sort of instant feedback that can be invaluable to someone in such a subjective creative position.

 Video Game marketing has evolved quite a bit over the last decade, and has become a lot more mainstream as Video Games become normalised in society. However in interesting development has occurred regarding the online participatory culture revolving around the sharing of consumption of games. Youtube is a platform mostly centered this idea of a participatory demography, relying on it’s users to create video content that Youtube can then monetise. Video Creators can also then see a percentage of that ad revenue, allowing them to potentially make a living off having an online video presence. As a result, there is a large subsection of the site that is focused on video game content, ranging from “Let’s Plays”, to reviews, to comedic and even parody videos either containing footage of games, or entirely new user created content. While this sort of transformative play has become very popular, what’s more interesting is can be explained by this study Google undertook to understand gamers and their consumption of youtube videos. The study states that 95% of gamers watch videos about games, and that the most popular (most engaged by the community) videos are not brand-released content, such as trailers or announcements, but rather reviews made by third-parties or even in-house youtubers (Getomer, Okimoto, Johnsmeyer, 2013).

Fig2. A review on the video game Destiny by youtuber AngryJoe is one of the most viewed videos on youtube regarding the game with over 8 million views.

The above review of a popular multiplayer shooter game, Destiny, has been viewed by more than 8 million people since it was uploaded to years ago, soon after the release of the game. The reviewer, AngryJoe has built up a reputation for being scathingly honest with games, and adding skits to his reviews to entertain viewers while he informs them. This particular video by him also has 157 thousand likes and 36 thousand comments, boasting a very high level of engagement with viewers.

What this means for Video games and the industry is that more and more gamers are getting their information about a game from online videos, specifically reviews, but also community created game power entertainment, which took 39% of the views for all console game related videos. Furthermore, 47% of these views were claimed by community-made content, meaning that “community-created videos effectively doubled the amount of views the top selling games would have received through brand-released content alone” (Getomer, Okimoto, Johnsmeyer, 2013). This has a potentially huge impact on the marketing of the industry and its approach to video game marketing, when considering the percentage of gamers that view gaming videos. The surge of user created content regarding games has led some developers to take active steps to incentivise that sort of participatory behaviour. The creators of a game called “Polybridge”, a studio called “Dry Cactus”, added a simple GIF sharing function to their game, allowing users to with the press of a button quickly and easily share their creations and their experiences in the game with other. Developer Patrick Corrieri attributed much of the success of the game to this and goes on to explain that despite little marketing, the feature resulted in a ripple effect through social media, creating a very unexpected feedback loop (Corrieri, 2016). By encouraging a participatory culture through a very easy one click share of a player’s experience with in the community, the developers were able to reach far more potential consumers and increased the longevity of the game.

 As the gap between developer and gamer closes, and communities grow around games, genres, and even content-creators such as youtubers, developers are finding it increasingly difficult to get away with the sort of behaviour that might have gone unchecked 20 years ago.  When a developer is perceived to have stepped out of line, community justice can be swift and decisive.

Take Mass Effect Andromeda as an example. The game, which was released late March, shipped with several glaring issues, the most commonly hated being the facial animations of human characters during cutscenes. The community very clearly did not approve, and through countless tweets, online videos, reddit threads and forum posts, they showed Bioware that they were not content. Gif’s, clips and screenshots of the, sometimes hilarious, results of the games animations spread quickly across the internet and the game became ‘meme-ified’. 2 weeks after release Bioware released a blog post apologising and explaining their plan for action, and a few days later a patch was implemented which fixed a lot of the complaints gamers had had with the animation.

Fig3. A few of the videos uploaded onto youtube that address the facial animations of Mass Effect Andromeda

 On the flip side, there is the case of Video Game publisher/developer, “Digital Homicide”. Popular youtuber, Jim Sterling, made a video in 2014 where he criticised their game “Slaughtering Grounds”. In the video he showcased some gameplay, along with many broken and poorly implemented systems and expressed his outrage that such a game could find its way onto the market, labelling it an “absolute failure”. The developers responded by reuploading his video, but this time with text overlayed on top, pretending to speak as Sterling and insulting him and blaming him for his lack of enjoyment. 

Fig4. A video by Jim Sterling explains to his fans the situation between himself and “Digital Homicide”.

This eventually escalated to the developers pulling his video off youtube, citing fair use, and attempting to sue him for damages in excess of $10m, concerning counts of libel, slander and also assault. They also went so far as to attempt to sue 100 steam users that had left negative reviews on their game’s page for $18m, and were then kicked off steam by Valve, who were then the targets of a series of blog posts courtesy of the developers. This entire process lasted 3 years, only being settled a few months ago, however it is due to the community of gamers that rose in support of Sterling, that the youtuber came out on top. The virality of a ‘Developer gone mad’ took hold of the gaming community, and together they proved that game developers very much still answer to their consumers and that their image in the public sphere mattered very much.

 The Video Games industry has progressed far in the last two decades, and social media has played no small part in that, allowing for a whole new kinda of developer/gamer interaction, allowing entirely new communities and cultures to rise around community-created content through the transformative play of video games and giving gamers the power to hold developers to a higher standard and make their demands clear. Where we go from here remains to be seen.

References:

Barilla, C. (2016). How game developers can use social media integration to contribute to emergent play. Gamasutra.com. Retrieved 5 April 2017, from http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/ClaireBarilla/20160801/278227/How_game_developers_can_use_social_media_integration_to_contribute_to_emergent_play.php

Serge, D. (2015). Why is social media important to the gaming industry | DOZ. DOZ. Retrieved 8 April 2017, from http://www.doz.com/social-media/social-media-gaming-industry

Walters, M. [macwalterslives]. (2017, Mar 23). Definitely taking a look at these issues, and others. We take them seriously. We'll have more details soon. https://t.co/sCL2GzTG2B [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/macwalterslives/status/844912966466228225

Scholz, T. (2013). Digital labor (1st ed., p. 5). New York: Routledge.

Getomer, J., Okimoto, M., & Johnsmeyer, B. (2017). GAMERS ON YOUTUBE (1st ed.). Google. Retrieved from https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://ssl.gstatic.com/think/docs/youtube-marketing-to-gamers_articles.pdf

Vargas, J. (2014). Destiny Angry Review. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzopWRXK_r4

Dry Cactus,. (2017). Poly Bridge and Social Media: A Love Story. Retrieved from http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023384/Poly-Bridge-and-Social-Media

Yongyea,. (2017). A Hard Look at Why Mass Effect: Andromeda's Facial Animation Looks So Bad. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB1vBEaDisI

BeastGaming,. (2017). MASS EFFECT ANDROMEDA ALL Funny Animations Compilation Funniest Moments. Retrieved from Yongyea,. (2017). A Hard Look at Why Mass Effect: Andromeda's Facial Animation Looks So Bad. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB1vBEaDisI

Harperlarp,. (2017). Mass Effect Andromeda's Awful Animations. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR2gsGFOmTY 

Yin-Poole, W. (2017). Jim Sterling comes out on top as lawsuit with Digital Homicide dismissed. Eurogamer.net. Retrieved 8 April 2017, from http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-02-22-long-running-lawsuit-between-jim-sterling-and-digital-homicide-finally-comes-to-an-end

Sterling, J. (2014). SLAUGHTERING GROUNDS - New 'Worst Game Of 2014' Contender. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfI7pAaOH9c