How Promotions Can Ruin Community Created Content

The following issue is something that I have seen in a number of different communities.  It seems that tech and gaming communities are the easiest to exploit though.  The problem that I am speaking of is promotional content.  Sponsored videos or articles in exchange for free products, prerelease coverage, promotion, and exposure.  No matter how much people can say that free product won’t affect their review, most of the time it does.  

This issue really came to a breaking point for me whenever I was watching YouTube and an ad played.  This ad was for the Samsung Galaxy S8 but it was different than others that I have seen before.  The video ad was a compilation of YouTube videos of people giving glowing reviews of the Galaxy S8 phone.  It was a cherry-picked compilation from content creators that were undoubtedly sent the phone early and for free in exchange for a review.  They also might have been made aware that if they reviewed the phone dramatically enough or positively enough then they would be featured in the upcoming ad campaign.  Do you see where the trust of the viewer in the content creator could easily crumble?

Companies typically outsource the giving away of free products to contractors who choose who to give product to.  The main goal of these contractors is not to get honest opinions for the next model of phone or the next update to a video game.  It is to market the product.  “What difference does it make?” you might say.  It makes a whole lot of difference.  The companies are no longer in a stage where they can change anything and the goal of getting content creators onboard is to market the product.  This means that if a content creator is known for their honesty and impartial opinion, they are less likely to receive free products.  Instead, they can send review product to fanboy channels or overly positive channels and drum up the most amount of positive results possible.  Mix this with the normal lack of disclosure and honesty on the part of the content creators, and you have a very misled customer. 

The depth of this cynical (while logical) business plan goes further than face value.  If you are a content creator that creates for a living, it is in your best interest to agree to marketing deals.  You get products early so you get all the early clicks and views.  You might be hard for cash so you get money or free items for your work.  There are a lot of upsides to review a product positively if you receive one.  If you review a poor product honestly, you could get blacklisted by a publisher which means your growth is going to stagnate.  While Jim Sterling is a great journalist, his growth has suffered because he never gets games early because companies know that they can’t win his favor with free product.  

Over a long period of time, this means that platforms like YouTube become crowded with creators willing to give positive reviews to anything they get. On the other side of that coin, honest channels are slowly pushed out of the algorithm because they consistently get products after launch and review them up to a week after

So what is the solution?  I don't know.  I didn't write this to act like I know what to do about the issue.  I have no idea.  Dishonest coverage is a positive feedback loop with really no downside.  If people had more of a moral compass, this wouldn't be an issue but unless everyone had a change of heart at once, people will be slowly moved into irrelevance by not getting the products early and reviewing them before release.  The only thing that we can do is support those people that make trustworthy content and call out those who are reviewing things positively while clearly glazing over glaring and indisputable flaws. 

I will be working on an investigative piece in effort to compile all the outlets/indie journalists who received review copies of a certain game and comparing it to those of people who reviewed the game without review copies.  I think my theory will be proven true but I’ll go where the facts take me.  The game in question will be Oceanhorn for Nintendo Switch.  I am going to try and find out what outlets got the game as a promo deal and which outlets got the game after launch and reviewed it.  I will be analyzing the following data (disclosure of promotion, content release date, views, subscribers, review score or reaction, recommendation).  

The reason that I chose this game was that I personally found it to be a mess with reused assets, graphical and mechanical glitches and a boring storyline that literally put me to sleep in the middle of a play session.  I have heard some people say it ranks as one of the best games they have ever played and others say it's a Zelda clone that does it worse and also brings nothing new to the table.  Follow me on twitter to keep updated with the progress of the project.  That is all for now.  Thanks for showing up guys.