FTC vs. Bloggers… FIGHT!
The Federal Trade Commission today released a document (PDF) outlining some new rules that go into effect on December 1st, the first revision of its rules regarding endorsements and product reviews since 1980. There’s some stuff in there about celebrities being able to be held liable for false claims that they make in endorsements, but the bit that’s got the internets in a huff has to do with regulating what can (and must) be said by bloggers.
Basically, if you’re pretending to be an objective reviewer of a product or service, but you’re actually being compensated in some way for posting positive reviews, the FTC can slap you with a fine of up to $11,000 per violation if you don’t disclose that compensation up front.
On the face of it, it’s an excellent modification to rules that were written back when the closest things we had to blogs were mimeographed and stapled fanzines. It’s the 21st century equivalent of forcing an advertiser to put a little “ADVERTISEMENT” banner at the top and bottom of a newspaper ad that’s formatted to look like an article.
And quite honestly, the online world probably needs something of the sort—especially in the video game industry. If you’ve never worked as a game reviewer (particularly in a staff position at a magazine), your mind would be blown by the sheer volume of swag that gets thrown your way by PR folks who desperately need you to say something great about a game that might not be.
image © Cnet.com
The most egregious example I ever came across in my own career was back in 2000, when I was working as a News Editor for a gaming magazine that no longer exists:
A European game publisher who had the rights to make games based on a famous athlete flew me and about a dozen other U.S. journalists across the Atlantic on their own dime and put us up for a long weekend. Ostensibly, it was a press junket to visit the company’s offices and see the titles they had in development, but in reality, it was a three-day party. As soon as we got the three or four hours of previewing the company’s games out of the way, it was nothing but clubbing, fancy dining, lots of drinking and VIP seats to see their celebrity athlete compete.
When I got back to the States and had to write up the previews of the games I’d seen, I found myself in a predictable quandary: the games that they showed me weren’t very good at all, particularly their big-money athlete’s game. At the same time, I did feel a tremendous sense of gratitude for my all-expenses-paid European vacation.
I tried not to let that affect my previews—which are generally written from an optimistic perspective as a rule, since they’re not reviews of finished products—but I couldn’t swear that I was as objective as I would have been had the company just sent me builds of the games to play in the office. And when it came time to review them, I handed the duties off to someone else. So my conscience is fairly clear on that front, but I know that some of my peers chose not to take the same route.
However, as well intentioned as these new rules are, there are a number of points of concern. Dan Gillmor sums up some of them in an excellent piece posted yesterday on Mediactive:
First, the new system is unworkable in practice, which is bad enough. Worse, the rules are worryingly vague and wide-ranging. Worse yet, they appear to give traditional print and broadcast journalists a pass while applying harsh regulations to bloggers (and others using conversational media of various kinds). Worst and most important, they are, in the end, an attack on markets and free speech, based on a 20th Century notion of media and advertising that simply doesn’t map to the new era.
The advertising of the past was a one-to-many system. Call it broadcasting. The Internet is a many-to-many system. Call that conversation. They are not the same.
As an example, what’s the protocol if one of my game designer friends sends me a free copy of their latest game, which I legitimately happen to like, and I want to tweet about it? 140 characters doesn’t leave much room for me to disclose that I was given free merchandise that may or may not have influenced my opinion.
image © Kotaku.com.au
Similarly, what constitutes “compensation?” The FTC says that free product counts as compensation, but where’s the cutoff? Is the aforementioned example of a free copy of a game enough to meet that threshold? Obviously, you need a copy of the game to be able to review it, and a boxed retail copy will only make you a few bucks if you sell it when you’re done with it. Or is it a volume thing? I know plenty of people in the industry who are on so many comp lists that they haven’t bought a game in years; if they’re not sent a game that they want for free, they have plenty to trade in for enough credit to buy it outright.
I’m reassured by the fact that the FTC is saying that they’re more likely to go after advertisers rather than bloggers, and that they’re focusing on educating and informing everyone of the rules change, instead of leading off with a slew of fines. But at a certain point, these rules need to be enforced if they’re to have any teeth, and that’s when we all need to be vigilant about how that’s done and ready to kick up a fuss if necessary.
Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
Now this is service: the same day that Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days hits retail shelves, I get a FedEx delivery of my comp copies of the guide, which I co-wrote with strategy guide vet (and all-around top-notch human) Dan Birlew.
image © Bryan Stratton
Once again, BradyGames‘ design team outdid themselves with a clean, attractive layout that doesn’t feel shoehorned into a generic template. It’s got plenty of room to breathe, which is essential for such a dense game, but it also doesn’t feel stretched to fill its 320 pages.
Many thanks to Dan, as well as Tim Cox, Leigh Davis, Michael Owen, Keith Lowe and everyone else at Brady for really knocking this one out of the park, and especially to Jeremy Blaustein, who provided some last-minute translation heroics that helped me hit deadline.
image © GameSpot
Oh, and congrats to Square-Enix on another great KH title, which I’m happy to see is already getting some good reviews.
Shadow Complex
Last entry of the day. My friend Christian wrote a simply amazing piece for Gamasutra.com on whether or not progressive-minded gamers should consider boycotting Shadow Complex, a game based on concepts from author Orson Scott Card, who is an active campaigner against gay rights.
From the article:
While I feel passionately about the issue — it’s a matter of public record on my personal blog, Twitter, and Facebook, which are all read by members of the industry — it has nothing to do with “The Art & Business of Making Games”, which is Gamasutra’s mission and motto.
What does, however, is an examination of a boycott of a game, arising because some members of the gaming community feel strongly that one of the creative talents behind it is too strongly linked to a political cause.
My delight at reading such a thoughtful piece of true gaming journalism is equalled only by my disappointment that it’s such an exception to the rule. Hopefully the games biz will continue to grow and mature to the point where that’s no longer the case.
Secret Origins
Another blast from the past, courtesy of Google. In the summer of 2004, I wrote an article celebrating the 20th anniversary of the comics store where I spent the better part of my growing-up years in Barre, VT. It was published in Burlington, VT’s Seven Days, the alt-weekly newspaper that published my very first professional work (a review of a Sex Pistols reunion show) in 1996.
7D wasn’t interested in just another “local business survives two decades” story, so they asked me to contribute my reminiscences of how I became a comics fan and what an influence the proprietor, Mark Patterson, had on my life. I eagerly accepted the challenge, which gave me the opportunity to add about about 50% more schmaltz to the piece than originally planned. It’s sappy, it’s highly sentimental and it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever done.
image © Mark Patterson
A Bit of the Old Ultra-Violence
The game that I’m currently wrapping up the strategy guide for has just been banned in Australia due to excessive violence. It’s also excessively awesome. The two are not unrelated.
Something I Posted On SuicideGirls.com
I warmed up my writing synapses this morning by wading into a discussion about Joe Francis, the Girls Gone Wild douchebag, on SuicideGirls.com (not at all safe for work). I’m reposting what I wrote here, because if the past is any indication, I’ll probably have my SG account canceled by the end of the week.
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Not that I’m trying to say that this is an apples-to-apples situation, but…
I have several friends who shot sets for this site and other reputable “female empowering” alt-porn sites when they were in their late teens or very early 20′s. They were paid a pittance and signed away all rights to the photos, because it was a scene that they wanted to be a part of, and because when you’re 19, $100 can make the difference between coming up with your part of the rent or not. (Or it can buy you a fairly substantial bag of weed or a tiny amount of coke. I’m not saying all these girls leapt off of the pages of Les Miserables. Although I do have a great story about a dancer I knew who stripped to save her farm…)
After these friends of mine did a little growing up and wanted to pursue more mainstream careers, they tried to get the sites to remove their photos. Despite the fact that the sites had gotten much, much more than their money’s worth from the sets, the sites refused to comply. One even sold their archives in bulk to other, less reputable sites, with the only condition being that they had to change the screen names of the girls. The sites did nothing illegal, and they were well within their contractual rights to do these things, but it definitely ran contrary to their mission statements.
Now, $100 isn’t a t-shirt and a trucker cap. And creating a scene that people want to be a part of isn’t plying them with liquor and coercing them into taking their clothes off. And even if you’re only 19, you should be smart enough to realize that maybe in 10 years, you might want to run for the local school board and not want pictures of your boobies floating around on the internets.
But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that SG and similar sites exist solely to empower women and create great erotic art any more than Joe Francis produces Girls Gone Wild to promote women’s freedom of expression. At the end of the day, despite the gulf of differences that separates them, both rely on horny guys paying to see young women’s naked bits to pay the bills.
And if this is the last post anyone sees from me, it’s because my account got suspended right after I posted this.
For Mom
What do you do when you’re asked to review a game that you have no interest in? Turn the review into a story about your mom instead.
Old School vs. New School
It has now been scientifically proven that there’s nothing quite like the smug sense of contentment that comes of being an English major:
Media Studies and other trendy ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees ‘leave students disatisfied’
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got 30 more pages of Ulysses to get through in order to hone my witty cocktail party banter. Pinkies out, gentlemen, pinkies out.
Zing!
Four of my five reviews of the ludicrously bad Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer games just went up on GameSpy.com. Best line from the Wii/PS2 review: “It’s the videogame equivalent of watching your dog being run over, with worse production values.”
SDvR 2007 Is Out!
The last game I wrote the scripts and dialogue for, WWE SmackDown vs. Raw 2007, has just been released, and it’s getting some pretty decent reviews, which is always good news for those of us who enjoy the prospect of continued employment.
FUN FACT 1: The most-discussed storyline in the game is the one I didn’t come up with. I lay the blame for the “Candice Michelle turns male wrestlers into women with her magic wand” story squarely at the feet of my former script supervisor, who was either having a moment of pure insanity or pure genius. In retrospect, some might see it as him leaving a metaphorical turd on the desk of the company he was getting ready to leave, although he’s far too much of a pro to do something like that intentionally. I think.
FUN FACT 2: One of the storylines in the game featured former WWE Superstar Christian in a major role. As soon as I finished my first draft of the script, Christian opted not to renew his WWE contract and instead jumped to TNA (new, upstart rasslin’ company). We replaced him in the script with Eddie Guerrero, who died shortly after the second draft of the script was finished. Johnny Nitro was our third choice for the story, so if something awful happens to him, you know why.
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