Escapist Podcast: 091: Sega & Gearbox False Advertisement Suit

Namechangeday

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You know, being part/knowing people in the 16-20 years of age, [the interview thing] makes much sense. I see people everyday using cellphones in the class, even when the teacher scolds at them. I also see many teens still relying on their parents on lots of stuff even when they are in their 3rd/4th year of high school.
 

Andy Shandy

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Jun 7, 2010
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With regards to the whole Twitter thing - although this is coming from someone who didn't Tweet all that often until recently - I like to think I'm reasonably good at not annoying "famous" people on that. I tend to only reply to them if they're asking a question or perhaps just making a general statement.

To use a recent example (provided she doesn't mind), The Escapist's own Ashley Esqueda tweeted something about the band Them Crooked Vultures. Being a fan as well I said something about it in response and we had a short fun conversation between two fans of the same thing.

However, there has also been plenty more times where I've seen what is basically a conversation between two (or more, at times) people, so I've stayed out of it because butting in and going "THIS IS MY THING!" just seems like it would be irritating, unless it's helpful.
 

awdrifter

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I don't mind the off tangent rant from Susan because that's what I like about this podcast, the hosts has their personalities.

The audio in this episode is really bad though, I don't mind it if it's all low, but everyone's audio levels were ok expect for Josh, so I can't turn up the volume either. Please make sure your volumes are more even.

As for the lawsuits, they'll probably lose, but at least this raises the awareness of this kind of practices (at least for games) so that they won't pre-order so many crappy games. Just like voting EA as the worst company for 2 years in a row will give them some bad publicity.
 

s0osleepie

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MorganL4 said:
Also.... The USA Today article... Are you POSITIVE it wasn't a spoof?
100% positive! But don't take my word for it. Here is the link so you can check it out ;)

Okoi said:
Yeay! Janelle! Having you back for the podcat has just made my day.
Yay! Well, your comment just made my day, so now we are even :D
 

Okoi

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I have in fact seen someone text during their interview. They sat in their chair, slouched down and trying to hide their cell under the table. They also had listed on the resume under skills, 'destroying n00bs'. They also repeatedly used gaming terms and examples to answer questions and I later had to act as a translator for the HR rep. Their resume was dropped into the shredder.

As a note, I work for a bank. While certain gaming related things may be appropriate for certain jobs, a bank job is not one.
 

Drauger

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Dec 22, 2011
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Wow.... protip? get a bussiness twitter and a family /friends twitter.... seriously you gusy sounded so snob today.
 

Susan Arendt

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Almack said:
crap now I feel I should apologize to susan because I asked her what breed her dog was.
oh and if you do read this susan sorry

also on the subject of youth unemployment often times employers don't want to hire inexperienced workers and so it's hard for my generation to break into the job market because you have no experience in whatever field your applying to so they wont hire you because they dont want to spend time and money training you soooooo it's a catch 22 situation. and yes because we cant even get in the door you cant practice our interview skills so we make mistakes that are all our own.
Don't be silly, I don't mind that at all! Very few people have ever crossed the line with me personally on twitter, and I've said something to those who have. :)
 

icmonkeys3000

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Jun 25, 2011
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The entire podcast all i could hear was someone breathing loudly into the mic. Sorry, just couldn't not mention it, it drove me a little insane. =P
As for the pre-order fiasco with Aliens Colonial Marines, i'm going the old fashioned route with this. If you bought a ticket to see a movie, and you didn't like the plot, tough cookies. The theatre shouldn't have to repay you, the director shouldn't have to repay you. Same as if you didn't like a book. The author isn't at fault for your subjective opinion regardless of what advertisements led you to believe. Ads are not reviews.
Anyone who spends money on something they haven't seen for themselves simply because an advertisement told them it would be good deserves to have their money taken from them.
 

Eric the Orange

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Apr 29, 2008
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Drauger said:
Wow.... protip? get a bussiness twitter and a family /friends twitter.... seriously you gusy sounded so snob today.
Try and word your comments less insultingly like for example what you said could have been,

"One thing you guys could try is having personal Twitter accounts for friends and family, and buisness accounts for profesional things."

That way makes it sound like a helpful suggestion rather than an insult.
 

s0osleepie

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StriderShinryu said:
The Twitter thing is kind of hard to tackle. Twitter is a totally open medium with nearly no restrictions. If you use Twitter, particularly if you are a public person who puts their handle out there, you are basically opening up yourself up to pretty much any sort of contact via the service...Thing is, as above, if you're a Twitter user, you're basically agreeing to be in public contact with people who have varying levels of social IQ. You know there are sharks circling in the pool below you; whether you jump in or not isn't the fault of the sharks
I completely agree with you in that if you publicly put yourself out there, regardless of who you are, you should expect for others to see it and respond. Every one on twitter is a public person. Heck, it is what social media is for, right? ;) I unlocked my private twitter into a public account back in 2008 when I was just a student specifically because I wanted to find new people with like interests through conversation. I'm one of those people who see tweepeoples as my friends and unless people tweet back at me, I am just a crazy person talking to myself. Lol.

But at the same time, we are all still people, no matter where we connect with each other and I think that is ultimately the point that all to often gets lost sometimes. As more and more of our overall lives and interactions move over to social media, hard to tackle conversations like how we should aspire to treat other need to follow us there so that we may all socially mature in the new landscape together... even if they are awkward to openly discuss and work through at first. I think that is what we tried to do here. We get to work these social details out with people in person fairly easily, but the lack of a venue to do so on social media just leads to unaddressed bad behavior that can sometimes spiral out of control. And while people with tens of thousands of followers have a more concentrated view of this, it effects everyone. Just read a thread of random youtube comments. The internet is growing up, but people still use anonymity as an excuse to be wildly inappropriate and down right mean to others. Many times it's as simple as forgetting that there is another human being on the other end because we tweet so fast we forget to think. Without instant social feedback like we would get in person, interactions online take a little extra thought than most of us give it unless we are constantly aware of the need to stop ourselves and think first. To be honest, I still tweet some really dumb things because I forget to take the extra second to think before I tweet. Sometimes I don't even realize it until a response embarrasses me. Haha. True story.

Drauger said:
Wow.... protip? get a bussiness twitter and a family /friends twitter.... seriously you gusy sounded so snob today.
Speaking for myself, while I completely understand how it may have come off that way, that was definitely not the intention. As I tried to explain above, it was meant to be a casual conversation on when inappropriate fringe behavior in person is still socially inappropriate online and not general complaining about normal behavior. My twitter is my personal one and has no affiliation with my employer or business, in so far as work is a major part of my life and thus, my twitter ;) I would think that goes for most people.
 

Camaranth

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Feb 4, 2011
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The whole lawsuit thing is probably going to fail but I hope it will bring attention to publishers and developers, as well as consumers, that having such a negative difference between demo and product is not okay, and maybe things can start to change.

I'm part of the demographic that interview article was aimed at and I just.......wow...really? There are people in my situation that need to be told that? Dressing for the interview is tough, everything I've found on the subject suggests neutral to be best, let the interviewer project what they want to see. That being said I have a few unique things I wear so I'm not just another blonde in a black suit, namely a very cool but formal watch and a very small dainty ear cuff. It's just enough to stand out.

If you don't mind my asking do you have any advice for how to deal with the constant rejection from job hunting while under/unemployed?
 

JohnHayne

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Apr 28, 2013
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[HEADING=3]On false advertising and games.[/HEADING]

Firstly, even if some practices are standard to the industry, it doesn't make them OK... It shows that the industry relies on deception to sell their products (see video at 49:40).

Secondly, the slippery slope argument (see video at 51:15) is not fully applicable here, 'cause the point is not if you like a feature or not (gameplay, story, sound, art), but rather if there was a false statement about that a feature. On A:CM the statement was that some features (smart AI, well done animations and ambiance) were going to be in the final game, which ultimately were not. Want to change the game? Fine, but do not let the consumer believe that major element was stripped out on development.

The important features in a game

Which feature should be deemed important? Well, it depends. What is a videogame but an interactive software design to cause an effect in the player (deliver an experience, challenge, a story). Does the lack of that feature make it so that there is no way to cause that effect expected? If so, it is a major feature. Take A:CM. It supposed to be challenging, to have a dense atmosphere. Bad programming destroyed those elements, essentials to the experience. It's like announcing a word processor software that doesn't let you save into files the work done...

However, let it be noted that if you don't like how the story ended, too bad, 'cause fondness is entirely subjective. The experience was delivered? You just didn't like it.

About the legal aspects of the suit

It's a grey area... One thing is to say that your product is the best, that a book has the "best story ever" even if the product is not all that great; this is acceptable. Another is to demonstrate one thing, and deliver another. 'A vacuum that can suck water, but it doesn't really...' kind of ordeal.

You need to prove five things to have a case on false advertisement:

[ol]
[li]A false statement of fact has been made about the advertiser's own or another person's goods, services, or commercial activity; [/li]
[li]The statement either deceives or has the potential to deceive a substantial portion of its targeted audience; [/li]
[li]The deception is also likely to affect the purchasing decisions of its audience;[/li]
[li]The advertising involves goods or services in interstate commerce; and [/li]
[li]The deception has either resulted in or is likely to result in injury to the plaintiff. [/li]
[/ol]

From those items, the weakest link is the number (3). However, IMO, there is no need for the plaintiff to prove that the deception is the sole cause of the purchase, but rather if it has affected the decision to purchase the game in any way. It doesn't matter if one of the reasons to buy the game was the IP (in divergence to what they said at 58:40).

The main questions to be awnsered are:
[ul]
[li]Does the preview constitutes proof that they implicitly advertised one product, which doesn't correspond to the final product?(item 1)[/li]
[li]Have you known that the game was badly programmed, in contrast to what was shown (it looked well programmed at the previews), would you have bought the game? (item 3)[/li]
[/ul]

In my opinion, false advertising in the game industry is a subject that must be better analyzed.

[HEADING=3]Concerning the dichotomy selling product v. providing service[/HEADING]
(see video at 57:40)

The industry doesn't "act" like they are providing a service (with some exceptions like MMO, or always online DRM). The law states that software, videogames included, are intellectual property (more like invention than books and movies), and the buyer of a game is purchasing a license to reproduce that software in their computers and consoles. Due its nature, being like inventions, you do not buy the code, 'cause the code can be easily copied and transmitted.

Nevertheless, with some MMO and always on DRM games (not to mention in-game purchase), there is also a service being provided: the game data hosting, to which access is need to play the game or access a feature.
 

JLink

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Apr 10, 2013
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I am glad that Susan brought up Bioshock Infinite in this discussion. Granted, it wasn't as buggy as Colonial Marines (at least the PS3 version I played wasn't) but I was still disappointed with what I ultimately got because the 2010 and 2011 gameplay videos showed a game that, to me, was a superior product than what I ended up with. I spent almost an hour putting together another post in the general gaming forum dissecting all the differences between the previews and the final product, so I am not going to go through that again here.

As far as what I hope we get from this debacle? I hope we get what Susan was talking about with the hair dye example. We buy a game and if we don't get what we paid for, we can return it to the retailer we got it from and get our money back. Basically what Amazon did with Sim City. Now, it's my understanding that Amazon did that on their own with no guarantee that EA will refund Amazon the money that they lost. If that is true then I can see why retailers are hesitant to start adopting this kind of a return policy for video games. I don't know all the legal stuff that is involved when the publishers and the retailers agree on a deal for buying and stocking games. If the agreement is such that the publisher is legally exempt from having to refund any money to the retailer what-so-ever, then I hope that retailers as a group boycott the industry and force them to agree to terms that allow for reimbursment for copies returned by customers due to not delivering the product that was promised. Because the price of buying 100 units of hair dye is nowhere near buying 100 units of a video game. A retailer can afford to take a hit on the occasional defective box of hair dye or the occasional defective copy of a game to keep customers happy. But if every single copy of a game that they sold gets returned and the publisher won't reinburse them, that is a BIG financial hit for them to take.
 

peache

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While it's certainly the most visible aspect of the controversy, this Aliens fiasco isn't just about the PAX/E3 demo. People on both sides of this argument are too focused on that. Demos always promise more than can be delivered, be it overhyped gameplay or features that have no chance of making the deadline. If that's all this was, I don't think you would see the sense of betrayal that surrounds A:CM. People are familiar with those kinds of passive deception, and it's cynical to think that this controversy is just whining because the game wasn't better. Not that it makes it right or okay, but those kinds of practices have become hallmarks of salesmanship. Not just in the game industry, but everywhere. People get that. Gamers get that. Hell, I've seen great demos for games that never came out, but even that doesn't inspire the hate associated with A:CM at the moment.

A:CM isn't infuriating because Gearbox and Sega raised our expectations and then didn't meet them. It's infuriating because they had countless opportunities since the 2012 demo to make this right and actively choose not to do so. They could have delayed the game (again). They could have cancelled it or released more accurate footage or offered refunds to people who felt betrayed. They didn't and they don't, because they were more interested in getting their check than doing right by their gamers. Even to this day, most of the marketing materials for A:CM contain "screenshots" and video from a game that will never exist. Then when asked about the problems, they wring their hands and point blame and say they don't know what happened.

Of course, the legal case hasn't a leg to stand on and I typically fall into the "buyer beware" camp. I think the best we can hope for is that these kinds of controversies will help to create some better industry standard practices, and ultimately I'd like to see someone step in and end the no-refund policy on games.

But for that to happen, we need to better understand the problem. It's not one demo that creates this sense of betrayal and outrage. It's the behavior of companies that have engaged in these practices and told these lies every day since.
 

LordFish

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May 29, 2012
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OMG Susan has terrified me into White-listing em.com, if the adds start to roon my enjoyment again I'll buy a pubclub membership; Tis only fair.

LOVE the longer podcasts and it was great to hear from Janelle, Keep up the great work guys x

(Also as someone who over-dresses for work as well, can I just say that; Josh looked THE BOMB! Well payed sir, well played.)
 

Almack

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Susan Arendt said:
Don't be silly, I don't mind that at all! Very few people have ever crossed the line with me personally on twitter, and I've said something to those who have. :)
well I'm Canadian so expectations and everything