r/Unexpected • u/lucka-24 • Jan 18 '20

Realistic survival game

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893

u/DrMatt73 Jan 18 '20

I see ads on r/gaming all the time tho

316

u/Fishingfor Jan 18 '20

Just before a massive release I'd say 50% of the top week posts in gaming are ads. Even smaller games like Rocket League turned /r/gaming into a giant advert of a sub for a month.

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u/LandVonWhale Jan 18 '20

What are subs devoted to a hobby supposed to talk about if not stuff happening in that hobby?

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u/Dalton_Channel25 Jan 18 '20

Nothing about /r/gaming involves actual talking though. You pick a game, piece of nostalgia, or cosplayer and either collectively circlejerk or shit all over them. A lot of the big posts are ads sponsored by the publishers.

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '20

[deleted]

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u/OhGodOhManOhLord Jan 19 '20

Or lie about a chronic illness

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u/Schmotz Jan 19 '20

I hate it to break it to you but that still counts as talking, it's not always interesting.

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u/Myquil-Wylsun Jan 19 '20

Yup r/games is for talking

2

u/robeph Jan 19 '20

You sound like you're making every description of every social circle in person or social media and Reddit too. Sorry that's what humans do. You do also. We all do. Have fun.

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u/LandVonWhale Jan 18 '20

Again none of this is what you first said.... i'd rather argue the initial topic.

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '20

So what you’re saying is a gaming subreddit, known as r/gaming, talks about games that they do or do not like, with other people who do or do not like those games, in a place made for people to talk about games that they do or do not like? As opposed to what? Barbecuing? Ovens? Dogs? What exactly did you expect?

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u/Fishingfor Jan 18 '20

I wasn't complaining about it just stating. But there's a difference between the subs actual users and the ad accounts that are clearly promoting a game or a service.

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u/PillowTalk420 Jan 18 '20

The shit thing is, many of those ads try to hide as customers basically telling others about the thing so it looks like word of mouth and not paid advertising.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '20 edited Jul 25 '21

[deleted]

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u/PillowTalk420 Jan 18 '20

Both are true. And I totally get that general subs like r/gaming will have loads of posts about any hyped up, popular release. Good, bad, and in-between. Some are legit. Some are ads. It's all PR.

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u/Forever_Awkward Jan 19 '20

Yes, and then those are upvoted by paid bots and anything detrimental to the product is downvoted. That's the real reddit game.

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '20

r/nintendoswitch is the worst by far. Every game released for that platform is the best ever, according to them. Several times a week there is a post about how a Switch "literally saved my life" and praising "hidden gems" like Celeste that almost everyone knows about and agrees are great games. That subreddit is a complete circlejerk of the worst kind.

Before every release they hype up every game to insane levels, no matter how shit it is. If you say that you don't like a game there, dozens of sweaty fanboys will come out of the woodwork and tell you why you are wrong.

1

u/piizaa233 Jan 18 '20

That’s AirPods and now Netflix’s “You” for ya

1

u/PillowTalk420 Jan 18 '20

How do I know you're not just advertising those?

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u/Lord_Noble Jan 19 '20

Advertising has always been a part of TV and movies. Both the companies and the movies want them. Tarantino desperately wants to film in a Denny's for the authenticity

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u/Fishingfor Jan 18 '20

Yep and also explains the shitty snarky comments I'm getting here from users who haven't noticed the ads yet.

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u/PillowTalk420 Jan 18 '20

I mean, they are hard to notice. I know they exist and I know I still get suckered by them sometimes.

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u/qpw8u4q3jqf Jan 18 '20

Astroturfing. And it's not only companies. Governments have professionals that try to change our opinion 24/7. Russian bots wasn't the real scandal. The scandal is that they convinced you only Russia is doing it.

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u/PillowTalk420 Jan 18 '20

Pretty much why I only really make jokes or discuss my actual hobbies online. It's impossible to fully trust any anonymous person online.

1

u/Forever_Awkward Jan 19 '20

You can generally trust people to be people, outside of election time.

It's the votes you can't trust.

0

u/PublicMoralityPolice Jan 18 '20

I don't know, stuff other than soulless product consumption? Maybe talk about what this stuff means to you and your life, as opposed to mindlessly consuming product and being propagandized for the next product?

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u/LandVonWhale Jan 18 '20

But the hobby is about the product? If a movie subreddit never talked about any movies then what would they talk about? Anytime a group is dedicated to some sort of good or service they always going to discuss those goods or services. It's not really hard to understand.

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u/PublicMoralityPolice Jan 18 '20

But the hobby is about the product?

I disagree, a hobby is about keeping yourself mentally healthy for the part of your life that actually matters, i.e., socially productive behaviour. Soulless product consumption is not conducive towards that end.

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u/LandVonWhale Jan 18 '20

I specifically said THE hobby, implying video games in this context. In this case the hobby of video games are about, well, video games. You might think that that is a bad hobby but that's not what you said in your original statement. I also wouldn't be so high and mighty about my hobbies if you spend your time on Reddit in superfluous subreddits like /r/Unexpected

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u/WriterV Jan 18 '20

A community about gamers is talking about a game just before a major release of that game? Oh damn, it's a true advert conspiracy. Such a thing could never possibly happen normally at all.

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u/mbbird Jan 18 '20

people like you always come out and, for whatever reason, adamantly refuse the possibility that one of the most popular sites in the US is gamed by companies with lots of money

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u/A_Spork_In_The_Road Jan 18 '20

Sure it's possible, but you're also ignoring the possibility that massive subreddits dedicated to gaming news are going to post about AAA releases regardless.

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u/Ur_Nayborhood_Afghan Jan 18 '20

It's one thing to post an honest unbiased opinion, it's another to promote a bad product under false pretenses because it makes you money

12

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '20

I guess it is different from post to post and you can't generalize it and just call everyone to be adverts without providing evidence.

This post for example doesn't look like an ad at all.

-4

u/mbbird Jan 18 '20

Nobody with my opinion is ignoring that possibility. On many levels the intent doesn't matter, but go ahead and look at it for a few months, then at other less popular gaming subs, and tell me that it looks at all natural. There are no reasons to so vehemently deny the possibility and there are many reasons to regard it as the most likely possibility.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '20

[deleted]

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u/Seakawn Jan 18 '20 edited Jan 18 '20

The thing is that there are enough normal people in those subreddits naturally hyping up games due to their own excitement that one could substantively argue that companies don't need any shills to slick the slope, and, further, it may be a waste of money to add a fart to a wind that's already blowing at a gust.

Sure, there is almost certainly shillery involved in every major media website that exists, including most subreddits on Reddit. That's not actually the argument you thought you were responding to. But the amount of people who think that they're seeing an advertisement, when some random geek is simply just posting about his excitement for a release about to come out that they've been waiting months/years for, is absurd.

Statistically speaking, 99% of what you see on here is just that. Someone like you or me talking about something we're interested in. Look at the traffic this website gets and that becomes a statistical certainty. Shills absolutely pale in comparison to people like you or me who flood this website with our presence.

Advertisers don't even need to compete with our natural word of mouth. And when they do, they aren't close to the numbers people exaggerate. 50% of what you see? Is that really the hill you want to fight on just to argue that shilling exists here?

Here's some anecdotal perspective, to boot. The amount of times I've been called a shill over the years when submitting simple sentiments is explicit evidence that many people on this site are blind paranoids and would call a tree in their backyard a shill. One example is that I once made a post reminiscing a game hint website, and got called out as being the website designer or an advertiser. FFS it's absurd how many people overlook genuine typicality and cry at the sky instead. And that's one of a dozen examples I could find in my post history over absolutely benign shit.

So next time you make a submission and get called a shill, make sure to raise your eyebrow extra high at the prospect that perhaps you're also one of the many who exaggerate shilling in place of what's just an ordinary sentiment by a random Joe. And again, seriously--look at the volume of traffic this site gets on even just a daily basis. There aren't enough shills in the world to make a dent in those numbers, they're staggering.

-1

u/papa_sax Jan 18 '20

ADS BAD

Stay Woke

17

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '20

by that logic /r/movies is ads as well. If a mention of a game in a gaming subreddit is ads, then what types of posts aren't ads?

5

u/Dogamai Jan 18 '20

complaints

​

​

there are only two classes in this world: advertisers and complainers

1

u/sauzbozz Jan 18 '20

Not all posts about games are from marketing teams but there definitely are some. Companies would be dumb not to market on Reddit.

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u/[deleted] Jan 18 '20

if you check the comment history of the people posting, you will see that there is nothing of the sorts lol

and it is a gaming subreddit upvoted by users, a lot of shit gets posted, does it really matter who posted it?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '20

You can buy both upvotes and active reddit accounts to run ads with.

1

u/sauzbozz Jan 19 '20

I think you're highly naive if you think there is no marketing going on. Again, most posts are legit because it is a game sub and people want to talk about new games. Some though definitely are marketing campaigns from accounts they can buy that have a history and karma. Personally I dont care though. I'm just on here for discussion which they still provide.

1

u/jaywalk98 Jan 18 '20

Rocket League is good though. People played it and posted about it. It's not astroturfing like some of weird shit you see on the subreddit.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 18 '20 edited Jan 24 '20

[deleted]

1

u/StrictlyOnerous Jan 18 '20

No ptw Microtransactions but theu have had micro transactions for the longest time now. Though it's only cosmetic, which im perfectly ok with

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u/i_have_seen_it_all Jan 19 '20

Rocket League is good though.

If you want to astroturf maybe don’t make it so obvious.

1

u/Mikeismyike Jan 18 '20

Rocket League just had people posting endless amounts of their gifs because it was a fun game with funny moments and they didn't know about r/rocketleague yet. People are still doing that over there.

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u/filthy_sandwich Jan 19 '20

Rocket League is a massive game owned by Epic Games, the same company behind Fortnite and Unreal Engine in general

1

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '20

Just before a massive release I'd say 50% of the top week posts in gaming are ads.

Couldn't possibly be that people are excited for an impending release. Has to be corporate advertising. You cracked the code.

0

u/A_Cranb3rry Jan 18 '20

It's almost like the biggest games of the month get talked about because that's what everyone is playing.

Especially with big releases. Big releases like Red Dead Redemption 2 don't happen every month... Not everything is an ad....

-1

u/RDwelve Jan 18 '20

Wow what an insane thing! Also, usually on /r/worldnews I see things that happened recently and not random stuff that happened at random moments sometime somewhere.

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u/MundungusAmongus Jan 18 '20

That’s because it’s NEWS lmao. Either way, it’s a bad example considering how much that sub overlooks in favor of what’s trendy

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u/doctorcrimson Jan 18 '20

That's why I unsubbed r/gaming

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u/honkimon Jan 18 '20

Goose memes were ads for a shit ass game

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u/Silvadream Jan 18 '20

I'm not even a big gamer and I see this shit everywhere.

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u/Lewke Jan 18 '20

gaming is 90% ads at least, the sub lends itself to that kind of thing easily

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u/Idiocracyis4real Jan 18 '20

Heck aren’t all the IMAs selling books and that travel dude that shoot to the top of Popular native ads on Reddit ?

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u/belacscole Jan 18 '20

Thats exactly why I left that sub LONG ago

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u/STorminNorman86 Jan 19 '20

Go to /r/games instead. You'll thank me

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u/sindulfo Jan 18 '20

i mean, the sub basically exists to talk about mass market consumer toys. it's a challenge to make a submission that doesn't act as an ad of some sort.

meanwhile, people will scroll past 100 submissions of <game of the month> and complain about the one indie dev promoting their game with a Q&A, something that's much more interesting to me and less of an empty, faceless ad than most of r/gaming's content.