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I don't want to post in those other stupid threads about the whole Microsoft thing, so I'll ask this here. Honest question:
How is Microsoft paying people to make promotional videos any different than just regular marketing? How is it bad? Isn't that how marketing works? A marketing firm (or department within a company) gets paid to present the product and talk it up. It seems totally logical to me.
Now if the contract was like, "We'll pay you if you say negative things about Sony" then I can understand why people would be so upset.
The difference here is that there is
no room for criticism, even constructive. Despite an element of neutrality being listed, from what we can tell, Machinima participators largely have to keep facts neutral and
opinions saccharine - that's the problem. Other companies might lie or skew facts in their favor, but Microsoft is directly manipulating the human element of reception in this case. For example, let's say the Dreamcast has a contract where the opposite is true - they have to keep facts positive or neutral, and opinions can be whatever.
"The Dreamcast sold 200,000 units this quarter!
It may not be the likes of which you'd expect with, say, Sony, but we're still trucking along."
The bolded indicates a variable statement made by a human and not a sales tracker. Now let's flip that and use the Microchinima agreement:
"Modified fair usage policies have resulted in a viewer loss rate of approximately 640% compared to last month. By extension, alterations of Microsoft privacy policies have rendered direct game-capture footage via third-party hardware void as per legal standards. A dropoff of roughly 38% has occurred in original content.
We think HALO: The Forgotten Spartans and Bergie The Elite are radical!"
It's a subtle difference on the surface, for sure, but the implications are that Microsoft's deliberately taking the human element out of the equation so that the only way they can get fucked over is in a statistical sense.
I haven't touched my PS4 in like a month because of the lack of games, and my Xbox One has officially became the "Peggle 2 Box". March needs to come out already so I can play Second Son and TitanFall.
