My ideas on the future of video game advertising and PR

[the_tyrant]

Conventional video game advertising has already reached its limit
Even bribing game reviewers don't work anymore
therefore, video game companies need to think outside the box
i suggest the following marketing techniques:

Astroturfing
Video game companies should learn from the Chinese government, and create 50 cent parties(payed internet commentates link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party)
so there will be a large number of people posting on forums pretending to be players (actually marketing people) saying how good the game is

Forum manipulation
Bribing moderators, and deleting posts that point out the game's problems.
of course, no game could be 100% perfect. Posts actually pointing out problems should be replaced with stupid nitpicking complaints. Also, the best idea is to only allow posts pointing out the game's problems a few days before creating a patch fixing the problem. Creating the impression that costumer service is good.


Black propaganda
needless to explain, video game companies should hire PR agents pretending to be the fanboy of their competitor's products. This could ruin their competitor's products' reputation

turning bad posts into satire
turning every post pointing out the above marketing techniques into funny, satire posts(like the "subsim army of zombies" post)

of course, the above techniques will only work for a few years. after that, people will know of them, and they will lose their effect.(maybe even become illegal)

of course, the video game companies will think of ways to turn video games into truly addictive substances, and these techniques won't be needed any more