The "Letter of the Month" Racket

"...With a single DVD player, I can watch every movie imaginable. I don't need a Paramount player to see Mission: Impossible... "

-Cara



"...For example, I have one DVD player, and amazingly enough that DVD player will play every single DVD in America. I don't have to get out my MGM player to watch Spaceballs or my Paramount player to watch Zoolander..."

-Cara--Via Internet



The first quote above comes from the latest issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly (Issue 184, Nov. 2004). The second quote comes from the latest issue of GamePro (Issue 194, Nov. 2004). Both quotes come from letters that won the "letter of the month" contest in their respective magazines.



For her trouble, Cara won a Logitech Cordless Action Controller from GamePro and a copy of "some game or another" from EGM (A picture of Def Jam: Fight for NY ran with Cara's letter in EGM, but it doesn't explicitly say that is the game she won.)



EGM ran a more concise version of the letter with the headline "You must assimilate" while GamePro's version is at least twice as long and headlined "A Modest Proposal." The EGM response focuses on the business model that keeps the competing system entrenched while the GamePro answer focuses on historical competition that led to the current system.



The fact that two different magazines (from two different publishers) decided to print and award prizes to similar letters from the same author is most likely simply a coincidence. But the occurence does point to some unscrupulous tactics that can end up unfairly skewing perception of public opinion on an issue.



The first tactic is a letter-writing campaign, in which a person or small group of people organize to write similar or identical letters to as many publications as they can, hoping one will stick enough in an editor's mind to get published. Sometimes these campaigns are legitimate, grass roots efforts for change, but other times the authors will misrepresent facts and their own identities in an effort to exaggerate public support for often controversial issues.



While this happens quite often in the newspaper realm (.pdf), I'm not aware of any such organized campaigns against the specialist videogame press. Still, videogame editors should remain mindful of the tactic. If you suddenly begin to notice an influx in letters with a similar, slanted message, you might want to consider whether they are all actually by different people.



The second tactic to sway perception of reader opinion is often referred to as "comment bombing." This is the practice of filling comment areas in blogs or message boards with positive comments in order to generate positive buzz, usually for a product. Comment bombings are often allegedly sponsored by PR companies as a part of a guerilla marketing strategy that injects advertising into places that consumers are unlikely to notice it and tune it out.



Online videogame publications are very suceptible to comment bombing, which can be much harder to detect than a letter-writing campaign, given the relatively anonymous nature of the Internet. But tactics like IP tracking and required registration can help reveal posters disingenuously claiming to be fans while actually writing from a game company headquarters. Other times, comments that seem overly positive in a sea of negative comments are often accused of being posted by covert PR employees (as in the recent Driv3r debacle). but its hard to prove that such comments are not just honest differences of opinion.



Bottom line: Editors should be mindful of the comments and opinions of their readers, but also be mindful of the potential for a dedicated few to misrepresent those opinions.