Yesterday I saw something on social media pertaining to the defence of Phil Spencer and the Starfield and redfall delay that blew my mind.
An "XBOX ambassador" stated that.
And in a strange turn of events it's revealed that this person isn't an actual gamer. She admits to preferring to watch someone else game. But what blew my fucking mind is that from following this thread, it was revealed to me that there is a slew of these types of accounts/people who don't actually game but get paid upto 50K and all of them are seemingly in unison telling, telling us XBOX gamers that we need to wait.
I didn't know this type of shit existed! Non gamers essentially telling actual gamers to "Shut up and wait." And being paid money to do so. That's underhanded right?
It made me sick to my stomach to see the hobby I care about be infiltrated by these types who are paid to push corporate damage control while pretending to be gamers. Kinda makes my skin crawl, kinda.
You didn't know about this? This is the official Xbox Ambassador program -- you can
sign up here. For full disclaimer, I do not support initiatives like this.
This program offers "missions" to ambassadors who then get rewarded to complete those "missions" on the internet. Here is an example of what the inside of the program looks like.
They also have special campaigns during "
E3 time" (which is pretty much this time of the year). The primary objective is to increase online chatter and engagement (and basically rewarding people for doing that). As you can see below, it specifically rewards people for "taking 5 chats per day".
In action:
Here is a public list of some of the rewards that this program offers.
Based on the grapevine I've heard, a large majority of the rewards are now in the shape of Gamepass coupons.
The Tweet you shared above is from an Xbox Ambassador. You can also see other tweets by her (and from other Xbox Ambassadors) that use the same marketing language that Xbox uses to promote their brand. The idea is to use the same messaging and gain mindshare.
Here is an example. See the highlighted phrase.
Now check this Tweet.
This is basically advertisement from people who get paid in kind to advertise, but they aren't seen as employees of a company, but rather gamers like we are. Some people call it just a fair marketing tactic; I do not agree with that. I believe it's not ethical to have a system like this one in place.
More fair disclaimer: I do not boycott a company because of this. I still like and purchase and play some of the Xbox games on PC, despite this, but this leaves a bitter taste for me, and I am just more cautious of Xbox's marketing campaigns whenever I see one. I hope no other company is doing this. I like Sony and Nintendo for their games, but if they are also involved in programs like this, I'll have the same stand against them. I believe that fellow gamers are more important than protecting corporates, and programs like these have the potential to affect the gamers community and the mindshare in a sneak, unethical way.