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“Xbox Fans Are Paid”, Says Former World of Warcraft Designer

skit_data

Member
Kind of a sweeping, unnuanced statement that doesn't really come off as any hard evidence or anything.

But, in my experience there seem to be a few very hardcore Xbox fanboys that seem to do nothing else than create content pushing the brand (there are Playstation fans doing this as well) but the main difference I see between the two is that some on the Xbox side that do nothing but console warring (i.e there is barely any evidence of them actually playing games) and that some of the worst twitter accounts I've come across are followed by execs and other prominent Xbox representatives. I've yet to come across a similar situation among Playstation gamers tbh.
 

SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
The majority of fanboys do. It’s called enthusiasm.

As an aside, I don’t think Timdog gets paid. He’s just a retard. Senjitsu on the other hand…debatable.

mel.png
Senjutsu once confirmed that he was flown out to a MS event where one of the execs personally told him that the x1x would feature a zen CPU instead of a jaguar CPU. he peddled that bs here until he got himself permabanned on old gaf over it. Maybe he was lying, but I dont see someone risking their account over a lie, he legit believed it. I think guys like Senjutsu, colt eastwood and timdog are useful idiots who are being used by Microsoft. Timdog gets retweets and quote tweets from Phil and his tweets are nothing but console wars. it's like if Jimbo regularly conversed with THE RED DRAGON or MVG on twitter.

I think the real guys who are paid off are not your average forum goers who spend all day on forums. Those guys login every now and then or during product launches. they have posts in the tens or hundreds at max. not thousands or tens of thousands like senjetsu. At best, they get flown out for conferences and other events with their hotels paid for. Pretty sure klobrie and colteastwood didnt get there on their own dime. It's not as bad as astroturfing but they are definitely being cultivated by Microsoft.
 
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No sh*t. The Xbox is made for insane Americans who drive fast cars and listen to loud music about brown skies and destroying sonic the hedgehog land. Every day they wake up and say "how can I make this industry more non inclusive for people who love nature?" Then they push Greta thunberg out of the way and chop down a tree to make more Xbox game manuals. The only console that still does this even for their digital games it will show up in the mail.

Xbox HQ is full of clean glass hallways that are dark except for lines of blue glowing lights lined with doors. Behind each door is a literal cop interview asking gamers why they didn't buy an Xbox and negotiating with them over a can of soda with aspartame even in the Doritos. Everyone works for Xbox even newborns. They have to test the Xbox gamer vaccines first like lab rats, no baby is spared.

The place is filled with bill gates look alikes it's like Saddams place but Steve Ballmer roams the hallways like the ultimate Chimera in mother 3. The only way to reach the top and disable the Xbox Twitter bots is to jump over a chair like bill gates and beat chips challenge while jumping. Nobody actually works here it's all just a place for people to punish gamers and create a false reality for the current landscape of modern day Xbox just like the illusion of gamepass making anyone money.
 

James Sawyer Ford

Gold Member
I’ve never seen the Nintendo/Sony equivalent of people like Tom Warren, TimDog, Colt Eastwood, Jez Corden, Klobrille, Destin, etc. so that pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

Really bizarre that this is allowed to go on and a massive company thinks this is the best way to conduct themselves.
 
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Banjo64

cumsessed
I just looked him up and his twitter is literally an advertisement page. “X game coming to Gamepass on Y” “X coming out early y”. What are these people doing?

This makes me respect SenjutsuSage in an entirely new way. Yes, he was and is a completely shameless shill, but at least he put effort into it! 500 tweets slamming the CMA? yes! 20 tweet thread that tags Phil Spencer on how Redfall is secretly a masterpiece and an underappreciated gem that set a new graphical benchmark 30 minutes after it came out? Let's do it!

And then there's klobrille who's like “This game comes out on Gamepass” with a screenshot and he gets like 135k followers on Twitter. Poor Senjutsusage. Sometimes hard work just doesn't pay off.
Tagging the Prime Minister when he incorrectly believed the CMA lawyer had previously represented Sony was a special moment :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 

Fredrik

Member
The most obvious is trying to establish a definition. Like the first rumor about the revamped psplus described it as a game pass competitor. in a few days, their emerged an angle where psplus is not actually a competitor. This took up pages upon pages for the whole life of a big thread. This very specific thing to not use the word competitor. Maybe someone else thinks that's normal but these instances come in so hard and fast that it seems obvious to me that you have a whole lot of people trying to fall in and get on message. On era it was gradually getting out of control.
That’s standard tribe behaviour. Fans gang up with group thinking and form new ways to battle an argument.

But yeah I’ve seen that. And I see the same thing here, like focusing on the day 1 aspect as if every game is day 1 when it’s mostly MS 1st party and they have barely released any 1st party games. 🤔 Day 1 on PC is a legit thing though. That’s awesome. But hyping up Xbox Cloud when Stadia was around was odd too, like super strange. I had all streaming services and xCloud was honestly trash, Stadia was so much better with more stable performance and higher resolution and on a console-like experience for the TV.

But it’s not just Xbox, same thing when PS fans go on about how Gamepass is rent pass or whatever as if that’s some brilliant diss, or suddenly criticizing 30fps like crazy when 30fps has been a plague on PS for decades and on all GOTY awarded games people couldn’t stop hyping up. It’s oh so transparent.

Not sure it’s shilling though, could just be plain platform warring. I mostly think about shills when there is this sudden ”Let’s goooo!” gif for something that really isn’t that hyped up or when there is instant trolling and downplaying and FUD coming at an obvious great thing on the other platform. And if something is exclusive it’s instantly on pedestal, if it’s multiplat it’s not even brought up in talks, and exclusives on other platforms gets downplayed and criticized for all kinds of dumb reasons. Etc. People are rarely that onesided.
 

Crayon

Member
That’s standard tribe behaviour. Fans gang up with group thinking and form new ways to battle an argument.

But yeah I’ve seen that. And I see the same thing here, like focusing on the day 1 aspect as if every game is day 1 when it’s mostly MS 1st party and they have barely released any 1st party games. 🤔 Day 1 on PC is a legit thing though. That’s awesome. But hyping up Xbox Cloud when Stadia was around was odd too, like super strange. I had all streaming services and xCloud was honestly trash, Stadia was so much better with more stable performance and higher resolution and on a console-like experience for the TV.

But it’s not just Xbox, same thing when PS fans go on about how Gamepass is rent pass or whatever as if that’s some brilliant diss, or suddenly criticizing 30fps like crazy when 30fps has been a plague on PS for decades and on all GOTY awarded games people couldn’t stop hyping up. It’s oh so transparent.

Not sure it’s shilling though, could just be plain platform warring. I mostly think about shills when there is this sudden ”Let’s goooo!” gif for something that really isn’t that hyped up or when there is instant trolling and downplaying and FUD coming at an obvious great thing on the other platform. And if something is exclusive it’s instantly on pedestal, if it’s multiplat it’s not even brought up in talks, and exclusives on other platforms gets downplayed and criticized for all kinds of dumb reasons. Etc. People are rarely that onesided.

People become fanboys naturally, then they band together. The question for me here, is not if they get labeled a shill, but how is the company harnessing these people.

Sony does social marketing and disseminates information in hopes that it will be repeated. But how much of that is fud like? How many hardcore visible fanboys do executives follow and fly out to events? Does Sony send out messages that turn into an instant noise machine?

Day 1. Quick resume. BC. Hd Blu-ray. Cross play. Great things. But the intensity and clarity of the unified message on how incredibly important these things are is coming from the mother ship. It is super aggressive and persistent. To the point of spamming. I really don't see an equivalent happening from Sony, Nintendo, or steam. I saw it from epic for that first year steady then it dropped off a cliff.
 

mrmustard

Banned
Yeah how do we know he isn't being paid by Sony to say this?
I don't think Sony would pay someone whos name is not even worth to be in the headline (Former World of Warcraft Designer)
or in bold (Ex-World of Warcraft Team Lead), because nobody knows him. It's almost like "Former Ubisoft cleaning woman says open world games suck".

So are they telling me that the creepy-ass and borderline delusional Sony fanboys that over-crowd comment sections everywhere are doing it for free, instead?
You should be really careful with that. I got 3 whatever points for inappropriate behavior for just indirectly calling one of the fanboys a fanboy.

Day 1. Quick resume. BC. Hd Blu-ray. Cross play. But the intensity and clarity of the unified message on how incredibly important these things are is coming from the mother ship. It is super aggressive and persistent. To the point of spamming. I really don't see an equivalent happening from Sony, Nintendo, or steam.
I've seen tons of posts about the game changing controller + SSD, Xbox has no games, a weird obsession with sales numbers, Game Pass is only shovelware and PS5 punches way above it's weigth on the internet. But you are right about Nintendo, their fans are just nice guys.
 
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The Fuzz damn you!

Gold Member
Day 1. Quick resume. BC. Hd Blu-ray. Cross play. Great things. But the intensity and clarity of the unified message on how incredibly important these things are is coming from the mother ship. It is super aggressive and persistent. To the point of spamming. I really don't see an equivalent happening from Sony, Nintendo, or steam. I saw it from epic for that first year steady then it dropped off a cliff.

Oh, that was a definitely there. SSD. Clock speed. Custom IO / hardware decompression / Kraken. Tempest audio. Pretty cool, right?
 

Drizzlehell

Banned
I am sorry. I have been found out. I will now format myself. Goodbye.

01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01000001 01001001 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01001001 00100000 01101100 01101111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01011000 01100010 01101111 01111000
So, I translated it but it says "I'm gay and I love cocks"?
 

Fredrik

Member
People become fanboys naturally, then they band together. The question for me here, is not if they get labeled a shill, but how is the company harnessing these people.

Sony does social marketing and disseminates information in hopes that it will be repeated. But how much of that is fud like? How many hardcore visible fanboys do executives follow and fly out to events? Does Sony send out messages that turn into an instant noise machine?

Day 1. Quick resume. BC. Hd Blu-ray. Cross play. Great things. But the intensity and clarity of the unified message on how incredibly important these things are is coming from the mother ship. It is super aggressive and persistent. To the point of spamming. I really don't see an equivalent happening from Sony, Nintendo, or steam. I saw it from epic for that first year steady then it dropped off a cliff.
Yeah you have a point. I guess the closest thing is the SSD speed but it could just be buying into the hype and I don’t see that being mentioned as much now. There is always FUD and trolling coming from core PS fans now though. Can be seen everywhere if you take a step back. But it would be hilarious if it were coming through some official channel when it’s usually dumb.
 

acm2000

Member
As an Xbox/pc "fan" I agree with this, MS bing rewards gives me game pass ultimate for free, forever, which means I'm getting free games out the ass just for spending a couple of minutes of my day doing the tasks on Xbox and bing.

By all means, Keep paying me!
 
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Crayon

Member
Kind of a sweeping, unnuanced statement that doesn't really come off as any hard evidence or anything.

But, in my experience there seem to be a few very hardcore Xbox fanboys that seem to do nothing else than create content pushing the brand (there are Playstation fans doing this as well) but the main difference I see between the two is that some on the Xbox side that do nothing but console warring (i.e there is barely any evidence of them actually playing games) and that some of the worst twitter accounts I've come across are followed by execs and other prominent Xbox representatives. I've yet to come across a similar situation among Playstation gamers tbh.

Senjutsu once confirmed that he was flown out to a MS event where one of the execs personally told him that the x1x would feature a zen CPU instead of a jaguar CPU. he peddled that bs here until he got himself permabanned on old gaf over it. Maybe he was lying, but I dont see someone risking their account over a lie, he legit believed it. I think guys like Senjutsu, colt eastwood and timdog are useful idiots who are being used by Microsoft. Timdog gets retweets and quote tweets from Phil and his tweets are nothing but console wars. it's like if Jimbo regularly conversed with THE RED DRAGON or MVG on twitter.

I think the real guys who are paid off are not your average forum goers who spend all day on forums. Those guys login every now and then or during product launches. they have posts in the tens or hundreds at max. not thousands or tens of thousands like senjetsu. At best, they get flown out for conferences and other events with their hotels paid for. Pretty sure klobrie and colteastwood didnt get there on their own dime. It's not as bad as astroturfing but they are definitely being cultivated by Microsoft.

I’ve never seen the Nintendo/Sony equivalent of people like Tom Warren, TimDog, Colt Eastwood, Jez Corden, Klobrille, Destin, etc. so that pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

Really bizarre that this is allowed to go on and a massive company thinks this is the best way to conduct themselves.

These posts are good at describing the asymmetry of the fandom noise.

Social marketing is a thing and all the game companies do it. Saying "they all do it" as an absolution of ms' behavior though is just trying to wish the subject away.

It's not just naive to think vastly different companies all do it the exact same way. It's denial. Who does it the least? Valve, right? We all can probably agree with that. They actually get criticized for being so low key.

Someone has got to do it the least or most benign. Seems like valve. And by that turn, someone does it the most or worst. We have a preponderance of evidence pointing to which one does it the most and with the most aggression and negativity.

On one hand, this is hard to talk about because it is so hard to keep it from straying into accusations. But it's rotten for communities and it's worth finally addressing. That is, it's worth it if we can not go calling members here shills or widely casting aspersions. If people can't help themselves from doing that then maybe we'd be better off continuing to pretend it's not there.
 
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Crayon

Member
I don't think Sony would pay someone whos name is not even worth to be in the headline (Former World of Warcraft Designer)
or in bold (Ex-World of Warcraft Team Lead), because nobody knows him. It's almost like "Former Ubisoft cleaning woman says open world games suck".


You should be really careful with that. I got 3 whatever points for inappropriate behavior for just indirectly calling one of the fanboys a fanboy.


I've seen tons of posts about the game changing controller + SSD, Xbox has no games, a weird obsession with sales numbers, Game Pass is only shovelware and PS5 punches way above it's weigth on the internet. But you are right about Nintendo, their fans are just nice guys.

Oh, that was a definitely there. SSD. Clock speed. Custom IO / hardware decompression / Kraken. Tempest audio. Pretty cool, right?

Yeah you have a point. I guess the closest thing is the SSD speed but it could just be buying into the hype and I don’t see that being mentioned as much now. There is always FUD and trolling coming from core PS fans now though. Can be seen everywhere if you take a step back. But it would be hilarious if it were coming through some official channel when it’s usually dumb.

Woof all my posting here. I have gals fighters on pause and the battery is ticking lol.

This group of posts all recall the ssd hype. That was definitely Sony taking page one of the propaganda manual and blasting this one little advantage as loud as they could. But it's illustrative that the ssd is the first thing to come to mind. That buzz died down once the consoles were out and the PS5 just loaded a second faster in games.

That was years ago and relatively short lived. But more importantly it is different in kind than a community being mobilized to sew rumors of the opposing console being weak, expensive, hard to dev for, overheating poor yields, missing features etc etc. Sony tooting their own horn on the ssd and the controller is not in the same ballpark as flying out fanboys to events or cultivating them into marketing accounts by tempting them with access to the execs they worship and the promise of more retweets. Fanboys beating their chest about the almighty ssd for about a year is sort of benign in comparison to what we see microsoft doing with their fandom. And keep in mind the ssd hype was the the first or maybe most significant thing to recall in these replies.
 

bender

What time is it?
As an Xbox/pc "fan" I agree with this, MS bing rewards gives me game pass ultimate for free, forever, which means I'm getting free games out the ass just for spending a couple of minutes of my day doing the tasks on Xbox and bing.

By all means, Keep paying me!

 
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DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
I’ve never seen the Nintendo/Sony equivalent of people like Tom Warren, TimDog, Colt Eastwood, Jez Corden, Klobrille, Destin, etc. so that pretty much tells you everything you need to know.

Really bizarre that this is allowed to go on and a massive company thinks this is the best way to conduct themselves.
Tbf this is completely true. I can't think of any pro Sony or Nintendo "journalists" that work at websites?

Tim dog and colt Westwood are just like your red dragon and those other loonies there is quite a few on twitter.
 

Crayon

Member
This might be true, but these people will never admit it because for sure it is part of their contracts.

And as we have seen, they’re not denying it but just projecting that “others do it too.”

Most people repeating it are honest fans but that fandom has a culture shaped by Microsoft. look at major nelson and Greenberg who hide behind Phil and stoke the fandom. In a way it is innocent to spread this:

random-xbox-politely-points-out-all-the-non-exclusives-from-sonyrs-ps5-showcase-1.large.jpg


It's what ms put out and it's good news. Games coming. But c'mon. This message is ultimately negative because it's used as a direct response and it's providing red meat that they know will feed console warriors.

But my point is that most these console warriors are just normal over enthusiastic people. The company is actively encouraging them in a certain direction though and it's trying to use them for both negative and positive advertising.
 

Riky

$MSFT
Most people repeating it are honest fans but that fandom has a culture shaped by Microsoft. look at major nelson and Greenberg who hide behind Phil and stoke the fandom. In a way it is innocent to spread this:

random-xbox-politely-points-out-all-the-non-exclusives-from-sonyrs-ps5-showcase-1.large.jpg


It's what ms put out and it's good news. Games coming. But c'mon. This message is ultimately negative because it's used as a direct response and it's providing red meat that they know will feed console warriors.

But my point is that most these console warriors are just normal over enthusiastic people. The company is actively encouraging them in a certain direction though and it's trying to use them for both negative and positive advertising.

I think you're right, it is just enthusiasm really, the only difference is that Xbox openly engages with those fans on Twitter and YouTube whilst Sony doesn't, both companies have those same sort of people supporting them.
As for that tweet I really think people read something into it that isn't there. Games are announced that are coming to your platform at an event that you aren't mentioned in so they tweet that those games are coming to the platform, it's just factual information really.
 

Fredrik

Member
Nail on head.
This acquisition has made the divide far far worse, especially here and has caused what looks like to me a campaign of actual hatred and bitterness. It's a shame really as we all are here because of a love of games. Hopefully once it's over it will calm down.
I think it’ll be worse before it gets better. I’m already ignoring all ABK threads because I don’t want to witness the mess. Whatever happens it’ll trigger some major event, I think either Sony or MS will go out on some crazy exclusivity or acquisition spree depending on the outcome. I already have all the plastic so I don’t care I just want to go back to talk about games again. 3 temples down on TOTK now! Found out how to build a bike last night, pure awesomeness! 👌
 

Riky

$MSFT
I think it’ll be worse before it gets better. I’m already ignoring all ABK threads because I don’t want to witness the mess. Whatever happens it’ll trigger some major event, I think either Sony or MS will go out on some crazy exclusivity or acquisition spree depending on the outcome. I already have all the plastic so I don’t care I just want to go back to talk about games again. 3 temples down on TOTK now! Found out how to build a bike last night, pure awesomeness! 👌

Yes the fallout whatever happens is going to be huge both in gaming and on this forum, you're right that just staying out of it is probably the best thing to do.
 

Allandor

Member
Shit, where can I sign up? I don’t mind spewing some craziness on Twitter for some extra income!
If you know where, tell me. Some extra income would be ok.
People, come on, there are also some stupid developers (Xbox fanboys, ps fanboys, Apple chills, ....). Don't take everything on Twitter for a fact. Else we must pay more attention for Elon's tweets ....
Nobody wants that

Btw, also no longer works without an account.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
I think you're right, it is just enthusiasm really, the only difference is that Xbox openly engages with those fans on Twitter and YouTube whilst Sony doesn't, both companies have those same sort of people supporting them.
Interesting how you are wordsmithing feeding console war BS’era as simply supporting the enthusiasm of your fans (and astroturfers)… :rolleyes:.

As for that tweet I really think people read something into it that isn't there. Games are announced that are coming to your platform at an event that you aren't mentioned in so they tweet that those games are coming to the platform, it's just factual information really.
Followed up by mandating a 48 hours ban on on those publishers from saying their games were multiplatform also and making sure Sony could not do the same back to them.

That tweet was their usual console warring nonsense: they wanted to paint Sony’s event negatively, they knew their next event had a lot more of the same, and wanted to paint a narrative where their event had tons of exclusives while mocking Sony for having games that were not actual exclusives.

Not that I find it surprising you presenting it this way (“do not know… they are just stating facts”)… it sounds quite disingenuous (only very very naive at best, but I guess it is the plausible deniability fine line).
 
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Crayon

Member
I think you're right, it is just enthusiasm really, the only difference is that Xbox openly engages with those fans on Twitter and YouTube whilst Sony doesn't, both companies have those same sort of people supporting them.
As for that tweet I really think people read something into it that isn't there. Games are announced that are coming to your platform at an event that you aren't mentioned in so they tweet that those games are coming to the platform, it's just factual information really.

It's really is just factual information and it's even positive on its face. But I hope we can agree it's in the form of a tailored response to Sony's show. Playstation social presence doesn't come off like they are fixated on Xbox. The closest example I can think of is the old game sharing video. That was some real "take this and rub it in their face, boys!".
 
It's really is just factual information and it's even positive on its face. But I hope we can agree it's in the form of a tailored response to Sony's show. Playstation social presence doesn't come off like they are fixated on Xbox. The closest example I can think of is the old game sharing video. That was some real "take this and rub it in their face, boys!".
Hahaha i love That video and lets face it, everyone That E3 was beyond pissed to xbox

But imagine in the ps4 days/this gen a campaign like Genesis Does what Nintendont, Im pretty sure Sony would make a living hell of xbox suits and Phil
 
I know a lot are joking but it will become a nightmare scenario with AI combined with corporate shilling. MS could create 100,000 Xbox bot's and you literally wouldn't be able to tell them apart from human users on the surface level at least. This is why we need something like TruthGPT from Musk as what's real is going to be increasingly hard to discern in the future, and truth is very precious.

The paid shilling I honestly find disgusting because again I hate anything that is trying to deceive or bend the truth. It has been going on for years I suspect.
 

DenchDeckard

Moderated wildly
Interesting how you are wordsmithing feeding console war BS’era as simply supporting the enthusiasm of your fans (and astroturfers)… :rolleyes:.


Followed up by mandating a 48 hours ban on on those publishers from saying their games were multiplatform also and making sure Sony could not do the same back to them.

That tweet was their usual console warring nonsense: they wanted to paint Sony’s event negatively, they knew their next event had a lot more of the same, and wanted to paint a narrative where their event had tons of exclusives while mocking Sony for having games that were not actual exclusives.

Not that I find it surprising you presenting it this way (“do not know… they are just stating facts”)… it sounds quite disingenuous (only very very naive at best, but I guess it is the plausible deniability fine line).

There's no point in getting wound up over xbox tweeting that multiplatform games are also on their console...that just seems odd to me.
 

rofif

Banned
Man... xbox not looking good not gonna lie.
Emails about outbuying sony, paid fan channels, a monopoly want to buy everyone in a chance to find new "marvel"....
ooof.... no thanks.

Shame sony won't buy From and Square benfore m$ does. Would be a shame to loose these two companies
 
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