I very much doubt there is any “you will cover our game favourably in exchange for the chair” type of deal there.
But that will be the conclusion anyone watching their steams will land on when they see the chair in the vid.
There never usually is an explicit deal.
In comms/pr across the board this isn’t unusual (except federal government because of gift restrictions). You always want to be building good relations with your contacts, and they want to build it with comms/pr people. It’s not a quid pro quo for either party, typically, it’s about gaining good will, falling somewhere between generousness and transactional. There is a reason a lot of people in comms/pr are friends with journalists and vice versa.
I mean, prior to The Witcher 3 coming out, CDPR flew a bunch of internet streamers (including Gopher, Jesse Cox, Angry Joe among others) to to Poland to hang out at a castle and have a good time and play the game for an extended period of time.
Getting a chair – even a really good one – seems to pale in comparison.
And yeah, pretty much every industry throws swag around, even to those who are paid to be independent reviewers. Not sure why this is any big deal at all.
I think it’s crass and ugly. And not just the chair.
The free chair thing is kind of lame, but I’m more disappointed with CDPR putting streamers in the actual game.
The game press event/swag scene is crass as hell, but it’s been industry standard for a long time. At Yahoo, big boxes of free stuff were standard, as were insanely lavish press events. (Trips to Italy, France, and England were among the fancier ones.)
There’s obviously the potential for unspoken quid pro quos. (At Yahoo we generally salved our consciences by writing previews, not reviews, of the swag-givers’ games. I at least never wrote a review that was swayed by anything but my play experience. Still, it’s an aspect of my old job that I look back on with more guilty pleasure than pride.) The practice should probably be banned. But if this is becoming some kind of a scandal for CDPR, then, y’know, there’s a long line behind them.
Not a fan either, but then I ask myself how this is any different from them casting other celebrities like Keanu Reeves. I guess you could argue it’s a different level of famous but that answer doesn’t fully satisfy me (which is tough since I’m in the “Keanu fine, streamer meh” camp).
Neo? He’s ok I think.
I guess in that case the difference would be that Keanu is a professional actor, not somebody who streams games for a living. The tit for tat is different – it’s “here’s a bag of money, act in our game” vs. “here’s an NPC, hope you like the game, nudge nudge wink wink!”
Honestly, in 2020 I’ve got other shit to feel aggrieved about.
Is it that different from Conan O’Brien in Death Stranding, in that they are both ‘professional entertainers’, and not necessarily actors?
I don’t know this guy so wouldn’t have noticed anything. No real issue unless the performance turns out terrible and the game is compromised because of it.
(Though obviously the integrity of said streamer’s views on the game are suspect, but then so are Conan’s in his Clueless Gamer skits)
Putting influencers in the game feels icky at first… but I know that in the end it won’t matter, as I won’t even know what characters are the ones interpreted by them (or at least, I wouldn’t if I wouldn’t have read about it on the news).
CDP are fans of Cohh and Cox and figured why not do something cool with them?
But yeah let’s be cynical, it’s in vogue these days
GAME IS TERRIBLE. DEVELOPER DISTRACTS WITH COLOURFUL CHAIR.
Heh yeah, I agree with Gordon that casting a streamer is waaaaay down the list of things I actually care about. Not a fan of it, but it won’t impact my decision to support them and I can’t imagine it’s going to be something I really notice once playing - I trust CDPR would cut the character if his performance is truly awful.
#CHAIRGATE 2020
It hasn’t been an issue for me in past. I didn’t care when Dan Ryckert was in L.A. Noire or when I interacted with Colin Moriarty in Fallout 3 as I had no idea who they were. I’m still excited for the game, but I find the prospect of seeing the likeness of big streamers in the game a little immersion breaking.
I definitely agree with Gordon that in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter.
I’m still annoyed at those NPCs in Pillars of Eternity that have nothing to do with the game and are just callouts to backers. Not that it was ‘corrupt’ mind you (I’m sure it was all laid out quite forthrightly in the Kickstarter campaign), just that it took you right out of the game.
Oh yeah, I thought it was some kind of puzzle when I started playing.
“Maybe I’ll understand what they’re saying when I learn a code or a different language later in the game”. Then someone on the forums told me it was backers, and I was pretty pissed every time I ran into one. I didn’t make it very far in the game.