Amazon Stops Selling Book On How To Game Amazon

from the free-speech-for-all...-except-if-we-don't-like-it dept

Remember Amazon's recent statement that:

"Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable."

The company quickly proved that wasn't the case and went back on its word with that book, and since then has taken down a number of other books it decided were objectionable. Apparently, one of the latest books it finds objectionable is one that explains how to game Amazon's ratings system. A guy, who figured out how to game the system that rates the popularity of Kindle books, wrote an ebook about his experience gaming Amazon's Kindle ratings. It was up for a while, until people started writing about it.. and then suddenly it disappeared. Apparently, Amazon's views on "censorship" are not quite as principled as the company made them out to be.

Filed Under: books, censorship, gaming, kindle
Companies: amazon

Instead Of Bad Drivers, What If Speed Cameras 'Caught' Good Drivers Instead?

from the carrot-or-the-stick dept

We've written at length here about the multitude of problems with speed cameras. What if, instead of focusing on punishing speeders, the speed cameras were used to reward good behavior? Drivers who obey the speed limit are automatically entered into a lottery and then notified by mail if they've won. So, you might pick up your mail one day with a letter from local law enforcement and a check for good driving behavior, rather than a fine for bad driving behavior. This is somewhat reminiscent of the idea from a few years ago where police would pull over good drivers and "reward" them with free coffee coupons -- but avoids the whole "pull over" part, which certainly upset some drivers.

The idea is that the jackpot could come from the fines that were paid from speeders -- so not only do you get rewarded, you get rewarded from the pockets of worse drivers. This method may also serve to make a speeding ticket feel even more painful than just a fine alone. After all, a $500 ticket definitely stings, but a $500 ticket PLUS a little note that had you not been speeding, you could have won $10,000 instead? Ouch, that hurts a lot more.

The idea was the winning entry to VW's "The Fun Theory" competition, where applicants were tasked to design ways to change people's behavior through fun. This is a brilliantly viral campaign that showcases the fact that advertising is content, and if you make engaging content, people will beat a path to your door to watch it. The "piano stairs" entry alone has amassed over 12 million views.

Of course, rewarding good drivers with cash awards does not help governments rake in quite as much in revenue, but speed cameras are supposed to be about safety and not money, right?

Filed Under: driving, gaming, good driving, incentives, lottery, rewards, speed cameras

Dungeons And Dragons Players Revolt, Storm Super Rewards Castle

from the spam-survey-broadsword-of-doom dept

We've been covering how Turbine recently changed the business model of their online role-playing game Dungeons And Dragons Online from the fairly typical MMORPG pricing system ($50 for the game and then $15/month to play) to a business model where users can play for free -- but pony up some cash for some additional perks. The decision has been a significant success for a game that was headed downhill in the shadow of larger MMORPG's, like Blizzard's World Of Warcraft, and Turbine saw milions of new players the first few months after the change. However, Nick writes in to direct our attention to the fact that some additional Turbine efforts wound up pushing our free-loving Elven and Dwarven friends a bit too hard.

The company recently implemented a Super Rewards "offer wall." Like in popular Facebook games like Farmville, the offer wall allowed users to fill out surveys and participate in other marketing efforts in exchange for Turbine points, which could be used in game for goods and services. Except judging from posts to the Turbine forums, users weren't pleased to learn that their account name and email were being sent to Super Rewards just for visiting the page -- and some of the early offers wound up being "questionable," even according to a Turbine forum statement. Despite a few changes, customers continued to complain and Turbine wound up tearing down the wall -- "for now":

"Based on your feedback, we're stepping away from the ‘Offer' category for now. We'll keep exploring alternate ways for players who want points to get them. We'll also continue to innovate in pricing and accessibility because that's who we are. As of today, the Offer Wall is coming down. We'll collect all the feedback we've received over the last few days and will use it to guide future decisions."

It's great that Turbine was willing to listen to customer feedback and pull back from (or revise) an offer that was annoying, though it seemed easy enough for users to avoid these kinds of offers if they wanted. The company still seems to be doing quite well by selling a revolving array of specialized in-game loot and additional adventures, though there's also a fine balancing act at play between offering users worthy, compelling content -- and pushing microtransactions to the point where they frustrate and annoy the userbase. That said, many gamers seem perfectly eager to pay a lot of money for relatively little; Blizzard Entertainment recently earned millions in fairly short order by selling users a $25 horse -- which offered players' in-game characters no additional in-game character bonus.

Filed Under: d&d, gaming, lead generation, revolts

The US Marines And The Mormons Are Buying Votes On Digg?

from the say-what-now? dept

The LA Times has a short story on one of a bunch of companies that claims to be able to let you buy votes on Digg (as well as some other sites, but Digg is apparently the main attraction). There have been a bunch of such companies over the years, but what caught my eye was the claim in the article that among the customers of this particular company were the US Marines, the Mormon Church and the Korean Dept. of Tourism. Perhaps I don't follow the Digg spamming world that closely, but I'd mainly assumed that it was focused on random publications or no-name companies incorrectly believing that getting onto the front page of Digg would boost the company into the big time. But the US Marines and the Mormon Church? That seems really odd. Oh, and as for the claims that if you get on the front page of Digg it can send tens of thousands of visitors to your site in a matter of hours... don't buy into the hype. Over the past few years we've been on Digg's front page a bunch of times and it certainly drives a nice stream of traffic, but never more than a few thousand visitors (sometimes significantly less). It's always nice when one of our stories makes it, but I can't see how the amount of traffic Digg drives could possibly be worth the rates this company supposedly charges.

Filed Under: buying votes, gaming, mormon church, spam, us marines
Companies: digg

Zango's Latest Trick: Pitching Fake Batman MMORPG To Get People To Download Adware

from the and-so-it-goes dept

We've talked about Zango's continued claims that it's a changed company from the one that paid huge fines for tricking people into downloading its intrusive adware, but somethings never really seem to change. An anonymous reader points us to an ad found on a bunch of legitimate video game sites recently, pitching a new Batman online virtual world game, but if you click through, it turns out that it's just a severely limited demo version of a client-side Batman game from 2001. Despite the ad promising all sorts of things, such as "play online with your friends" the actual download has none of that... but it does include an install of Zango. Chris Boyd, who figured all this out wonders why the sites that ran this ad did so, knowing that it was almost certainly bogus. Zango, of course, will blame a "rogue affiliate" which is what they always do -- but Boyd wonders why they won't actually identify who's responsible.

Filed Under: adware, affiliates, batman, gaming
Companies: zango

Turns Out Virtual Worlds Teach Players The Scientific Method

from the well,-how-about-that dept

With so many articles trashing video games all the time, Clive Thompson (who continues to consistently write the most interesting articles for whatever publication he's writing for at the time) has a report about a new study that notes that kids playing virtual world video games are basically learning the scientific method, without even realizing it. That is, in order to achieve certain goals and milestones, groups work together to put forth a hypothesis and data on how best to tackle a problem -- and then when it doesn't work, they regroup, and change the hypothesis based on the new data. In fact, the research found that when looking at forums discussing the games, rather than a bunch of juvenile trash-talking (though, there was some of that too), much of the conversation would mimic the process of scientific discovery and understanding:

Someone would pose a question -- like what sort of potions a high-class priest ought to carry around, or how to defeat a particular monster -- and another would post a reply, offering data and facts gathered from their own observations. Others would jump into the fray, disputing the theory, refining it, offering other facts. Eventually, once everyone was convinced the theory was supported by the data, the discussion would peter out.

The researcher then takes this a step further, suggesting that one way we could revive sagging science education in this country is to embrace this aspect of video games, and get students to recognize that what they're doing is the basic process of scientific discovery, so that they don't think of science as being boring and irrelevant to their lives.

Filed Under: coordination, gaming, hypotheses, science, scientific method, video games