The Guide to Gaming With Your Kids

The Guide to Gaming With Your Kids is designed to help grown-ups who are not gamers learn enough to get started and bond with their kids over videogames. The piece starts with the benefits of gaming, shares some common lingo, examines all of the major gaming platforms, offers guidance for online safety and then suggests a few hot games that are family friendly (these were my choices, not any sponsor’s). I received a lot of positive feedback on this article (which turned into a slideshow). I really hope it helps a lot of parents find common ground with their kids and, potentially, enjoy games for themselves.

Hilarious Gifts for Male Friends and Coworkers

Hilarious Gifts for Male Friends and Coworkers is basically just a gift guide, but one that is intended more to provide laughs than actual guidance on presents to buy. Some of the items are exorbitantly priced, a few are really gross and I’ve had reports that a couple items are already sold out indefinitely. But, again, that’s not the point. Just knowing that these things exist was enough for me (well, except for the plush Portal turret – we really did buy one of those to guard the Christmas tree!). I basically scoured the Internet for products that made me laugh, and then wrote up descriptions that I hoped would extend the laughs even further. The assignment actually morphed from one that was a general guide to funny gifts for guys to one targeted specifically at coworkers, so I had to make a few edits to make it work. One of my favorites, the toilet mug, had to be altered most. My original caption was written from the point of view of a spouse or live-in mate, not a fellow employee:

Sure, this thing is pretty disgusting, especially when it’s filled with his favorite dark brown beverage. And, if you’re his significant other, he’ll definitely bring it out when your parents are in town. If you’re really lucky, he’ll delegate it to the bathroom and let the dog drink water out of it. (That never gets old!)

You’re right, there’s no really upside to this present after the initial peals of amusement wear off. You’ll have no other recourse but to destroy it and blame the dishwasher. Again.

It’s worth noting that both of these are slideshows, and both have lengthy intros and captions. I wrote as long as I felt was needed to tell each story – or in the case of the gift guide, make it entertaining. I typically write much shorter copy (headlines and captions, mostly) in my everyday work, but I left the topics dictate length here and made it modular enough that the editors could easily cut elements without damaging the whole if they felt it didn’t fit the space. I was actually surprised at how little changed from my final drafts.

Not one to miss an opportunity to improve the depth of understanding in a major area of our work, I attended the session at PAX Prime 2011 on market segmentation. I learned some things, including how the industry is beginning to embrace psychographics (what motivates segments of customers to take the actions they pursue rather than who they are) and how it’s OK sometimes to shoot from the hip if you know your audience really well.

How Marketing Segments and Targets Gamers (1:01:55)

Panelists:
Pete Hines, Bethesda Softworks
Ed Davis, AKQA
Paul Caparotta, GameSpot

Once happy to prey only on newbies and the truly stupid, phishing mailers used to send poorly written, typo ridden messages that were easily sniffed out by Internet veterans. But not so much these days.

I got an e-mail recently that looked like it might have been legit. It claimed I had a Battle.net account which had its password recently changed. And if I didn’t initiate this change, I should contact Blizzard support to reclaim it.

Hello,

This is an automated notification regarding your Battle.net account. Some or all of your contact information was recently modified through the Account Management website.

*** If you made recent account changes, please disregard this automatic notification.

*** If you did NOT make any changes to your account, we recommend you log in to Account Management review your account settings.

If you cannot sign into Account Management using the link above, or if unauthorized changes continue to happen, please contact Blizzard Billing & Account Services for further assistance.

Billing & Account Services can be reached at 1-800-59-BLIZZARD (1-800-592-5499 Mon-Fri, 8AM-8PM Pacific Time) or at billing@blizzard.com.

Account security is solely the responsibility of the accountholder. Please be advised that in the event of a compromised account, Blizzard representatives will typically lock the account. In these cases the Account Administration team will require faxed receipt of ID materials before releasing the account for play.

Regards,

The Battle.net Support Team
Blizzard Entertainment
www.blizzard.com/support
Online Privacy Policy

These sorts of mails are commonly triggered for security reasons, so it gave me pause. Did I have a Battle.net account? It was entirely possible. Could someone have hacked it? Certainly. Did the mail come to the e-mail address I would have used when creating such an account? Yes, in fact, it did – an account that until now had been mostly free of spam. And those do appear to be legitimate phone and e-mail support options (they’re banking that you’ll choose the easy method and just click the link).

So I did the smart thing and visited Blizzard support. But I did NOT use any of the links in the e-mail I received. E-mail links are easily diverted to addresses that look remarkably legit but are really fronts for data thieves. No, I typed in a search and found the verified Blizzard support page, which looked like this:

Do these folks make you feel warm inside? Maybe from the blood spilling from your entrails.

What do you think of this page? Does it look warm and inviting? Do the characters portrayed on it suggest that helpful support personnel are standing by, ready to help you through whatever problem you might be facing down?

No. The woman looks like she’s piercing your soul with her silvery eyes and considering whether you’d make a tasty snack for her pet serpent. The dude on the right looks like he’d be sneering at your Level 1 Dwarf except that he’s decided that you’re beneath his contempt and will roundly ignore you should you attempt to engage him in conversation.

Probably not what Blizzard was going for, unless their goal is to sacrifice customer service for reduced support volume.

Despite the icy virtual reception, I submitted my support request. I only asked whether I ever had an account with them attached to the e-mail address that received the notification mail. It took a follow-up to clear up the issue to my satisfaction. This is a common problem with support – they don’t actually read the message, they scan it for keywords and then cut and paste canned responses. Here’s what I got back:

Thank you for contacting Blizzard! My name is Charli and I am from Blizzard’s Account and Technical Services department. I have read through your e-mail and would be happy to assist you. We have recently seen an increase in phishing attempts which pose a real threat for account security. As a friendly reminder, many scams will ask you for your password, which is something Blizzard Entertainment will *NEVER* do.

You may wish to review the following links for more information on phishing emails:

     – Types of Account Thefts: http://us.battle.net/security/types.html

     – How to tell if the email you received is legitimate: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/30828

     – Information concerning email scams, examples of phishing emails, and what to do in the event you have received a phishing email can be found on the Customer Service Forum here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=965511383

Add a Battle.net authenticator to the account and receive an exclusive Corehound pet! Information about this security device can be found here: http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/BLIZZARDAUTH.

If you feel you may have responded to a phishing email, and are unable to access the account, please contact Account & Technical Services. With proper verification our representatives may be able to assist you in recovering the account. Our contact information can be found at http://blizzard.com/support/article/cs.

Charli could be a guy or a girl, so I don’t know if it was the ice princess or that sneering dude who replied. To his or her credit, s/he did allude to the fact that it could be a phishing scam – but did not state what I actually wanted to know. A simple “The email address used to contact us is not and has never been registered to a Battle.net or World of Warcraft account” would have satisfied me. Which is what I eventually got, when I pressed for a more specific answer.

Since then, I have received several more “notifications” from the Society of Not Really Blizzard Phishers, including a notice of “Suspicious Activity – Account Locked” for my non-existent World of Warcraft account.

If there’s a silver lining here, apart from the fact that I avoided clicking what I can now see is a very suspicious link, is Blizzard’s concise white list messaging. I’ve written white list messages myself for various organizations in my roles as communications director and community manager, and this is a good one. Short, sweet and detailed:

Please be aware that if your email service or software utilizes restrictive junk or “spam” filters, you may not be able to receive important emails from our support department. This can often include critical account notices, password recovery, and billing confirmation. If such filters are in place, these messages may wind up in a junk folder, or even be deleted automatically.

To ensure you are able to receive support messages, please review the following options:

Do not use the “Spam”, “Junk”, or “Junk Mail” buttons to delete emails from Blizzard Entertainment. If this happens it may not only prevent you from getting important emails, but your mail service may start blocking ALL Blizzard Entertainment emails of any kind, for ALL its subscribers.

Check your “Junk Folder” or “Spam Folder” and make sure you do not see any official emails there. If you see any, be sure to mark them as “Not Junk” or “Not Spam” so that messages are not improperly filtered in the future.

Add our email addresses to your Address book or “Safe Sender” list:

• support@blizzard.com
• billing@blizzard.com
• wowtech@blizzard.com
• wowgm@blizzard.com
• *@blizzard.com

Following these steps should ensure that you receive all the messages from Blizzard Entertainment. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Now, if they could just convince us they really do want to have a dialog with their customers!

But it all started with this tweet, which at first glance seemed to be a random venting of frustration by a faceless social media plebe:

But this tweet seemed much more calculated after the events of the next few days.

Two days later, the online storefront was gone – apparently shut down and replaced with a short message:

We have recently had to give serious thought to whether we could really keep GOG.com the way it is. We’ve debated on it for quite some time and, unfortunately, we’ve decided that GOG.com simply cannot remain in its current form. We’re very grateful for all support we’ve received from all of you in the past two years. Working on GOG.com was a great adventure for all of us and an unforgettable journey to the past, through the long and wonderful history of PC gaming. This doesn’t mean the idea behind GOG.com is gone forever. We’re closing down the service and putting this era behind us as new challenges await.

GOG.com kept tweeting:

The news about the site remaining available for people to redownload their games was a tip off. Why would a company keep the site live for people to redownload past purchases if they had no new revenue coming in to pay the server bills?

That same day, rumors spread that the site shutdown was a hoax. And people were angry!

On September 20, the site message was updated:

First of all, we apologize everyone for the whole situation and closing GOG.com. We do understand the timing for taking down the site caused confusion and many users didn’t manage to download all their games. Unfortunately we had to close the service due to business and technical reasons. At the same time we guarantee that every user who bought any game on GOG.com will be able to download all their games with bonus materials, DRM-free and as many times as they need starting this Thursday. The official statement from GOG.com’s management concerning the ongoing events is planned on Wednesday.

The news was finally broken on Sept. 22 that the shutdown was a build up to the site launching out of beta. Anger still washed over the social media streams:

GOGcom apologized, but some feared too little, too late:

But the next day, it was business as usual – actually, more business than usual:

GOG.com seems to have generated the buzz it wanted and even earned back some customers’ trust with the addition of two popular classic games and a large sale on “favorites.” Time will tell if the stunt hurts them or served its intended purpose.

But as a social media manager who aims to understand customer needs and perspectives and strives for transparency in communications, I have to wonder if hoaxes and stunts that anger customers are ever a good risk.

Here’s how I might have handled it:

GOG.com is going down for maintenance. We’ll be shut for 5 days as we prepare to launch the new site with exciting new features!If you make a GOG purchase today, download it right away. If you don’t complete the DL you’ll have to wait til the site comes back on 9/23.

Don’t worry, your GOG.com purchases are safe! You’ll still be able to redownload everything you’ve ever bought! Big announcements coming!

Here are some new features you’ll enjoy when GOG.com comes back on 9/23: More news, community features, quick browse catalog and reminders! 

Feel free to speculate on the game news. We can’t confirm yet, but watch our Twitter on 9/22! We think you RPG fans will be pleased.

While the site is down, how about we give away a few copies of the mystery RPG. RT the following message for a chance to win!

GOG.com is back up. You may see hiccups as we continue to add servers and manage 5 days of pent-up demand. Tell us what you think!

I found both of these discussions fascinating – true highlights of the show despite the general lack of gaming content (my passion!). Fortunately, I recorded both from the front row with generally good results (there was a fidgety person next to me at the second panel who makes a few stray sounds early on, but she finally settled down).

Please note there is explicit language in the second panel (NOT safe for work, at least not without headphones!). I don’t recall any cursing in the first panel.

Becoming a Community Manager (1:01:23)

Panelists:
Jay Frechette, EA/Visceral Games
Jennifer Kye, Gameloft
Sam Houston, formerly with Perfect World and GamerDNA
Arne Meyer, Naughty Dog Studios
Collin Moore, formerly with Irrational Games
James Stevenson, Insomniac Games
Allison Thresher, Harmonix

Twittering for the Man (59:36)

Panelists:
Dan Amrich, Activision
Jeff Green, formerly EA
Larry Hryb, Microsoft
Jeff Rubenstein, Sony
A.J. Glasser, GamePro magazine (moderator)

Did these panels offer you any lessons you can apply to your job, either inside or outside of the games industry? We’d love to hear what you think.

Facebook on Xbox 360

Normally I wouldn’t post gaming news to this site (that’s what BusyGamerNews.com is for) but the news flash that Facebook and Twitter are going to launch on Xbox 360 consoles this fall should interest everyone who works in social media and community.

The game is about to change (again). It’s one thing to tweet and post status updates from a mobile phone. Typically, you’re out in the world tapping in texts about your work, meals and entertainment. Usually with bleached out twitpics of food that hopefully tastes better than it looks. We’re all used to that.

Now, expect a lot more gaming chatter. Once this feature launches as part of a long overdue Xbox 360 dashboard update, people will post pictures and achievements from their games. Trash talk will go a lot wider. And scheduling for group play of games and other activities, such as movie watching via Netflix Instant Queue parties (also launching soon), will compete with tweetups and Facebook events for your attention.

If you make your living in social media and don’t play games, now is the time to start.

UPDATE: Nintendo announced that its portable, the Nintendo DSi, will be getting Facebook integration this summer. But it will be limited to uploading images taken with the DSi’s camera. So the only impact here will be an influx of crappy low-res pictures, many with special effects such as stamps applied using the DSi’s primitive photo editing tools. Still, more evidence that social media is going to become more gamer-centric.