Are advertisers and PR companies who visit video game blogs truthful about their affiliations, or do they pose as gamers and seed discussions with favorable plugs for the products they're being paid to shill? We have long suspected that certain comments made on Joystiq.com are the work of advertisers, promoters or even creators of the products that we blog about.
That needs to change.
In yesterday's New York Times, writer Julie Bosman quotes Robert Ricci, a director at PR firm Weber Shandwick, (an Interpublic Group company): "If you're working on a video game, and you go onto a video gamer's blog, let your contacts know that you are an employee of said company... Always let them know what your intentions are up front."
