Firstly, I’ll briefly explain what Twitter is. Twitter is an online social network and blogging website that allows users to send and receive messages called ‘tweets’. The user tweets over the internet either through the website, external applications or mobile phones.
With such a large fan base, it didn’t surprise me when I found that The Sims had joined Twitter. There is both a Sims 2 and Sims 3 profile that you can follow, and a huge list of fan created profiles. The Sims was one of the few profiles I could find that was about the game itself, the rest seem to be the companies that make the games. Other profiles I found that were solely based on the game itself included Rockband,Guitar Hero, Band Hero, Katamari Forever and Bioshock 2. I found these by going through the list of games I own and searching them, considering I own over 20 games that’s not many. There are probably more out there however it would take far longer than I have time available to write every game in the search box.
So why have these particular games joined Twitter? Well, Social networking is a powerful tool, with websites such as Facebook and Myspace boasting the two of the most visited websites in the world. In the chart below the blue line is Facebook, and as the months progress it tops Wikipedia. It’s now the fourth largest website, sitting beneath Yahoo!, Microsoft sites and Google.
A recent example of the power of social networking is the success of the Rage Against the Machine for Christmas No.1 facebook group which asked users to purchase the Killing in the Name track by Rage Against the Machine so it would overtake X-Factor’s Joe McElderry’s cover of The Climb by Miley Cyrus in the Christmas No.1 charts.
Another example is extracted from The Wealth Of Networks, by Yochai Benkler (Full book available here)
“Our first story concerns Sinclair Broadcasting and the 2004 U.S. presidential election. It highlights the opportunities that mass-media owners have to exert power over the public sphere, the variability within the media itself in how this power is used, and, most significant for our purposes here, the potential corrective effect of the networked information environment. At its core, it suggests that the existence of radically decentralized outlets for individuals and groups can provide a check on the excessive power that media owners were able to exercise in the industrial information economy.”
“Alongside these standard avenues of response in the traditional public sphere of commercial mass media, their regulators, and established parties, a very different kind of response was brewing on the Net, in the blogosphere.”
Through the use of various social networks responding to each other, they managed to find a way to hit Sinclair where it hurts.
“By 10:00 that morning, Marshall posted on TalkingPoints a letter from an anonymous reader, which began by saying: “I’ve worked in the media business for 30 years and I guarantee you that sales is what these local TV stations are all about. They don’t care about license renewal or overwhelming public outrage. They care about sales only, so only local advertisers can affect their decisions.” This reader then outlined a plan for how to watch and list all local advertisers, and then write to the sales managers—not general managers—of the local stations and tell them which advertisers you are going to call, and then call those.”
In total, the boycott database included 800 advertisers. The damage was that at first, 50 advertisers pulled ads, and mainstream reporters had reported it. Next, the companies stock dropped by 8%, and the following morning, by another 6.
“While this does not prove that the Web- organized, blog-driven and facilitated boycott was the determining factor, as compared to fears of formal regulatory action, the timing strongly suggests that the efficacy of the boycott played a very significant role.”
As you can see, this can be very dangerous for companies. The public were able to indirectly affect the success of the company by social networking. What used to be a simple letter of complaint has turned into a retaliation that makes a difference, clearly showing companies cannot ignore the voice of their consumers.
If something as effective as this can bring a company down, it’s likely it can be of great benefit to the company too.
“The most valuable part of marketing using social networks is that it allows people to market their services to a large market at no cost. Thousands of people enter these sites daily. Therefore they are able reach a mass market free of charge.”
So you can see why companies would want in, with the ability to influence their “followers” (twitter) or group members (facebook) and trigger a large scale chain reaction so that their product, or themselves, gets noticed/ talked about. The Sims benefits from it’s inability to ever be completed, it’s on going game play which revolves around customisation and creation means that users want to share what they’ve built, videos they’ve made, Sims they’ve created etc. and will do this via these social networks. However, I find that The Sims tweets are very stale, almost robotic. I can see why they wouldn’t want a personality representing their game, as it could clash with their followers and cause problems. Here’s a few examples of typical Sims tweets:
Happy Tuesday, Simmers! Which one of these reasons is your favorite reason to give TS3 as a gift this holiday?http://bit.ly/6YKaUa
We love LOLSims! Do you have any of your own? Share them with us and we’ll post them in our Facebook LOLSims album:http://bit.ly/5y4i5e
Perhaps it’s the lack of personality, over use of exclamation marks, or feeling that they’re just bluntly trying to sell me more stuff that puts me off. But how does a franchise as big as The Sims avoid this? Or maybe this is exactly what the fans want, but I’m just not that big of a fan any more to get excited about what they’re saying. Yet here I am, talking about The Sims. Whether I’m saying anything good or bad, they have succeeded in making me think about it.
