The ficus is an excellent corporate plant.  It’s very robust, requires little water and sunlight, and makes an excellent cubicle companion for today’s modern worker.

The forums over at GamersHell, on the other hand, are full of terrible corporate plants.  Sony’s recent faux pas is the perfect illustration of a company getting caught with its hand the viral marketing cookie jar and it’s a growing trend of insulting marketing techniques.  I’m pretty confident that there’s no shortage of hired marketers - clumsy hired marketers - posting over at GH trying to pimp out their games.

Take this thread for example.   I’m pretty sure that the primary thread drivers are also producers of the game in question.  I’ll be honest, I lose respect for any game and any company that goes for this sort of crap.  I’m perfectly willing to listen to a corporate pitch about why their game is the next coming, but I feel insulted when companies aren’t up-front about their marketing and pretend like we’re too stupid to recognize a paid endorsement.

My dream would be to have a forum where these types get e-booed every time they raise their shill heads and cry out the wonders of a game they get paid to promote.  Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe these are just highly organized, PR savvy, eager to please fans with an array of promotional links at their excited, trembling hands, but honestly?  It walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck.