Dear game marketers,
Have we lost completely our sense of shame in this industry? In any other world, advertising one game to make people download another one would be considered at the least insulting, probably criminal.
I’m talking, of course, about games like Gardenscapes, whose entire gameplay consists of a mixture of Match 3 a la Candy Crush, and light city building. Yet, the ads you get show a character in some immediate peril, and multiple choices on how to save them, of which, of course, the player in the ad chooses the wrong one to make the player feel they would do better.
This is how Gardenscapes advertises itself. This is NOT the game you'll download at all.
It has to work, though, because right now, half of the games available in mobile seem to be the same kind of puzzle, like Heroes Charge, which is a battle gacha, but once again, advertises itself as a puzzle game.
So, I wonder, is there no one with a small sense of ethics in these companies? No one asks “why do we have to outright lie to get people to play our game”? And also, why is no one ACTUALLY BUILDING THAT GAME?
The mobile game industry has completely detached itself from any notion of ethics, and it’s now just a bunch of sleazy psychology tricks to get people addicted to crappy games.
Dear developers, there’s greener pastures in other industries. Consider where you stand and where your ethics are, and walk out. Remember why you started programming (it probably wasn’t to trick a bunch of people into spending money on unfun games), be proud of it, and find somewhere else to use your skills.