It seems like if what you’re showing is what you understand they find appealing and fun, then surely that’s what should be in the game. You give them that.
But instead, you give them something else that is unrelated to what they’ve seen on the ad? A gem matching candy crush clone they’ve seen a thousand times?
How is that model working? How is that holding up as a marketing technique???
Just fucking get “Yeah You Want Those Games” on Steam.
Btw, I love the ones where they actively acknowledge that many of the ads are fake “Why does everyone say this game is fake? I’m playing it right now.” or “See, we’re going to walk through the game in order to prove it’s real…” proceeds to make overly generic commentary that proves nothing
And I find it amusing this game Envoy: The King’s Return has been a puzzle game and an RTS, and it seems the voice over keeps getting confused… because after the generic voice over for Envoy sometimes says “Let the battle begin!”, after showing it as a puzzle game.
I forget the game but there was one ad that specifically said, “Don’t you hate those fake ads? Well we’ll show you what our game is really like!” I was so amazed that I downloaded the game even though it didn’t appeal to me… their ad was also fake.
I get that Google Play is “whatever goes” but it’s fucking embarrassing that Apple doesn’t police their store - they’re certainly being paid more than enough money to do it.
embarrassing that Apple doesn’t police their store -
Isn’t it the ads that you want to be policed? Or are the screenshots in the Play Store and App Store also misleading?
It’s the app. If they’re deceiving customers then Apple should remove their app.
How is apple supposed to keep track of ads displayed within other apps and platforms, though?
I mean, if nothing else, user reports and reviews, followed by a trivially short investigation?
The most devious format is when they show a “clip” from a “totally real youtuber’s very real games people say are fake, but aren’t” series
Protip: The harder someone tries to convince you something isn’t the case, the more likely that it is. Lemme put it like this. Would you trust a restaurant that felt the need to put up a sign saying “We do NOT jack off into the clam chowder!”, no?
Wishlisted, this looks like it’ll be some cheap fun for my deck. Thanks for sharing 😁
I love that somebody actually went and fucking made them.
It’s important to realize that this isn’t a game, it’s 20 seconds of animation that looks like a game. There would be a lot more work designing levels or an algorithm to send enemies etc.
The actual game is designed to be as addictive as possible so you become a whale spending money on it. The advertising is designed to get you to download the game. Two different jobs.
Also, easier A/B testing and targeting if you can just advertise different games to different people but funnel them all to the same end game.
If the math worked out that people who saw the real game downloaded it and ended up paying more money, they would advertise the real game. Guess the math doesn’t work.
The ads also have obvious mistakes in the gameplay. That’s to deliberately induce frustration in the viewer, who thinks they would be able to do better.
Can’t cite sources, just want to reaffirm. Kept running into that concept when researching game design, advertising, psychology.
Yeah, advertising is one of those things where it superficially looks awful. Then you study the details, and it only gets worse.
Ah yes, the 'ol fractal of horror
Its also an old trick of greengrocers. They put a sign up advertising “tomaetoes” People come in to correct them and end up buying stuff
This doesn’t answer the question but it’s amusing.
That’s really a smart idea 😂
Hilarious!
iirc they actually started adding these as mini games after getting sued for false advertising
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=03I_a5cVoS0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
That is insane. Makes me want to follow these trends and make the actual game. Put ads in it, charge a dollar or two to get rid of them. Give the people what they saw and want while also making myself not egregiously poor.
The thing is folks have proceeded to do effectively that, make the game you see in the ad… and…
You realize the game isn’t actually fun, it’s pretty boring. The only driving force of the ad is your frustration at watching a person fuck up the game on purpose.
People made faithful clones and it became painfully obvious its not actually interesting or fun, and you quickly get pretty bored of it. There’s not much skill involved.
This is a >11 minute video, which winds around the truth, but ultimately the creator trying to reason about what’s going on… But his conclusions end up being incorrect. Don’t waste your time.
These videos are made to gauge interest in game ideas by making up ads, and the seeing what engagement is like. If people will click on an ad to download a game, they don’t know if that game is real, but their clicking says they are interested. And if it’s successful, the game may incorporate the idea as mini game, within their existing gams, and see how it pans out in actual game play.
This is idea testing, it’s not deceit trying to hook you up into their existing game by baiting you with something else. That might be a secondary side effect but this is not the primary goal.
This creator is totally misreading this.
They cover A B testing part in the video.
They also cover the marketing disconnect from the game devs.
I’m not sure how you came to the conclusion that the video misread it.
I also don’t care how you came to the conclusion so misread me all you want.
The ads are for testing game concepts, if an ad have enough engagement the game is made.
Problem is, hero wars never seems to make these games lol
When I was pitching games to publishers, this was how they would test game ideas to see if there was interest. You essentially sent them a few minutes of gameplay or faked gameplay ideas and they would create these ads.
One of the more interesting things about how these games are advertised (I don’t play mobile games but I suspect a lot of people that do are kids) are that it always shows someone playing the game poorly. It’s supposed to make you go “huh. Well that looks easy. Wait wth is he doing? No! He could have gotten the powerup. Oh! Looks like he might get this one! What?! How do you mess that up?! I bet I could do that.”
One thing that I’ve realized about this generation of kids and people who didn’t grow up on tech but were forcibly introduced to it(millennials, gen x, boomers) is that they don’t want the game to be challenging or to reward skill. They just need the game to be flashy and to pass the time. That’s why these games are always made to look so easy and like the guy playing is a moron. A lot of people are attracted to games in a different way than “gamers” … They are not attracted to the challenge or the mastery, they’ve attracted to the visuals and lack of difficulty.
I believe these types of games are akin to gambling. The last time I went to Dave and Busters, you wouldnt believe the amount of adults i saw playing games of chance (not skill) for tickets. Exactly like a casino.
One thing that I’ve realized about this generation of kids and people who didn’t grow up on tech but were forcibly introduced to it(millennials, gen x, boomers) is that they don’t want the game to be challenging or to reward skill.
As a gen X who has been gaming for all my living memory, electronic gaming since I was 5, and gaming on computers since i was 10, I don’t think you have any clear idea what those generations are like. Certainly, there are groups that vastly prefer games of chance to games of skill, whether they be electronic or not, but I’ve seen those in every generation, just like I’ve seen the opposite.
Additional facet: when I was younger, only super nerdy, tech people into coding and stuff played video games. Now tho, way more people playng phone games, video games. So games popping up to cater to people who aren’t super nerdy or into tech.
Pretty much going right for the dopamine hit; gotta keep em hooked.
Does anyone understand the point of advertising a game doing something that, after downloading, it does not do?
They’re called “lies.”
Todd Howard has entered the chat.
Some of the responses here dance around the truth, but none of them hit the nail on the head. This is a bit of an artifact of how the mobile industry works and the success rate vs profitability vs the way ads work on mobile.
Yes, hands down, this is not an effective advertising strategy. Many of these game companies are very successful so it’s not because they’re stupid. It’s because these ads aren’t advertising campaigns.
These ads are market research. The point isn’t to get you to download their game. At all. The point is to figure out what people will engage with.
These ads are all game ideas. Mobile game ideas are a dime a dozen million. They’re easy to come up with, cost a lot to build, and many don’t monetize well and therefore aren’t profitable. Because of that, it’s very expensive and unsustainable to build games and test them and see what succeeds.
Instead, companies come up with ideas, build a simple video demonstrating the idea, and put up ads with those videos. They then see how many people engage with the ads to determine how many people would even visit the download page for that game. Building a quick video is much much much cheaper than building a game. This is the first step in fast failing their ideas and weeding out bad ones.
Essentially the companies have lots of ideas, build lots of simple videos, advertise them all, and see which ones get enough engagement to be worth pursuing further, while the rest get dropped entirely.
But those ads need to link somewhere. So they link to the companies existing games. Because they’re already paying for it. So why not.
But building a whole new game is also expensive. Dynamics in mobile gaming are very odd because of the way “the algorithm” works. It is actually extremely expensive to get advertising in front of enough people that enough download it that you have any meaningfully large player base to analyze at all.
So the next trick is these companies will take the successful videos, build “mini games” of those ads as a prototype, and then put that in their existing game. This means they can leverage their existing user base to test how much people will engage with the game, and more importantly, eventually test how well it monetizes. Their existing users have already accepted permissions, likely already get push notifications, and often already have their payment info linked to the app. It also means they don’t have to pay for and build up a new store presence to get eyeballs on it. Many of the hurdles of the mobile space have already been crossed by their existing players, and the new ones who clicked the ads have demonstrated interest in the test subject. This is why many of the ads link to seemingly different games that have a small snippet of what you actually clicked on.
If these mini games then become successful enough, they will be made into their own standalone game. But this is extremely rare in mobile. The way the store algorithms and ads work make it pretty fucking expensive to get new games moving, so they really have to prove it to be worthwhile in the long run.
So yeah, most people look at this the wrong way - it does actually go against common sense advertising, but that’s because it’s not actually advertising. It’s essentially the cheapest way for companies to get feedback from people that actually play mobile games about what kinds of games they would play.
It’s not advertising. It’s market analysis.
This is brilliant for them. They basically take the elevator pitches from the concept phase of design and toss them at players to see what sticks. Don’t even have to get to the point of a vertical slice to playtest, just a conceptual animation of gameplay.
Yeah, this makes me so fucking mad as a player but like… It actually works super well so I can’t blame them.
Mobile gaming is full of shitty elevator pitches and super high failure rates so it just kinda… Makes sense.
But I still hate it.
This is a great answer but do you have a source for it? I’m not doubting you; I’ve just never heard this explanation before so I’m really curious about it.
As I mentioned in other comments, I’m a software dev that’s worked with companies that were doing this, that were talking to other mobile game companies that were doing this. I hate to say “trust me bro” but, this stuff isn’t something they’re like happy to publicly advertise so it’s not like it’s written up somewhere, AFAIK.
If true it’s kind of a dumb idea. I downloaded one of these that looked good many years ago, didn’t end up being the game, I deleted it immediately and haven’t clicked on a single one of these since. A few of them even looked like fun concepts but fuck it, it’s probably not real. Seems like their market research is going to be heavily skewed by people once bitten, twice (or forever) shy.
That’s just the thing they want. You know that 99% of the ads are fake, but if you enjoy one enough to click it anyway, on the off chance it’s real, that data is extra valuable because you’ve watched a thousand ads and clicked on one so that’s the one they know to focus on.
As an old game dev, this is so depressing. All hooked up dopamine addicts needed to be bled their money as fast as possible.
Nice writeup though!
Yeah, I hate that this is the state of mobile gaming. And it’s seeped into other game spaces as well. I find it really sad and pathetic, but once big money crept in, it feels like that’s all most games are. It’s basically just pushed me harder towards indie games, and luckily that’s easier to find and discover these days.
Thank you!
An RTS with a backstory like red alert, even a rpg wirh a good story…
Last one I enjoyed was Knights of pen and paper :-)
Age of Empires Mobile (the real one, not a scam ad illegally using Microsoft’s assets) is probably going to release later this year! More info due to come out in a livestream on 23rd Feb.
You almost had me there ;-)
But let’s see how they might crapify it, and where’s the story in it, is it a good one in the original?
this makes so much sense, how do you know all this?
I’m a software dev and have worked with some of these companies. It’s kind of sad because I liked the idea of mobile games and working with them was a bit like seeing the devil behind the curtains. I dreamt of making cool little games based on fun and unique ideas and quickly learned it’s all a huge well oiled machine chugging through market data to find the most effective money extracting methods they can come up with.
For every bit you think these companies are grimey money chasers, I promise you it’s at least 5 times worse.
What are you on about? Why does any dev in the mobile need to deal with companies like this?? Unless you’re looking to work for Niantic, EA, Ubisoft/Gameloft etc you can just self publish and that’s what people do daily. Lots of self published games and apps exist and more are available every day.
I am concerned with the larping you’re doing here. Why are you trying to scare people ?
I play D&D with a guy who plays one of these games. It’s so strange. It’s clearly cheap junk, it has absolutely awful reviews everywhere but he just… plays it casually and talks about it like it’s any other major multiplayer game.
It’s weird but I guess he likes it so, who cares? I’m guessing that these studios spend an incredibly low amount of development, a good amount on misleading marketing, and coast by with a moderate playerbase of a maybe a couple thousand people
Probably because there is a nugget of quality and a whole lot of nuggets of attention attraction built into the game. Check out Vampire Survivors sometime, it’s free on Android and it doesn’t have ads (unless you go out of your way to click the button that says “view an ad”). And it was developed by someone who had previously worked at a casino.
It’s the same reason somebody relentlessly checks Twitter, it triggers the same dopamine receptors.
You installed their app on your phone, giving them access to some kind of array of data points on you, up to and including information stored on your device/keylogging you.
With the way Android permissions are setup, anything after version 11 shouldn’t really have access to much of your data unless you specifically give it access
Which most tech illiterate people will happily do.
Ouch, didn’t think of that part. Yeah, that’s worrying
I think there is a huge amount of people technologically “disadvantaged” enough to install these apps, give them the rights and then find the App “not worth it” but forget to or simply don’t know how to uninstall them.
Saw it with relatives who had hundreds of unused Apps on their phone (aka managed to fill an Galaxy to the brim with these Apps) and a company I once worked with by accident once pushed an App version of their (legitimate) App that required literally all rights Android could request - more than 40% of all users did give them these rights within a day. (Normally the app didn’t require any rights at all).
Anti-user features are a major thing. People are dumb enough with technology you can get away with openly screwing over your “customers”. The antifeature in this case is “it’s not actually the advertised game, it’s a cheap pay to win thing”.
Presumably, people download this thinking it’s cool, and then end up playing it anyway and whaling for the “developers”, who may literally be four people, one of which reskins existing games, while everyone else does sales and marketing.
Don’t know if the others are correct about the reasons, but here’s what I felt to be a reason when I once installed such a scam. They do whatever they can to make you run the game and then try to hook you up by using every trick possible to increase engagement. Then they sell you worthless in-game resources for real money. The game I played didn’t even have ads aside from ads of purchasing in-game stuff everywhere
Baiting you into paying for in app purchases.
It’s basically elaborate clickbait, but for apps. In the field of user experience design, it’s referred to as a “dark pattern.”
Bait and switch
