Asklemmy

This isn't even the worst offender: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3_E9iW_wTk

There's actually a game made of these games called, hold your breath: "Yeah! You Want "Those Games," Right? So Here You Go! Now, Let's See You Clear Them!"

Okay the real question, is there a good version of this game genre?

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

How is that holding up as a marketing technique

1. the kindergarteners playing roblox on their mom's phone don't care

2. you already have their malware and that's all that matters

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.

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.

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.