@“Moon”#p62893 what‘s crazy about these slidey water/gold/lava puzzle game snippets is that they in fact ARE NOT the game that’s being advertised! This is a “fake” game (or game genre??) that exists only to elicit that exact feeling you describe–“well, I could do that! a literal moron could figure that out!!”–but, when you click it you will be brought to the app store page for whatever totally unrelated game it is actually advertising.
Just using this game ("Evony") as an example, here's what this mobile game _actually_ looks like based on a quick google image search:
I'm so incredibly fascinated by these fake games and feel like there _must_ be an interesting story behind the company (or companies) that produce them, but I suppose it's entirely possible that the full story is just as uninteresting as the hollow and cynical advertising tactics themselves.
@“kory”#p62895 I’m so incredibly fascinated by these fake games and feel like there must be an interesting story behind the company (or companies) that produce them, but I suppose it’s entirely possible that the full story is just as uninteresting as the hollow and cynical advertising tactics themselves.
There’s [this article about Evony in particular](https://kotaku.com/what-happened-to-evony-5850739). It’s been heavily advertised for quite awhile. (I think it’s ok to link to Kotaku now? I can delete the link if it’s not.)
I agree that I wish there were more journalism on the games like these that aren’t as popular as Evony is. I occasionally see ads for stuff I find very cool looking ([Trading Legend](https://youtu.be/t0ksJ4BIy3A) is the most recent one that comes to mind). When I search them up though I just find reddit threads of people sharing tips, asking questions, and talking about how much money they’ve spent. I want to know the whole intellectual history behind these games, what the influences of the creators were, what their lives are like, what their dream games would be if they didn’t have to worry about money, etc. Some are very cynically made. Some do very cool creative stuff, even if they are pay to win. It’s possible to sort of understand ”where they came from” by a playing a whole bunch I think, but I want to hear more from the creators.
I suspect there are people on this forum (maybe @"exodus"#3 or @"Syzygy"#279) who know a lot more?
Wow, I can't believe that Kotaku article is over a decade old! It's interesting the emphasis it places on Evony being a game you can play in a browser, when I'm sure today they must place more emphasis on it being something you play in an app on your phone. How the times do change.
@Moon@kory forget what I said! I actually looked up Evony in the app store, and it turns out the game in the ad (Evony: The King’s Return) is more or less accurate, and something completely different from the much more notorious Evony I was thinking of/Kory posted a picture of. This is Evony: The King’s Return:
[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/whPYmW4.png]
So I guess it’s a case of them just naming their game after something that is/was popular? Or maybe Evony is a generic enough name that it was a coincidence?
I ended up clicking and it’s 54 pages long and a work of fiction only mentioned at the end. And it turns out if you remove all the referral data from the URL at the end, it’ll display as one long page – so I archived it so you can read it too Mom Lets 14 Year Old Babysit, 2 Hours Later Gets Text That Says “I’m Baby”
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/Cw7DRdo.jpeg]
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/wGRDtbJ.png]
getting these ads on youtube for god's sake
is this a new fad
