I’m a huge gamer. I’ll game on anything and that does include my mobile phone. Right now, however, I’m playing Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes for my long-term play and Archero 2 for when I’m bored and doing nothing.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been baited by downright ridiculous mobile game ads in the past. I always presumed that false advertising would also regard mobile gaming ads the same way as broadband or telecom ads, but it appears not.
I decided to write about this because when I’ve been playing Archero 2 and having to watch “ads” and seeing that it’s still never changed in all the years I’ve played games on a mobile device. I play on iOS so I’m presuming this is the same across all platforms but something has to change here.
Here are just 5 of some I’ve come across;
- “99% of people get this wrong!”
- “You’ll only get this right if you have ADHD”
- Free to play, no ads – often recorded with an overly excited person who’s clearly been paid to do the video when the game’s literal dog water
- Some games show an ad that looks good but the game itself is a completely different game
- Games show you can have this overly powerful character when in reality, that’s not the case
I’m a huge Star Wars fan and I do like Galaxy of Heroes but even their ads are misleading. They showcased a 6* Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker when it’s not even possible as he’s part of a legendary journey character, which means after you complete the event, he’s 7* so it’s impossible for him to be lower.
I understand a lot of the time these ads are designed in some pathetic psychological sense but it does go to show that these games need to lie in order to rack in downloads. I’ve even seen games advertising Pokemon characters only for the game to not have any link whatsoever to Pokemon. It’s a clear breach but it goes under the radar unnoticed it seems.
I am surprised developers like Apple and Google don’t pay more attention or do further testing to show what ads they’re showing. It’s even worse now that when an ad does show on another game, you have to click the X button in the top corner 3 or 4 times for it to fully close off.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it. Mobile gaming is predatory and it’s toxic. Understandably these sorts of games are usually free so they have to generate revenue somehow, I respect that but I can’t respect how unethical and immoral it is.
I don’t understand how some devs aren’t proud enough of their games to truly advertise it the way it’s designed to be played. It screams to me that they’re there for a quick buck and to move on from it. We see the backlash AAA games get when they showcase something that isn’t there, Ubisoft’s first Watch Dogs game springs to mind and they got a lot of hate for that.
The mobile gaming platform is often dubbed as the most popular platform due to people not really considering themselves as gamers but play games. You may have a family member still playing Candy Crush, I do but they don’t play anything else. That’s still a game being played on the mobile gaming platform. It’s surprising that more people aren’t talking about this.
I never cared before but recently the ads aren’t just showing on games I’m already playing, they’re on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook and it’s ridiculous. Thankfully, Facebook often shows comments on their ads which is a helpful reminder. Those are the comments that matter. Not some random guy acting as if this terrible mobile game is better than Grand Theft Auto and that they “don’t play anything else now because of it”.
That’s my rant done for today.
