Ya. cant say id thought about it before today outside of a general idea that mobile games are full of dark patterns and thus annoying and bad.
if you'd asked me would they do it i would have said totally, but there is something different here about the level of effort they actually do go to not just to manipulate the game into a state where it can force you into the highest value ad state, but how much effort it goes into to manipulate the player so that they keep coming back for "one more hit"
a game with dark patterns but still
a game is what i think i expected before. now its pretty clear you cant or shouldn't even really call this thing a game anymore. There is no "game design" in forcing a player to lose because you have an opportunity to sell a better ad. this is just ad tech wrapped in a game like package.
if you'd asked me would they do it i would have said totally, but there is something different here about the level of effort they actually do go to not just to manipulate the game into a state where it can force you into the highest value ad state, but how much effort it goes into to manipulate the player so that they keep coming back for "one more hit"
a game with dark patterns but still a game is what i think i expected before. now its pretty clear you cant or shouldn't even really call this thing a game anymore. There is no "game design" in forcing a player to lose because you have an opportunity to sell a better ad. this is just ad tech wrapped in a game like package.