Comment by ineedasername | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ineedasername | Hacker News Reader

A sort of interesting "corollary" to this is something I've noticed in mobile games with in-app ads for other mobile games:

The best way to attract a player isn't by showing them someone playing well, it's by showing them someone playing very bad

Because these ads show demo play (usually of puzzles) where the player is making obviously bad decisions, and watching it is sort of like seeing a dozen objects in a row, but one of them is completely askew, and there's an urge to straighten in out a bit.

I only noticed this after seeing a bunch of ads recently for perhaps a dozen different games, and realized that I felt somewhat uneasy when they came on instead of simply impatient, and eventually. I tracked this feeling down to the crappy gameplay phenomenon. And once I realized that was the issue, the unease went away.

Further reflection made me realize I'd been much more tempted to download those games to "do it right" than other random games that didn't seem to use this tactic. It was actually when I broke and was about to download one that I had the realization, basically "this game looks awful and tedious, why am I about to download it?"

Man, I just don't understand people who don't use ad blocking[1]. You just wrote a whole post analyzing how you are being manipulated, causing you to feel "uneasy", "impatient", so that you almost do things that are "awful and tedious". Why do people live like this?

[1] You can block ads in mobile games with a proxy that takes less than a minute to set up, at least on Android.

You could probably reframe your post in positive light given that you are suggesting a pretty straightforward solution that you seem to use to help make this problem go away~

I find nothing wrong with someone expressing their lack of understanding of something. They didn't phrase it in a way like "people that don't use adblocking are so dumb". They just stated they don't get why people continue to not use tools.

I try to not use ad blocks for my work chrome profile so I understand what my users are experiencing. It is depressing to see what normal users go through in their daily lives and I hope at least I can alleviate some of frustration in the apps I work on.

While I laud your empathy for your users, I think that you can improve user experience more effectively by refusing to work on apps that insist on invading their users' headspace with ads. I made the decision to not work on anything that got its money primarily from advertising early on in my career, and I have no regrets. It hasn't hurt my career at all: if anything, my friends who work for ad companies often end up in bad situations because such companies tend to have thinner profit margin than companies with an actual product that people are willing to pay for.

I wasn't aware you could block in-app ads. (Thanks for the heads-up!) That may be a primary reason that many don't block these ads. Browser adblockers are relatively well known, and relatively popular, but I don't think that's true of blocking in-app ads.

For in-app, there's also the tech hurdle. Now that I know there's a method, I'm tech savvy enough to search it out an implement it, but there's going to be a much higher barrier than a click-to-install browser extension which means the average user (who won't know what a proxy is to begin with) won't really have access to this method.

Many games will allow users to do something advantageous by watching an ad. If they are blocked, then this will not work. I've seen these fail when the device cannot connect to the network or other causes of timeouts, but they are smart enough to know this and not give you the reward.

> Many games will allow users to do something advantageous by watching an ad.

That's… horrifying.

Why would you want to play a game that treats you like that? I mean, is it fun? I suppose some people must enjoy window-shopping, and I guess this is like that, but… I just can't imagine hoping to see an advert — it feels really manipulative and sinister.

I play a lot of Japanese escape the room games, which typically involve decoding puzzles and finding tools to use. Most of them offer a hint system where you "pay" by watching an ad. The games are otherwise free, and given how little a dev gets per adview I don't mind supporting them in that way.

Yeah, this is a good thing. I don't mind ads where you get something in exchange for the ad view, but ad supported games that rapaciously shove ads down your throat are not worth my time.

So don't play those games?

Thanks for sharing what you know. I believe with a little bit more empathy, you have so much to give to make the world a better place, if you don't mind.

Therefore, including what the parent and the others have already mentioned, I would like to suggest these perspectives:

• maybe not everyone is aware of the ease of setting up ad blocking as you described

• maybe not everyone is on a platform where this is feasible -> you provided an example on Android, which implicitly means it is different or more difficult on other platforms

• maybe someone is using a restricted device provided for work

• maybe experiencing what many others are experiencing is intended. e.g. due to work reasons as creakingstairs suggested, or due to personal fulfillment

• maybe someone values the time spent on writing "a whole post analyzing" the situation more than setting up any modification

• maybe not everyone or no one is exactly Homo economicus [1]

• etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_economicus

bleurgh

> maybe not everyone is aware of the ease of setting up ad blocking as you described

Well, now you know.

> maybe not everyone is on a platform where this is feasible -> you provided an example on Android, which implicitly means it is different or more difficult on other platforms

This is just as doable on Iphone, I just Googled it. Though perhaps people aren't aware of the ease of Googling things as I described.

> maybe someone is using a restricted device provided for work

This is in the context of ads seen in mobile games, so...

> maybe experiencing what many others are experiencing is intended. e.g. due to work reasons as creakingstairs suggested, or due to personal fulfillment

You're accusing me of not empathizing with purely hypothetical possibilities which support your worldview, but you're not empathizing with what someone actually said. Does the word "uneasy" or the word "impatient" suggest "personal fulfillment" to you?

> maybe someone values the time spent on writing "a whole post analyzing" the situation more than setting up any modification

I'm not criticizing the choice to write the post--that I get. I'm criticizing the choice to view ads, which is inherently harmful to people's mental health.

> maybe not everyone or no one is exactly Homo economicus

I'd go so far as to say that nobody is Homo economicus--I'm not sure what I said that would lead you to believe I think that. I do believe that with a bit of knowledge, people can take steps to protect themselves from advertising.

You should be able to understand them easily: many don’t know about the adblockers, don’t realize they’re available or haven’t learned about the benefits or don’t know or lift a finger to install them and learn to use them

I may not like the ads, but I like that they pay for a lot of cool stuff on the web that otherwise would not see the light of day.

I disagree. Lots of cool stuff existed before advertisers took over the internet, and it was allowed to be a lot weirder and less clickbait-y because they didn't have to appease everyone or constantly be driving for more views. In fact, a lot of this was funded out of people's own pockets, at a financial loss, because they wanted other people to see it or use it. With search engine optimized ad-delivery platforms dominating the front pages of search results, these people don't see the encouragement from users they used to see, and have died off. In the rare cases where people are still doing this stuff, they're much harder to find.

In short, advertising has killed a lot more, and a lot better, than it has funded.

I wonder why no one has come up with a try-before-you-buy download option. First X levels are free, next Y levels are $0.25-$0.50 (assuming the full cost of the game is $1, adjust accordingly), the rest of the levels are the remaining price of the same.

For a casual game a model like this would be a good way to get a decent amount of revenue from anyone that likes the game but may not be completionist or get bored with it at some point.

Then, in the rare instance that you have a hit game, you can further supplement it with paid DLC for extra levels that you have to own the base game for.

Same principle applies to Let's-Players on Youtube / Twitch that play new games "non-optimally". In their comment sections you'll see people commenting about how they bought the game just to be able to play it correctly themselves, to prove to the streamer and themselves that their strategy is better.

They could also just watch a speed-runner to convince themselves that they will never play it optimally.

Not every game has a speedrunning community, especially not for new games (which my comment was about), and especially not for new early-access games that most new games these days are.

Not to mention optimal play and speedrunning are orthogonal concepts in general.

Interesting-- that promotes engagement with the content, which is good for viewer metrics & ad $$. If the video is actually sponsored by the game publisher then it's a double bonus for video creator.

Yes, there's often speculation that the streamer is playing badly intentionally for this reason. Though Occam's razor dictates that it's more likely that the streamer just doesn't care to get good because they're only going to play the game for a little while anyway.

The streamer can also be optimizing for entertainment rather than perfect gameplay. So they're focused a bit more on being creative rather than optimizing their combat skills, and they try things you'd never attempt which occasionally go very badly (sometimes predictably) and its amusing.

I actually prefer that sometimes, but it's because it shows me a bit more what the game is like if you get the unedited feed. But that's also because I'm not really interested in one-upping random people on the internet, it just feels like it shows more of the stuff that might be edited out on Youtube.

I guess the analogy is the old joke/meme about the O'Reilly Javascript book, and the JS The Good Parts book sat next to it.

This is also a classic tactic to draw in marks in the “Find the Lady” [1] confidence trick. Wiki says it’s been going since the 15th century!

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-card_Monte

It's not just ads. It's the same on every media and knowledge domain these days. For example look up some short tech reviews or tips on TikTok, Instagram or even YouTube. They make blatant errors that are so bad you might think "This causes more harm than help!?" but as it turns out: That's how you get "community interaction" (money). People will follow your content just to tell you what's wrong with it as soon as you output more of it and hence cause engagement. For the same reason most influential anti vaxxers are in fact actually vaccinated.

Yeah those game ads are cringe.

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