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At one point I had a blocklist of absolutely dozens of these in AdSense and they were still getting through and advertising on my site. Evony or something. Goog

by prawn 5y ago

At one point I had a blocklist of absolutely dozens of these in AdSense and they were still getting through and advertising on my site. Evony or something. Google didn't do a great deal to help stop it.

duskwuff 5y ago
Evony is an amusingly long-running example. They've been running misleading ads for their game since 2009 (NB: includes some NSFW ads): https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/07/14/evolution-of-evony-video-game-ads/ https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/07/14/evolution-o... But I think what the parent was referring to was more along the lines of games which literally use images from other games -- or, in some cases, games which don't exist at all -- in their advertisements.
- prawn 5y ago
  Evony might as well not exist at all either - not like I was ever going to play it! How does a publisher verify whether images are from the project being advertised? How do they verify that the game exists? On HN, we talk about running ads to build a database of interested users for a project we might not have created yet. I think we can hold companies to greater account for not locking out bad actors once they're identified, but I can't see a viable way to do that pre-publishing short of an ad requiring potentially hours of due diligence. And after the fact, we'd require any advertisers to have a local (business) presence so that false advertising claims could be dealt with. I'd be all for that.
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    When I say "games that don't exist at all", I actually have two specific ad campaigns (or, possibly, groups of copycat ad campaigns?) in mind. One campaign contained illustrations showing a physical scenario involving barriers that the player could remove to help or harm a character, e.g. by dropping a character into lava, or by releasing that lava to destroy an enemy. The advertising campaign sent viewers to a generic match-three game, a la Bejeweled; the game appearing in the advertisements didn't exist (although some other enterprising developers actually created the game later on). Another campaign contained illustrations of a character faced with obstacles and given a selection of objects to overcome that obstacle, e.g. a character faced with a fire might be offered a gasoline can, a firehose, and a vacuum cleaner. These advertisements typically showed a player choosing the wrong item, causing the player character to be graphically injured or killed, and challenged the viewer to do better. Again, these ads typically sent the viewer to a match-three game bearing no resemblance to the advertised game. Neither of these was a situation where a developer was running an ad campaign to gauge interest in a game concept -- these campaigns ran for years (and may even still be ongoing), and were used to drive users to finished games completely different from the advertised content.

by prawn 5y ago

duskwuff 5y ago

Evony is an amusingly long-running example. They've been running misleading ads for their game since 2009 (NB: includes some NSFW ads): https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/07/14/evolution-of-evony-video-game-ads/ https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2009/07/14/evolution-o... But I think what the parent was referring to was more along the lines of games which literally use images from other games -- or, in some cases, games which don't exist at all -- in their advertisements.

prawn 5y ago
Evony might as well not exist at all either - not like I was ever going to play it! How does a publisher verify whether images are from the project being advertised? How do they verify that the game exists? On HN, we talk about running ads to build a database of interested users for a project we might not have created yet. I think we can hold companies to greater account for not locking out bad actors once they're identified, but I can't see a viable way to do that pre-publishing short of an ad requiring potentially hours of due diligence. And after the fact, we'd require any advertisers to have a local (business) presence so that false advertising claims could be dealt with. I'd be all for that.
- duskwuff 5y ago
  When I say "games that don't exist at all", I actually have two specific ad campaigns (or, possibly, groups of copycat ad campaigns?) in mind. One campaign contained illustrations showing a physical scenario involving barriers that the player could remove to help or harm a character, e.g. by dropping a character into lava, or by releasing that lava to destroy an enemy. The advertising campaign sent viewers to a generic match-three game, a la Bejeweled; the game appearing in the advertisements didn't exist (although some other enterprising developers actually created the game later on). Another campaign contained illustrations of a character faced with obstacles and given a selection of objects to overcome that obstacle, e.g. a character faced with a fire might be offered a gasoline can, a firehose, and a vacuum cleaner. These advertisements typically showed a player choosing the wrong item, causing the player character to be graphically injured or killed, and challenged the viewer to do better. Again, these ads typically sent the viewer to a match-three game bearing no resemblance to the advertised game. Neither of these was a situation where a developer was running an ad campaign to gauge interest in a game concept -- these campaigns ran for years (and may even still be ongoing), and were used to drive users to finished games completely different from the advertised content.