Five Reasons I Lost $9,000 On An iPhone Game

Wires Don’t Cut Goes Off: five Movie Deaths That Can’t Happen

six Behind-The-Scenes Stories That Prove Hollywood’s Crazy AF

If we’ve ever made you laugh or think, we now have a way where you can thank and support us!

Five True Stories Cut from Movies for Being Too Unrealistic

6 Amazing Spectacles by Actors Who Weren’t Acting (Part Two)

7 Famous Actors Who Lost Their Minds Getting Into Character

six Sensible Things You Should Never Do in a Zombie Outbreak

The six Most Horrifying Dating Scenes Around the World

Read Next

How Shady Tech Support Schemes Are Scamming Old People

If you’ve observed television recently, you’ve most likely noticed that Kate Upton’s tits truly want you to play a smartphone game called Game Of War: Fire Age. That ad campaign cost approximately forty million dollars, or about five million more than the entire development cost of Borderlands Two. They can afford their “it’s like Game Of Thrones, but, somehow, even more sexual!” marketing because, as we write this, Game Of War is raking in more than a million dollars each day. Jason Croghan has spent several thousand dollars on it, and he told us all about how games like Fire Age bury their claws into you — and don’t let go.

Advertisement

If you haven’t played Game Of War (and I strongly suggest that you don’t): It’s a bit like Civilization. You build a city, research technology, train soldiers, and attack other players. I commenced playing because I was bored at work — the same reason you embarked making clans clash or birds angry.

When you sign up, you’re inserted into a kingdom populated by other beginners. Fresh players will be added until it’s total, and then the cycle commences anew. At very first, it’s harmless joy, and, yes, I realize I sound like a drug maniac. Like many casual games, you have to wait a certain amount of time before a building is finish or certain technology is researched. The timers embark low, so you can play for a few minutes every day and make decent progress.

And I very likely would have only wasted those minutes looking at something else.

At this stage, you can spend five bucks to wipe the floor with anyone who’s still playing for free. You laugh off defeat because the stakes are low. You can lightly catch up without spending a dime. But, soon, all of those fresh players you joined with aren’t so fresh anymore. They’re growing stronger, and, after a few months, the wait times to accomplish anything are so fine that if you don’t spend money to keep up with the fantasy Kardashians, you’ll be perplexed. We’re not talking five bucks anymore — many players will have dropped a duo hundred at this point. Hey, those virtual troops weren’t going to train themselves. Well, they were, but it was going to take forever.

You can’t shrug off defeat anymore. Now, the only way to recover is to flash some cash. And you’ll notice people in your kingdom doing exactly that, getting wiped out but coming right back a week later. If you attempt to do it the slow, sustained, and free way, you’ll get frustrated by the delays or just get wiped out again, before you can fight back.

Maybe people are being suckered in by the gorgeous visuals.

You’ve gone from a game that was joy to play for free to a game that’s no joy to play at all unless you spend to keep up. And you will spend because you’ve been putting in thirty minutes a day for half a year to reach this point. It’s become an investment. Possibly the worst investment outside of real estate in the Pacific Northwest, but an investment nonetheless.

Every MMO needs an endgame — something repetitive, but joy, that your paying customers can do indefinitely once they’ve mastered everything else. In World Of Warcraft, the game is reaching the maximum level, and the endgame is all about completing difficult raids to earn the best equipment and the worst skin complexion.

But, Game Of War has no endgame beyond attacking opponents. Every time you and your mates team up and strike, you’re wiping out hundreds, if not thousands, of your enemy’s dollars. In a different context, that’s a sci-fi dystopia we would need the team of the Enterprise to rescue us from.

Flawless World Entertainment

Provided you can pay for them to showcase up.

In most games, if you spend money, the benefits are permanent. Your Cloak Of Questionable Financial Management may have cost forty bucks, but no one can ever take it away from you. But, here, you’re spending money on troops and other expendables that can be lost in combat. I was casually browsing the map at work recently and came across a man who must have spent at least 7,000 Euros. He wasn’t around to defend himself, so we attacked. We wiped out about Two,500 Euros. Two-and-a-half grand, gone in five minutes.

It’s like gambling, but with no possibility of winning. The best you can do is not lose. We ruin so much in a single attack that it would take months of gameplay to recover . or one hundred bucks. You’re futile to your alliance until you rebuild, and what’s money if it’s keeping you from playing with your friends?

Always recall that people who say their friendship is unconditional are liars.

Almost everyone still in my kingdom has spent at least a few grand. By the time the money starts looking less like what you would only waste on rapid food and more like what you should be putting into mutual funds, you’ve built alliances and formed grudges. The only thing more stupid than continuing to waste money is to have wasted all that previous money for nothing. Yes, I realize that’s the sunk-cost fallacy. Did you realize shut up?

If you read reviews of Game Of War, you’ll inevitably see it described as complicated. But, it’s not complicated in a way that has any logic or meaning behind it. No, this is a game that purposely bombards you with endless statistics, menus, and options to confound you.

Albeit I’m sure that “Messages Corrected” is a key parameter.

If a game has a elementary learning curve, you get bored prompt. How many of you are still playing Angry Birds? But, mastering Game Of War is such a long, laborious process that by the time you’ve ultimately figured out the difference inbetween Enemy Troops Debuffs and Overall Enemy Troop Debuffs, Tier four Trap Salvage Range and Trap Salvage Luck, March Speed, Gathering March Speed Bonus and Trade March Speed — well, you’ve basically graduated college in this damn game. You can’t stop now.

Strategic infantry are way better than those dumbasses who use no strategy whatsoever.

There are one hundred sixty seven statistics to improve. I counted. It doesn’t need one hundred sixty seven different statistics — no game on Earth does. But, each one could mean the difference inbetween victory and defeat, so you have a financial incentive to improve them all. This is often done through research . of which there are two hundred thirty seven different technologies, most of which have Ten tiers. For comparison, Civilization V, considered a masterpiece of the same genre, has . 74. Seventy four versus over Two,000.

Albeit obviously every game needs to let you make twenty piecemeal improvements to your hospital capacity.

Related movie: