I’ve been seeing a bunch of video ads on Facebook of games that are similar to Tetris. I find them mesmerizing and oddly satisfying to watch. But when I tried downloading a few of these games, they are nothing like what was shown in the ad.
I just don’t get why game developers do this. You went to the trouble of making a program to do a certain thing so you could create an ad to trick people into downloading a completely different program. Why not just create the game you figure people want to play? If you’re able to create the program to show in the ad, why not make that the game?
The ads are made by a separate ad agency. Their goal is to do whatever they think will grab the most attention - not what faithfully represents the game. They likely don’t have access to any game assets at all.
What’s amazing is that it seems like it works. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t keep doing it.