Back where we started
Icame to a realization recently about just how attached to our cellphones we have become. The days of just using them to make calls, or even just for calls and texts has long passed. Just about anything we can do on our computers can now be done on our phones.
One such use is entertaining ourselves. We can watch TV and movies, listen to music, podcasts and books, and play games. I am certainly guilty of this myself. I am always listening to an audiobook and have plenty of music on my phone. I haven’t been much of a gamer on my phone. I have been able to resist that urge, at least up to now.
Phones have had games on them for a long time. My first flip phone had several games loaded on it. Once in a blue moon I would play a game on my phone if I was really bored, but it wasn’t very often. The games have become much more sophisticated over the years. We are no longer limited to the handful of simplistic games loaded on the phones. We have our choice of thousands of games we can download — some free, some not.
I avoided games on my phone for the longest time, not because I had some big objection to them; I just wasn’t interested in them. Then, last winter when Wordle was all the rage, I tried it to see what all the fuss was about. I was terrible at it but I started getting ads for other games. I downloaded a puzzle game that was kind of like Tetris. I got pretty good at it, or at least not awful at it.
I started playing it when I had a few minutes to kill and discovered it had a daily puzzle. I quickly found myself making it a point to solve the daily puzzle. Work was very stressful at the time, and I found playing the game for a few minutes helped relieve some stress. I have since downloaded several other games and find myself using them as a diversion or time killer. I gravitate to the puzzle games.
What I also quickly discovered is that these free games are really just an ad delivery system. These games that are free to download will mix ads in between levels or other breaks. You can’t skip them. Of course, this is nothing new. Commercials have been a part of radio and TV practically since their invention. This is the same thing.
Some ads are for other games, while others are your normal commercials that you might see on any other online service. Of course the games offer you the option to pay to avoid the ads, not unlike paying for the pay version of Pandora or upgrading your streaming services. This is how cable TV started. It was a way to avoid commercials.
The other way they try to part you from your money is offering you the option to get hints or clues for a small charge. If you are not careful, these can add up quickly. $2 or $3 doesn’t seem like much, but if you buy one hint per day at $2, that’s $60 a month. Luckily, I haven’t fallen into that trap. If I want a hint, I opt for the free option, which, of course, requires watching an ad you cannot skip.
This is yet another example of how the more things change, the more they stay the same. If people are find a source of entertainment, advertisers will find a way to monetize it.