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Japanese coder finds perfect way to incorporate ads into games

Master Blaster May 11, 2020
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Tired of games with annoying ads? How about one where the ads are the game?

If you’re like me and can’t be bothered to pay for YouTube Premium, then the simple act of watching a video is often precluded by a phalanx of ads and annotations that you must carefully navigate and hit X on without accidentally redirecting yourself.

Being the adaptive creatures we are, most of us are probably quite good at it by now and can pick off those boxes like a bunch of cyber Annie Oakleys. It’s almost as if closing ad banners as fast and as safely as you can has become a game in itself…

Enter this concept by Japanese Twitter user Ten N (@secondpoint_n14) which he demonstrates in the video below.

▼ “I made a block-breaking game with those super annoying ads.”

https://twitter.com/secondpoint_n14/status/1256963553803644930

As we can see in the video, the game works like the Atari classic Breakout in which players must bounce a ball off a horizontally sliding paddle and smash all of the blocks before the ball falls off the screen.

However in this game players must also deal with recurring pop-up and banner ads with their mouse, which is also what’s controlling the paddle. Simple and brilliant, this game harmoniously combines the past and present of digital entertainment. Ten N was inspired by the name of the browser plug-in “AdBlock.”

Although very realistic looking, the ads themselves are fake and were created by Ten N. They won’t actually redirect the player anywhere but still impair vision. He also revealed that in later levels players are met with more challenging obstacles like CAPTCHA.

https://twitter.com/secondpoint_n14/status/1257173117450907648

Needless to say, others online were quite impressed.

“Now the ads block you!”
“Haha! That’s looks way too hard for me.”
“It would be cool if you could smash the ads with the ball too.”
“It could be a good way for developers to make money without annoying players…unintentionally at least.”
“Genius!”
“I’m getting stressed just watching that.”
“That’s brilliant. I never heard of closing ad boxes being made into a game.”
“That looks really annoying, but I want to try it.”

If you too would like to try this game, here comes the bittersweet part: It was designed on OpenSiv3D, which is a game engine created as a Japanese alternative to Anglo-centric ones like Unity or Unreal. OpenSiv3D is an open-source engine that works on C++ language, but it’s very much geared towards Japanese speakers with very limited English documentation.

Indie games on this platform are often shared as the pure code, which means there’s a fair chance you can track down this game’s code somewhere online, or maybe even politely ask Ten N himself for it. But you’d also need to know how to download and install the engine onto your computer to run it.

In a way, getting this game is also a game in itself…a role-playing game I guess, or maybe survival horror if you turn off the lights while doing it.

Source: Twitter/@secondpoint_n14, My Game News Flash
Featured image: Twitter/@secondpoint_n14
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