It seems like if what you’re showing is what you understand they find appealing and fun, then surely that’s what should be in the game. You give them that.
But instead, you give them something else that is unrelated to what they’ve seen on the ad? A gem matching candy crush clone they’ve seen a thousand times?
How is that model working? How is that holding up as a marketing technique???
The thing is folks have proceeded to do effectively that, make the game you see in the ad… and…
You realize the game isn’t actually fun, it’s pretty boring. The only driving force of the ad is your frustration at watching a person fuck up the game on purpose.
People made faithful clones and it became painfully obvious its not actually interesting or fun, and you quickly get pretty bored of it. There’s not much skill involved.