I love the Daily Show but this made me think twice about it's content. There's some extreme trolling going on here that will make me look at their skewering of the right in a different way - which is probably a good thing.
With all the real crazy stuff going on, I'd expect The Daily Show not to have to invent fake stories, but I guess even they have airtime to fill.
I think the issue of kids being manipulated by mobile games is a legitimate issue.
That aside, the Daily Show is comedy. It's astonishing that people are surprised that their sketches aren't factually accurate. They have 'live' reports from heaven and hell for fks sake. Enjoy it, try not to form opinions based on it.
People keep using the "it's a fake news show" as a defense but I don't buy into that. I've always thought of the Daily Show as satire, holding up real news stories to ridicule has a long and glowing history of influencing the public - once you start twisting stories to fit in with a joke you've lost the high ground.
The fact that gamification's effect on kids is a legitimate issue makes it worse - there's enough real craziness around to make fun of without inventing some.
>I think the issue of kids being manipulated by mobile games is a legitimate issue.
Unfortunately, the DS seem to have targeted a fairly legit company to "expose" this issue. I mean, it's not as if there is a massive dearth of shady companies on the app store they could of featured... the Daily Show just took advantage of one legit company's openness and naivity.
I don't watch the Daily Show beyond the occasional clip, but it seems to me the difference in this case is that many (most?) people are not informed about the issue from another news source, so they have nothing to compare to. Unavoidably some of it will get taken for true...
How could he have believed this? Daily Show interviews (the prerecorded ones, not the in-studio ones) make fun of people. Watch any episode and you get that.
Reviving The Dead Fish costs $99. Really?!?
The piece showed screenshots both of buying fishbucks ("$99 for X fishbucks") and of reviving fish ("1 fishbuck to revive all your fish"). I watched it once and understood these details, so I don't think it was misleading about that mechanic.
One click to charge $99! Really??
OK, even if cheaper options exist, maybe Virk should try explaining why the $99 button exists at all. There's a line where it becomes unconscionable to even ask users for so much money (imagine a $1000 button), and I think it's well below $99 for what they're peddling.
The Phone Call with the Parent. Is That What Really Happened??
OK, so this parent got his issue resolved. How many parents did not? Is the CEO not ashamed for having sold $1500 of garbage to a child (or anyone!) in the first place? Despite popular belief, there's no law prohibiting ethical behavior by CEOs.
Wow. This is just about the best response I've ever seen. I've totally done a 180 on the situation. Honestly, I thought the CEO was a douchebag from the video, the Daily Show should be ashamed of themselves.
> When we designed the game, we were looking at Facebook where aquarium games were very popular – and the average player, according to various blogs was a 43 year old woman!
I have made a couple of games published by PopCap, and from the fanmail I get this stereotype seems to be about right (I wouldn't call it the 'average' gamer, rather the 'typical' one). There's often nothing casual about them - I get email from women complaining that the high score overflows the space allocated to it on the screen after they kept their game going >100 hours.
> Do adults in their 30’s and 40’s play Tap Fish? Yes there are LOTS of them. Do college students play Tap Fish? Yes LOTS of them. How do we know? Many of our users are on the Facebook Tap Fish page and fans of the game, and many more email us every day, and you’re not allowed to have a Facebook account if you’re under 13.
Great article. Makes me want to re-think how seriously I take the Daily show now. I always knew it was a "fake news show" but I also always knew that they had an agenda to push just like everyone else. I kind of was hoping this agenda was at least an honest effort to educate their audience. I can distance myself from clips shown out of context and just laugh at the content but stuff like this, where they go out of their way to make a point that isn't there, makes me uneasy about the Daily show all together now. Sure it is funny but I guess I got my hopes up that the show also was trying to do some good.
Hyperbole is a cornerstone of comedy and also effective at getting across a point if used correctly. Note that using hyperbole correctly doesn't mean sticking 100% to the truth, you have to be willing to accept that things are being blown out of proportion for the sake of removing subtext.
