How much pain do I want to endure to cover an app on this site that I don’t enjoy playing? I’m not being paid for trying out backgammon apps. This is supposed to be fun. So after an hour with this app I was longing for a special, hard deinstall that would not only deinstall the app but randomise every single bit of tablet memory that it was using. That’s how much fun I found Lord of the board, the #1 backgammon app on the app store.
Let’s begin with that #1. Try it out yourself: go to the app store, search for ”backgammon”. The first hit you get is an ad for LOTB. They’re out to make money, and they know how to do that.
It continues like that. LOTB is a textbook implementation of in-app-commercialisation. Every annoying trick to separate you from your money is there:
After some wading through ”hey hey hey great opportunity for some in-app spending!” screens you get to the action: playing a game of backgammon against a stranger. First you have to pick a game / match. In LOTB you have an experience level that continuously grows (so you get the feeling of achievement, so you come back, would be bad to have a rating and you stay away after your rating drops after a streak of bad luck), and with growing level you unlock more tournaments. As newbie, pick the only one you can pick – a 1pt match wihtout cube and off you go.
Now there’s the saying “on the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”. In the first matches I was not convinced that I played real humans. Their movement delays felt random, they never thought about a move, and in my first two matches I selected ”have fun” from the list of things you may chat, and got the response ”have to leave” from both. Looks more like a buggy bot than two humans in a row with unexpected communication habits. And they played like a beginner bot as well.
Playing on this board is okay, with a big but. Overall: nothing to write home about, but all done nicely. But for some reason LOTB believes that if I think longer than 3 seconds about my move, it should suggest a move to me by repeatedly moving two of my checkers back and forth. And there is no setting to turn this off. In my book this takes the ”eternal crown of irritating backgammon feature, ever”. Even if LOTB was a serious online backgammon site and not a site designed to get my cash, this alone would be a showstopper for me.
So, after a couple of games against weak opponents that were most likely bots, and two games against somebody who might actually be a human that I won with luck I finished my LOTB excursion.
I have a few more questions like ”why are matches for which you need to be level 75 only 15 seconds per move? I also could write a bit more about more annoying in-app crap like daily challenges, experience boosters to buy, special dice and stuff to unlock, tweeting or connecting facebook account, inviting friends for coins, but I guess you get the picture.
NB I’m all for commercial software, for spending money on apps. I’ve spent maybe a hundred bucks on backgammon apps by now, am a backgammon studio heroes premium user. I just don’t like apps that are not designed for me to have the best possible backgammon experience but designed for the developers to grab as much of my money as possible.
I’m happy to have finished this page. I will now deinstall this app and never return. There are wonderful sites like backgammon galaxy or backgammon studio heroes out there.
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