Game Theory: The Disturbing Lore of Merge Mansion

man i get so many mobile game ads these days what even are half these things [Music] uh sure why not oh that is that is not okay what are you waiting for pinch the one-eyed snake i i just i just can't i can't why what makes mobile game companies think that this sort of thing is gonna work you're next wait what are you saying granny what do you mean you're next what's that mean there's lore here oh boy i am downloading this one right now hello internet welcome to game theory the show that's a lot like a mobile game seriously i hear that if you click on the subscribe button youtube actually rewards you with coins and then you could trade 10 of those coins in for a diamond which when you get 15 diamonds can upgrade your subscribe button to the golden subscription button and to top it all off i hear if you click the subscribe button today you can actually start off your subscription with 3 000 free silver and an epic champion wouldn't you know just when you thought it was safe mobile games got smarter a few months ago i did this whole takedown of the industry calling out the legal loopholes that they exploit in order to sell their games i mean they are actively lying to get you to download their game and nothing is done about it and wouldn't you know it they took that idea and they decided to run with it we apologize for setting sashlow as a five star heroes for marketing with forced ads to make it up to you we're hereby giving to you the cdk ih777 oh we are so sorry for having unfair gambling in our game so use this code to gamble some more man this thing just set the new land speed record for youtube apology videos apologize for your actions and less than a minute later in the same video just do it all over again but amidst the sea of garbage one recently did catch my attention well actually it caught the attention of another channel danny gonzalez it's just like a home improvement game like a gardening and fixer-uppy game the game in question is merge mansion which saw lily's garden adds and said hold my beer creating an entire ad campaign revolving around its mysterious and confusing lore wedding breakups mysterious fires secret affairs and murder is all of this context and backstory important if i downloaded the game so i've got an empty spot in my garden i can either plant a tree or build a statue keeping in mind that my fiance did either die or stand me up on my wedding day i think the choice is actually pretty clear i'm going back to therapy but what really caused this game to blow up was the final shot from one of its ads here we have our innocent and loving grandma the woman who comforted us after we were jilted at the altar the dear sweet lady who gave us a derelict mansion to repair she's taken in by the cops and then biggest anime betrayal of all time a message is written on her hand you're next twitter exploded about this game and everyone was asking the same question what the hell did grandma do well danny and internet at large that is what i aim to answer today what is the mystery of the merge mansion what's granny's menacing message referring to and seriously how does a locket of family photos merge together into a garden rake all that and more except for maybe the last one today as we explore the lore of yet another weird mobile video game ad campaign you happy for your free promotion game you got me in total there are only like six or seven ad spots plus the lore that's delivered in game by granny so unlike lily's garden we're thankfully not dealing with hundreds of short 30 second videos this time so let's start at the beginning our story begins with lead character maddie in a wedding dress mascara running down her face clearly her wedding didn't go as planned with her fiance either not showing up or running out of the ceremony either way jerk move there bro but of course the bad news doesn't stop there she gets out of the taxi only to see her house has been burned down can i just digress here and say that i love her reaction in this moment just little slumping of the shoulders cause yeah that is the appropriate reaction when you see your life go up in flames anyway she immediately gets a call from granny ursula good timing there gran uncanny maddie accepts the call and in a separate ad titled wedding we see maddie tear up a photo of her and her fiance together so weird detail since you know she's both wearing her wedding dress and in the dress in the picture like how did she get a photo from the wedding if the wedding didn't happen this proves that at the very least her fiance whose name we later learn is arthur must have gotten cold feet at the altar and physically ran away maybe they both got dressed up but upon seeing the dress the fiancee suddenly got cold feet and ran after the photo was taken also polaroid photos for the wedding i recognize you hipster move well done but granny's there once again to the rescue by offering maddie a place to stay the old family mansion which gotta admit sounds great until you actually see it it could use some work we actually get two versions of this part of the story one in the cg style that we've seen and another in the art style of the actual game in it we're shown a newspaper headline revealing a few key details one that maddie is actually a bit of a local celebrity and two that she was pied off by her fiance paid off hideoff i've never heard of this before is that is this a real thing uh yeah i guess it is weird is this like some sort of old saying that's being brought back by gen z yo girl it was poggers when you told me that you loved me but then you went and pied off and now i'm all pepe hands hurts to be debated like that i'm omega lol regardless the article also tells us that she's been scammed by arthur and that she's now and i quote big sad so with nothing left to her name maddie takes granny's offer and decides to fix up the mansion however if you do the unthinkable and actually play the game you quickly learn that the city inspector roddy deems the house is too dangerous and threatens to demolish the whole thing if it's not repaired soon later on in the story he even takes the hands-on approach by offering to help himself which gotta admit awfully nice of him who knew that city inspectors could be so generous with their time oh wait they can't in the video perfect day we see maddie accidentally slip on a rake and in so doing falls into the arms of the inspector in the next video gardening we see clothes strewn about as maddie climbs out of a rose bush which gotta say bad choice of bush there like is nobody concerned about the thorns anyway i think you can tell where this one's going after maddie leaves out pops the inspector i mean maddie's a celebrity we've already established that she could probably have had her pick of the chads and yet she chooses him i don't think so think this is more of a tactical decision by wooing him maddie gets to keep the demolition of the mansion delayed sometimes who knows he'll even help out speaking of helping out grandma's also there in the bush yep a third person reaches up from the bush to pull the inspector back down and look at that flared sleeve there it's a match for granny's outfit and every scene that we see her in i suppose love is blind to age and apparently to also being in the same family they must really want to keep this mansion and while we're on the subject of granny it seems like her motives in this are twofold first while on the surface it seems like she wants to help maddie during a rough patch in her life in reality she's just using maddie for free labor to fix the mansion i mean she doesn't help at all except for that stuff in the bush we see her drinking cocktails on the roof relaxing in the pool ignoring maddie's calls for help in game whenever granny shows up at the end of a mission and it is always at the end when things are all fixed up she tends to drop little tidbits about the mansion and the family history like the fact that they earned a family fortune from crazy inventions like the tin can the spray can and the skateboard but whenever maddie asks for more information about why the mansion was locked away granny makes an excuse usually something to do with pie and the answers have to wait for another day well done game some apps keep you planned with small micro transactions but you're the first one that actually gets me you know that all i need is that slow drip feed of lore directly into my brain also caffeine definitely addicted to caffeine at this point which brings us to the two videos that started it all criminal and mystery see granny isn't just hiding secrets about the family she's hiding her own secrets in the video criminal we see granny leaving the house with an envelope on the side table reading the story of our family i'm sorry sorry sorry for what this is then followed up by mystery where she gets into the police car and we see that infamous writing on her hand what though is she being arrested for well i would say arson remember maddie's house and how it burned down at the start of all this and how just in the nick of time granny comes a call in with a comforting shoulder and a brand new house that gosh darn it just needs a little bit of fixing up her timing here is awfully suspicious i think she set the fire consider this maddie is devastated about being left at the altar and it means she's gonna be stuck at the ceremony for a while dealing with guests being comforted by friends things like that you'd assume that granny as a family member would be there too to act as an emotional support except we know for a fact that she wasn't because she calls back later that day to help maddie through her feelings about both the wedding and the fire all this time with maddie at the ceremony then gives granny plenty of time to sneak away and cause the fire why would she do something like that well granny clearly wants free labor to fix the mansion and she sees a vulnerable family member who can do exactly that by offering to help maddie through this difficult period in her life it suddenly makes maddie dependent on her so is that then why granny's getting arrested for arson well it's not actually the end of it in this gameplay advertisement we see another news article with the headline killer grandma caught she killed someone who well the answer i think is a pretty obvious one there's a character that's only ever mentioned briefly but is never spoken of or seen again the fiancee arthur to be clear we do see him in the first ever ad spot for the game but this spot also features some details that directly contradict every other major story point that we get from all the other ads and the game itself so i think that this one just kind of got swept under the rug in retconned way and i gotta admit i don't have a lot of hard evidence for this one but i do have a decent amount of circumstantial evidence first off did you see my lily's garden video exes like this don't just disappear in these mobile game ads in the lily's garden universe lily's ex-fiancee shows up constantly well after their relationship ends so why would merge mansion a very similar game following a very similar ad campaign not include this sort of key character unless he physically can't be included he can't show up because granny killed maddie's fiancee we do see in one of the ads that granny starts to tell maddie something about her ex-fiance and then the ad cuts out suspicious right if you left someone at the altar the first thing you'd do is go home and pack your things to make some sort of quick getaway right i suspect arthur may have done something exactly like that but he got caught granny saw him sneak away and knew exactly what he was doing she followed him home and set his house on fire with him inside which leads us finally to the hand message what does it mean or should i say what do they mean you see there's not just one but three separate messages ending this mysterious ad campaign you're next he's alive and i planned this clearly this is just the case of a mobile game ad trying to optimize for click-through rate by making a small change which is something that we actually talked about in our past mobile game episode but still which one of the messages is real which is right well what if i told you that all of them are let's start with the weirdest one he's alive right now there are only three men in the series the inspector granny's friend julius and the ex-fiancee arthur both the inspector and julius are alive so not gonna be them like yeah obviously he's still alive granny he was just helping us trim the bush this afternoon wink wink in the game lore granny tells stories about her husband grandpa charlie and while he does appear to be dead there's nothing really scandalous or interesting about him to warrant something like this the only person it would make sense for it to refer to is the ex-fiance he went home after running out of the wedding got caught in what people believed to be an accidental house fire and was declared dead that's the story that people know but in reality granny saw him and set the fire with him still in the house when they discovered her arson she got pinned for killing him as well he's alive might also lead us to what granny plans next when she drives off she's got an evil grin on her face she plans on finishing the job but how is she gonna do that when she's in prison she's not she's in the process of busting out remember one of the other phrases on the hand was i planned this which makes sense when you think about the envelope that she left on the table before being taken in by the cops she couldn't have just written that note once the police arrived she knew that they were coming for her but this is where granny's long-term planning kicks in in the ad where we see her in prison we see granny putting some massive thing inside of a pie it looks to be some kind of a file or lock pick which she plants in the pie for maddie to bring with her to prison with all of granny's talk of pies throughout the game her ever-loving granddaughter would bring the pie to granny not being aware of what's inside granny is planning a prison break she can then run away change her identity and set up somewhere nice with her family's secret fortune but that then leaves us with the last phrase you're next well if i'm right about granny planning a prison escape then maddie is technically an accomplice to that crime and would be considered to be an accessory after the fact and in the state of maryland which is the setting of the game based on the news articles that talk about the mcpd or the montgomery county police department in baltimore maddie is likely to get up to 10 years in prison and that might not be our only conviction once they start looking into maddie they might find the series of events currently blamed on granny to be a little suspect house being burned down to claim insurance money fiance being murdered fooling around with a city inspector if anything maddie should be suspect number one for all these crimes so the your next could indeed be granny showing her hand revealing that she set up all these dominoes so that maddie is eventually the one that takes the fall for everything granny is not nice in fact she is pure evil out for her own personal gain with a little bit of murder on the side once the police focus on maddie and once the mansion's repaired granny will be able to get the family fortune and sail away off into the horizon never seen or heard from again which would then lead to perhaps the biggest twist of them all the fact that the game plays literally nothing like any of this in the first place but hey that's just a theory a game theory thanks for watching [Music] so [Music] you

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 10,768,192

Keywords: merge mansion, mobile game, mobile games, merge mansion ad, mobile game ads, merge mansion ads, merge mansion game ads, merge mansion lore, merge mansion explained, merge mansion gameplay, weird mobile games, best mobile games, funny mobile games, merge mansion hack, merge mansion story, merge mansion tips, game theory, game theorists, matpat, game theory mobile games, game theory merge mansion, merge mansion must have, merge mansion game, merge mansion walkthrough

Id: z-uOvB72RGw

Length: 14min 19sec (859 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 24 2021