[nemothekid]

>Candy Crush impresses no one.

Now you are moving the goal posts. So Versace is "fair" because of intangible feeling X, but Candy Crush isn't because of intangible feeling Y? For all you know high Candy Crush scores could be a display of high status on some college campus somewhere. Neither companies sell anything other than the feeling you get when you buy their product.

[TheZenPsycho]

You can argue that versace is wrong on its own terms, but people aren't buying versace for the same reasons they buy candy crush power ups. Maybe you're right, maybe Candy Crush high scores does impress someone, but that's a superficial observation. the real question is why should it impress anyone? what did King do to make that impressive?

And is it really impressing other people that is truly the motivating factor in buying more power ups? Or is it.... the exploitation of bugs in the human operating system? The construction of game mechanics to manipulate people's emotions into doing things that don't make rational sense?