What game? If I send someone a document, I expect them to read it. If I send them a list of repeated keywords just to rank higher in a dumb algorithm that I'm hoping they use, and it turns out it's a human now staring at a page of repeated words... I don't find it surprising that the human is not impressed.
> It forces people to make a choice where they're effectively rolling the dice as to what the best course of action is
The best course of action is to make good resumes. If the scanner can't pick them out, the company will notice in any spot checks that it spits out only garbage. If you optimize for a computer, computer says yes, then a human opens it to see what your experience is and what to talk about in the (phone) interview, human would still see you're trying to cheat their system (which could be a good thing if you apply for a hacking company, perhaps).
> If the scanner can't pick them out, the company will notice in any spot checks that it spits out only garbage
This is giving the companies a huge amount of credit. The problem isn't that the only spit out garbage, just that they are 'unfairly' rejecting strong resumes.
> It forces people to make a choice where they're effectively rolling the dice as to what the best course of action is
The best course of action is to make good resumes. If the scanner can't pick them out, the company will notice in any spot checks that it spits out only garbage. If you optimize for a computer, computer says yes, then a human opens it to see what your experience is and what to talk about in the (phone) interview, human would still see you're trying to cheat their system (which could be a good thing if you apply for a hacking company, perhaps).