11–15 of 15 posts
Nobody wants to pay more than $2-$3 for a game, which disincentivizes people from making complex games. So we get formulaic puzzle games for 'free', which are loaded with gambling-style mechanics that constantly nickel and dime you to upgrade to paid mods to beat harder levels.
>teenagers had become addicted to online gaming and it was having a negative impact on them Same for tiktok & other social media. "Maximizing engagement" is just corporate-speak for optimizing addiction.
Quite a lot of job postings in the valley have ‘Maximizing engagement’, or some variant, in their description…
I miss the days of dedicated game consoles for this exact reason. Smartphones becoming a universal do-it-all device broke the economics of portable gaming. Nobody wants to pay more than $2-$3 for a game, which disincentivizes people from making complex games. So we get formulaic puzzle games for 'free', which are loaded with gambling-style mechanics that constantly nickel and dime you to upgrade to paid mods to beat…
No D-Pad/Joystick or hardware buttons really makes it difficult to design anything that will hit that fun + complex loop well. I can see play.date/steamdeck rolling in sales, as the portable market has a huge back-catalogue and is underserved.
Ultimately, our utilitarian glass slabs are only really good for lists. Lists within lists.
I miss the days of dedicated game consoles for this exact reason. Smartphones becoming a universal do-it-all device broke the economics of portable gaming. Nobody wants to pay more than $2-$3 for a game, which disincentivizes people from making complex games. So we get formulaic puzzle games for 'free', which are loaded with gambling-style mechanics that constantly nickel and dime you to upgrade to paid mods to beat…
China should just ban free2play games - that's where the addictiveness is concentrated. Require every game to have a minimum upfront price. It would be great for the industry and refocus publishers on creativity.