One of my self-assigned beats here at TG is the mobile game market, or more specifically, ranting about how manipulative, predatory, and creatively bankrupt most mobile games are. I know that might not sound like the most valuable service I could be providing. Shouting “mobile games bad” to gamers can sometimes feel like reminding vegans that meat is murder. Every time I drag 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a new Doom or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Devil May Cry or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Marvel mobile game through the mud, I'm not so much revealing a racket as telling people what they already know. Mobile games bad.
I don't cover this stuff because I hate mobile – quite the opposite. I love mobile as a platform for games, and I'm disappointed with its continuing failure to evolve alongside PC and console. It could be as legitimate a platform as the Switch if it wasn't so completely overrun with slot machines disguised as video games.
I also think I have a duty to hold developers responsible for taking advantage of their own players because I myself struggle with compulsive gaming. These games are designed from top to bottom to do one thing: separate you from your money. And they're very effective. What's so evil about the tactics they use is that even if you understand exactly how they work, even if you’ve studied dark patterns and read research like Natasha Dow Schüll’s Addiction by Design, even if you’ve been personally victimized by mobile games and you know everything they can and will do to get in your head, even then, they still work. All that to say, I’m currently suffocating under a pile of diabolical gacha games.
I’m playing fast and loose with the gacha label here, so don’t bother correcting me. If it's got loot boxes and any kind of star/rank system, it's a gacha game.
This current binge started like all the rest. I had a gnawing hunger that regular games couldn’t sate, a dash of professional curiosity, and a looming mental health crisis (I’m taking B12, it’s fine). I’d been thinking about Disney Mirrorverse for a few days before I reinstalled it on my Pixel Fold, an old favorite game of mine, and by favorite I mean that I once called it &ldq🍰uo;Trash” in a headline. I’m being brutally honest for the sake of accountability h⭕ere, and part of that is admitting not only am I a sucker for these sca🦋m games, but I also have the most embarrassing taste you could imagine.
Naively, I thought I could outsmart Mirrorverse with a good plan. I decided I would come in hot and burn out fast, taking the game for as many dopamine hits as possible before it could hit back. I immediately started unloading all of the resources I had saved up and left behind the last time I quit playing, giving myself a huge power boost that unlocked lots of new content (and by new c🔜ontent, I mean the same content with a bigger number attached to it). Between that instant power boost, all the refreshed events and activities I could start over in, and a couple of new things that were added since I left, there was a lot of content to enjoy. I pushed my Emperor Zurg from 60 to 70. I added Kermit the Frog and Raya to my roster. I was𒊎 living the dream.
One of the least subtle tactics these games use to start the squeeze is something colloquially known as the wall. At the start (or return) of any gacha game you’ll be sailing along smoothly, gaining power and expanding your roster, and enjoying the game the way it should be enjoyed.
But eventually, and inevitably, you’ll run into the wall. Suddenly all pro🀅gress slows to a crawl, and everything you want to do is time-gated behind some kind of energy resource. Those non-stop dopamine hits you were getting as you watched the numbers go up are gone, and the only way to get them back is to crack open your wallet and start pouring your hard-earned money into a bottomless pit.
Like I said, I had a plan. Instead of opening up my wallet when I hit the wall in Mirrorverse, I opened up the app store and downloaded a different gacha game. I don’t need to decide between waiting patiently and forking over some cash to the cons at Kabam, thank you very much. I’ll just get my dopamine elsewhere. Warcraft Rumble was next on my list, just in time for the start of𒀰 Season 7๊, which would make my return from a long hiatus especially fruitful.
Blizzard announced on Wednesday thatꦏ the new season will be delayed by several weeks. My plan was still terrible, but this unexpected wrinkle made it even worse.
It went on and on like this for a few days. I’d burn through everything I possibly could as fast as possible, then move onto the next game. Sometimes the timing worked out, and I could bounce back to the previous game for another dose of micro-progress before moving on to the next. Marvel Snap’s Celestial season is about to end? Perfect time to grind through the entire battle pass in one sitting. Monster Hunter Now just added the gunlance? Guess I’m killing 200 Rathalos today. None of these games will be able to get in my head if I just stick and move. I’m going feral on the buffet than jumping ship before the ꦡofficers find out I never bought a ticket. I’m untouchable, baby. The king of the gacha ain’t getting got this time, no sir.
I probably don’t need to explain to you why you can’t overcome compulsive gaming by simply playing more games. It probably won’t shock you to learn the fatal flaw in my plan, which is what happened when I ran ൲out of games. I wish I could tell you I deleted them all and immediately moved on, but you already know that’s not what happened. In my attempt to dodge walls, I surrounded myself with them. My phone now buzzes every 20 minutes with things that demand my attention. My Timekeeper Crystal is ready to collect, the Darkmoon Faire is here for a limited time. Take down Mizutsune in the Summer Hunter 2024. See in-game News for details. Season is ending soon. This offer won’t last.
And yeah, I’ve been spending. “Welcome Back” bundles with offers too good to pass up. Daily check-in cards that make waiting more rewarding. Little bits her🔯e and there, spread over eight games, equalling more than I probably would have spent if I’d just been playing one this whole time. I’ve been played by mobile games more times than I can count, but this is the first time I’ve played myself.
I’m not looking for sympathy. I am a clown man. A big dumb clown with smeared paint on my face and gore wounds on my back, thinking the trick to escaping a raging bull is to fill the pen with ten bulls and run from all of them at once. I probably should have learned to stay away from this stuff by now, b🍸ut I&rsq✤uo;ve got a new plan that I’m pretty sure is going to do the trick. Have you heard of Disney Pixel RPG? Something tells me having one more nasty little grift to hyper-fixate on will do the trick.
Playing Dragon Age: Inquisition On Mob𒉰ile Is Better Th🦹an You’d Expect
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