one part of your post that has me curious is that you’re asking the question “where is the line?” but then you seem to agree that there are scummy mobile games out there, right? So it sounds like you agree that there *is* a line, somewhere, right? 

i think there are some key qualitative differences between an educational magazine and a video game that gets people addicted to clicking creatures for thousands of hours and i think your wife would be likely to agree with that

sure i will give some explanation.

if you’re talking about blizzard, then no, their job is to make money and that’s it. they will do whatever it takes to increase the money they make, including psychological manipulation tactics such as the one discussed here. which is not good

i play abstract board games and in those, the term ‘endgame’ does in fact mean the end of the game. but i get your point

if i run a casino where the fun of it is continuous smoking, drinking, and gambling, it’s no surprise that my base of customers will be such that they ‘demand’ continuous smoking, drinking, and gambling. that doesn’t make it good and it doesn’t make it any less manipulative

self control and personal accountability are good things to have and to encourage. but using them as a reason to shift blame away from companies that are intentionally being exploitative is not good.

ok that makes way more sense! And yeah that was the impression i got, with the like, ‘traditional end’ of the game actually not being the intended end of the game. so strange to me personally, i think it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around since i tend to seek closure in games

it’s a psychological manipulation tactic to get people to remain invested where they otherwise might not. if it doesn’t work on you, that’s great, but it will absolutely work on many people (otherwise companies wouldnt use it)

it’s a tactic of psychological manipulation to get people to remain invested in something far longer than they they otherwise would, artificially

as someone who doesn’t play this type of game, and is old, i am confused by the term ‘endgame.’ to me ‘endgame’ means like, the end of a game (like last dungeon or whatever). it doesn’t seem to mean that in these games though lol 

we definitely need a system where workers cant just get fucked overnight like this

it seems you ignored what they said

it’s not his last match. he’s still competing, he’s just giving up the world championship title since he does not enjoy those particular events

this is so real

we just seem to have very different perspectives here. it seems that you are in circles where it’s normal for people to be playing a game for 2000+ hours, and then having feeling sad/bad feelings due to the time they’ve spent playing the game.

i also think a huge part of being a kid is the process of growing up. having a movie where, as you grow up, you can still appreciate the movie in different ways, would be really great. 

frankly i dont know much about the mechanics of these games. they have not particularly interested me, partially because people regularly say that they’re games where you turn your brain off and watch numbers go up for many many hours. so i speak from a certain level of ignorance here. perhaps you are right and diablo…

i don’t know anything about those games, but maybe they are even worse than this, as you say. in that case, both things would be very bad. all in all, it is not good for corporations to work extremely hard to get people extremely addicted to their video games

it’s not about how boring they are, it’s about the fact that they’re going out of their way to get people addicted to their game