[advice_thrwawy9]

> Instead of optimizing for fun, or a memorable experience, or an artistic vision, you are optimizing for profit, which compromises those other things.

But this has always been true of games based on whatever market pressures optimized revenue.

In the 80s arcade games, many of the classics we love today, were optimized around you feeding as many quarters as possible into a machine in order to beat it. There's even a joke about this in Wayne's World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4tmzwrdTmY

The 90s home console market has some classics but every 90s kid remembers awful games with great cover art or movie licensing.

Early 2000s is probably the peak of quality gaming: we were online enough to allow things like easy to access reviews to have a major impact on purchase decisions, while not online enough to make constant updates feasible.

After that we also saw the rise of extremely addictive MMORPGs that not only consumed people's wallets but their lives.

In the grand scheme of things I rather enjoy gacha games. Like most HNers I'm often in a position of having more money then time, and it's surprising how many relatively crappy gachas will evolve into pretty fun, well designed games over time.