[wyldfire]

> This extends to video games, usually of the free-to-play type.

Free games are mostly hot garbage, with a couple of rare exceptions. Many of these are also pay-to-win games which strike me as the most preposterous use of time imaginable.

[bdw5204]

A good heuristic for determining whether a game is worth your time is to determine if the game will provide the same experience regardless of when you play it. If the answer is no, the game probably isn't worth your time and you probably shouldn't be playing it.

Features that require you to play a game n days in a row or that require you to play a game at certain times of the day or that require you to stop playing the game and come back the next day are red flags in terms of the game being low quality because there's no need to exploit people's FOMO if you've actually created a good work of art that stands on its own merits.

I also more or less completely ignore phones as gaming platforms. Those platforms have such bad reputations that a game (that isn't a port of a retro classic like the early Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy or Grand Theft Auto games) even being available on them tends to be a red flag that it is a low quality game. There's no reason why good games can't be released on iOS or Android but generally speaking they aren't because of the stigma that those platforms have due to all of the "free-to-play" garbage that has been released on them over the years.

[yCombLinks]

I disagree with this in the sense that some games are only relevant when they are new, due to online play. I've played some great games for a year or however long until everyone moved on that I consider worth the experience.

[hoherd]

Mobile phone games are why I bought a 3DS. Some were good, almost all being paid games, but so many were just repetitious gambling for worthless achievements, portable slot machines. When I quit putting games on my phone and used that time for books and 3DS games my life got notably better. Breaking that repetition and proceeding through a story with characters and new ideas is so much more rewarding.

[kennend3]

I bought all my kids their own 3DS' long ago.

the other added benefit is no "micro-transactions" or other ways of "monetizing the user".

With the 3DS you pay for the game upfront, and for the most part that is the end of things.

[NoPicklez]

This frustrated me the most. In the particle walking about League of Legends and Warzone as two examples. It has nothing to do with the fact that it's free to play, its to do with how addictive they are to play, they're fun games afterall.

People used to walk about World of Warcraft being incredible addictive and that's not free.