[com2kid]

Farmville style games underwent similar explosive estimates of growth, up until they collapsed.

Much of the growth in gaming of late has come from exploitive dark patterns, and those dark patterns eventually stop working because users become immune to them.

[mrguyorama]

>Farmville style games underwent similar explosive estimates of growth, up until they collapsed.

They did not collapse, they moved to smartphones. The "free"-to-play gacha portion of the gaming market is so successful it is most of the market. "Live service" games are literally traditional game makers trying to grab a tiny slice of that market, because it's infinitely more profitable than making actual games.

>those dark patterns eventually stop working because users become immune to them.

Really? Slot machines have been around for generations and have not become any less effective. Gambling of all forms has relied on the exact same physiological response for millennia. None of this is going away without legislation.

[com2kid]

> Slot machines have been around for generations and have not become any less effective.

Slot machines are not a growth market. The majority of people wised to them literal generations ago, although enough people remain susceptible to maintain a handful of city economies.

> They did not collapse, they moved to smartphones

Agreed, but the dark patterns being used are different. The previous dark patterns became ineffective. The level of sophistication of psychological trickery in modern f2p games is far beyond anything Farmville ever attempted.

The rise of live service games also does not bode well for infinite growth in the industry as there's only so many hours to go around each day for playing games and even the evilest of player manipulation techniques can only squeeze so much blood from a stone.

The industry is already seeing the failure of new live service games to launch, possibly analogous to what happened in the MMO market when there was a rush of releases after WoW. With the exception of addicts, most people can only spend so many hours a day playing games.