The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

You may have heard about how free-to-play games are dominating the industry. This is something from SYSTEM shared over the Discord channel, this is a video that means to talk about one thing (in this case mobile free-to-play game engagement), but ends up being about something else entirely ...



In particular, the psychology behind initiating involvement, as well as more than a few insights into habit-formation and gambling. Fascinating stuff and at least a little ethically challanged.

For the record, things are worse on mobile than on PC. PC gamers aren't willing to put up with as much abuse as mobile gamers. The video I shared is specifically about the mobile side of things.

The reason for the way mobile games work is that mobile games sucked in a lot of people who had never played games earlier in their lives, and they just accepted everything the games threw at them (constantly asking for money, waiting timers, reliance on luck, notifications etc.) as normal - they didn't know any better. That didn't happen on PC because PC gamers know what games have traditionally been like and weren't willing to accept as much.

OTOH, there's a whole generation out there for whom gaming means playing on mobiles or consoles -- PCs are just weird contraptions they have to put up with in school and other such boring institutional settings.

I've witnessed as much with my offspring which although always having PCs nearby couldn't care less about them.

Midas wrote: ↑Sun Jul 12, 2020 11:11 am OTOH, there's a whole generation out there for whom gaming means playing on mobiles or consoles -- PCs are just weird contraptions they have to put up with in school and other such boring institutional settings.

I've witnessed as much with my offspring which although always having PCs nearby couldn't care less about them.

Weird, my son went in reverse.
He started out playing games on a mobile phone, went to xbox console,
then all but abandoned both for his gaming PC.

His still plays on the phone when he waits for the school bus,
and he still plays on xbox with a few specific games (Minecraft).

Yes, can confirm too, once they hit their twenties, they slowly start to come over.

Only, by then, the passive mindset is firmly entrenched...