toastus

If you ask a russian there is a good chance they will tell you Russia is "defending" one thing or another in Ukraine.
Or that russia is in fact defending itself from an attack from "the west" atm.
It's all bullshit, but propaganda will do its thing.

Nothing (russian) stopping NK from trying to "defend" some shit in SK as well.
Off course they will then find out that Putins word is not worth the dickhole it came out of, but that's another story.

Russia and entering treaties that neither party intends to honor...

I get it.

I sometimes put AAA games on my wishlist anyway.
Not to buy them on release but to get alerted when they go on discount at some point down the line, which is generally how I use my wishlist mostly.

I have some unreleased indie games on there as well, but those I might just buy full price anyway whenever I feel like it or have a little extra free time to play a bit more at a time.

A high-profile British judge who resigned from Hong Kong’s highest court last week has warned the city is “slowly becoming a totalitarian state”

Slowly becoming my ass...

HK is already totalitarian af.

You comment and comment and explain and explain shit that everyone already knows.

It is like you just recently learned what marketing is and now you feel like you know some big secret.

Just to make it short.
Every product in the world is marketed in a way to motivate consumers to buy.
That is not inherently immoral.

You said every successful game monetizes by maximizing addiction and frustration.

I have proven you wrong by naming games that just DO NOT MAXIMIZE FRUSTRATION.

Yeah off course even those games dangle stuff in front of you that you are supposed to buy.
That's the whole business model of f2p games.

But there are different ways to get to the players money.

There are those that indeed trigger responses to frustration.
This is absolutely prevalent in mobile games or even those million deckbuilder games.

But there just are also games that use other ways to make players buy mtx.
Again, you can play PoE, LoL, CS and many other games for literal thousands of hours without ever getting coaxed into frustrating barriers like a Diablo Immortals would do to players.

You said there aren't. So you were wrong.

So have fun running around with a goalpost in your hand, I am done.

Why do you think you can dictate to anyone what to wear?

right?

No, still wrong.

Obviously it is something that is not given to you for free.
It is a product and the developers/publishers are doing business after all.

And yes Sherlock, it is qol functionality that people playing the endgame might want and that is not included in the free version of the game.
But every functionality that any player ever needs is available for far less than what any other AAA title costs up front.

PoE is mainly financed by purely cosmetic supporter packs and whales.
Is that much more ethical than what you described? Maybe not.

But it sure as hell is not banking on frustrating the average user and thus a completely different form of monetization than the one that you just doubled down on insisting is the only one there is.
So again as I said, you are just plain wrong.

Oh and in CS I don't think you can buy any functionality at all.
Only cosmetics, that don't do anything for you in the game.

Any successful example is optimized for addiction and frustration.

That is just plain wrong.
Addiction I guess but frustration definitely not necessarily.
There are countless examples of highly successful games that do not monetize like that.

You can happily play PoE for thousands of hours without paying a penny; if you want to get into trading drop like 20 bucks for some stash tabs and you are ready to go again for absolutely any content the game has to offer.

CS or LoL also work just fine for f2p players.

And I say that as a player that fucking hates the new generation of soulless live service games.

Not that my opinion matters any more than the next person's, but I also can't recommend Celeste enough.

It does so many things so very right.
The pure gameplay is crisp and responsive platforming.
Like any good platfmorer it has some specific mechanics that make it unique, but every one is intuitive enough to pick up easily enough. I have heard it called something like "the hardest platformer that everyone can finish."

And it is true. I could never finish some of the harder SMB levels but I never got too frustrated with Celeste.
And if I were, there would have been accessibility options to make the game more approachable.

But it also caters to the hardcore crowd with completely optional collectibles that are organically included into the gorgeous level design.

It is speedrunnable for those folks.

And as if that wasn't enough to make a good platformer it also tells a heartwarming story supported by a beautiful soundtrack.

Sorry I am rambling, but Celeste is fucking awesome.

Elden Ring runs just fine on my Deck, but it drains my battery pretty fast.

But I have a refurbished non OLED deck so ymmv.

I mean wouldn't you also much rather be bribed than blackmailed?