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Cooperative online shared worlds, even adversarial ones, are a wildly different use of time compared to spending hours staring at short-format video after short-format video.

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And even gaming has been largely "gamified" into microtransaction casinos rather than a place to hang with friends.

Even single player games have adopted these practices. It’s in retrospect not surprising that roguelikes became so popular, but I think it’s very unhealthy that a game like Balatro is considered one of the exemplars of the video game medium. It activates almost exactly the same emotions as gambling and its no surprise that people spend hundreds of hours on them, but its almost certainly bad for the consumer even if they’re not losing money

Strong disagree, balatro plays on the same things that vampire survivors does: overwhelming the enemy with enormous domination.

And let me know when in the casinos (authorized) SKILL USE is the most important part.

I don't disagree that AAA games have horrible practices at time, but poking Balatro is a big mistake.

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