You do realize that iOS alone has more paid premium games—without microtransactions—than the entire combined library of NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube, right?

Hey, I’ve played every game I purchased between 2012-15.

I don’t know, you haven’t pointed out multiple examples.

Great idea for a future thread.

Wrong. Not ignored—not played yet.

I definitely don’t complete all of them. My goal is to at least play an hour each, but not every game is worth an hour.

The most time I’ve ever spent on a game is around 100 hours.

I mean, if it’s a trend, you’d think I would have noticed it by now.

A few thousand dollars.

Never bought a single game at full price. Almost all the time, it’s at least 90% off. Lots of game bundles abound. And free games are given away all the time.

Out of the thousands of games I have, not once have I noticed anything like you describe.

Say what you will, every game I’ve bought—I can still play. And I’ve been buying Steam games for over a decade.

Meanwhile, none of my GameCube discs work on my Switch.

Unapologetically, I’m a non-completionist.

Only complete the games you’re compelled to complete.

Oh no, I’m cringe. 😱

That’s great—I love being cringe. It means I’ve hit a nerve and said something so contrary that it actually rattles you.

Funny thing is, you haven’t actually told me how or why I’m wrong—just that I’m cringe.

If that’s all you’ve got, I’m doing something right.

Plenty of devs continue to make games for the Commodore 64. Should they stop just because most people don’t have one?

Sometimes I do buy games on a whim.

But usually, I’m a deal hunter—I scour for discounts, read descriptions carefully, study screenshots, and watch gameplay footage. If it grabs my interest, I pull the trigger.

Surprisingly, most of the games that catch my eye turn out to be pretty good.

You should give it a shot. Ignore the hype, forget word of mouth and influencers. Dive into something completely new and different—you might just be pleasantly surprised.

Have you ever considered that many people make games not just for some arbitrary measure of “success,” but because they genuinely love the craft of creating video games?

Some of these creators simply want to share their creativity with the world—no gimmicks, no exploitative business models.

There’s an entire universe of these passionate developers out there. We call them “indie” devs. You’ll find them on platforms like itch.io, and they’re far more common than most realize.

Many make games for PC, some for the web, and plenty for mobile as well.

If you want to play truly good games—without being at the mercy of marketing machines, no matter the platform—it’s on each of us to seek them out and discover what’s really worth playing.

Here’s where you and I differ: I don’t trust word of mouth. I don’t trust canons. I don’t trust marketing. And frankly, I don’t trust the so-called “gamers” who repeat the same tired narratives.

Instead, I dive deep—into the bowels of app stores, into archive.org, anywhere I can find games no one else has played or talked about. Then I judge for myself whether they’re worth a damn.

That’s how I’ve uncovered hidden gems, and why I know most of what passes for “good taste” is just groupthink dressed up as expertise.

The only people with real taste? The ones willing to seek things out and form their own opinions. Everything else is just noise.

Action 52 committed a crime worse than all those gacha games combined: it was not fun. And you had to pay good money for the privilege of being bored out of your mind.

But seriously—what’s stopping you (or anyone else) from buying games outright for your smartphone?

No one’s given me an answer, so here’s the truth:

Nothing.

But sure, keep pretending every mobile gamer is chained to gacha hell, like their phones come pre-installed with Only Microtransactions Forever™. Everyone with a smartphone is forced to play gacha 24/7, no exceptions.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, and I’m the CEO of Bigfoot Sightings Inc.

Wow, that’s some next-level conspiracy thinking—just because I share stats with a source, you leap straight to “sales rep for the statistics company” territory?

What’s next, claiming schools teach math just to line Texas Instruments’ pockets?

Here’s the simple truth: I’m tired of hearing people mindlessly parrot the same tired talking points with zero facts to back them up.

If having an unpopular opinion rattles your echo chamber, so be it. I’m perfectly fine with that.

The inverse is just as true. Just because you and many “gamers” accept a rigid canon of what counts as “quality” doesn’t mean those games are actually good.

Go to any retro gaming board and you’ll hear the NES era hailed as a golden age. I’ve played nearly all those games—and apart from a few true gems, most of them don’t hold up.

Yet people still pay hundreds of dollars for cartridges like Action 52 and treat them like holy grails, even though we all know that some of the worst mobile games today are technically better.

The truth is, I don’t think the average gamer really knows quality. I think most of their taste is just parroting what someone else told them to like.

Quality deserves to be judged on its own merits—not nostalgia or consensus.