They usually are free to play with predatory monetization mechanics. That was especially back in 2016 when thanks to these games, the mobile gaming revenue outpaced PC and console gaming revenue.
Because dweebs like you keep throwing money at garbage.
Small screen, combined with poor/touch screen controls, and wanting to make money no matter what by pushing ads everywhere because no one wants to pay $10+ for a mobile software.
The only time I consider a mobile a game is when there is an ad-free option available.
I still miss my Xperia Play. It’s been over 10 years… Still my favorite phone.
Have you ever sat in front of a casino’s slot machine. They are also trash, awful and disgusting. But they’re also engineered with the worst dark pattern psychology to manipulate any human being that sits on it to keep playing and be so addictive that people will burn their money just to keep playing. The qualities of fun, and additive are independent of each other. A game can be very addictive and really bad at the same time. Unlike slot machines, they have the advantage of constantly sitting in your pocket and going with you everywhere you go.
Idk. I got extraordinarily drunk in Vegas, put a twenty in a dollar slot machine, thought I would get 20 pulls, pulled once, lost all my money, them never touched a slot machine again.
I played a new gacha game 2 nights ago that was so overloaded with crap to do I found myself not even playing the game but just clicking the stupid rewards buttons for everything i “accomplished” and I hated it. I continued to play for another 4 hours… thankfully, once I closed the game, I removed it. I also didn’t pay a dime outside my wasted time.
what shocks me is that nintendo never made some new pokemon games in their old GBA or DS style. it would be perfectly suited to phone limitations and expectations and there is a huge potential market for that style of game.
If pokemon got a true mobile port it would have instantly cut their DS/3DS (and maybe Switch) hardware sales in half. Never going to happen
capitalism and greed
