This comic would have been just as effective–and less insulting–had they not included the explanation at the top; the graphic gets the point across just fine.

i saw this post and wondered to myself, “why all the down votes?” and, despite hating the reddit voting system in its entirety (imo, the number one source of conformity, dullness, and unnecessary-obsession in our online world; the whole thing really should be burned down with prejudice), i thought to myself, “the down votes are probably because this person seems to be more interested in building an audience than the art of writing.”

but then! lo, i checked your profile and quickly realized that you’re either a gamergate refugee with an inoperable 4chan-brain tumor, or you’re a really bad troll (and i hate just dismissing people as “trolls” because it’s too easy, but this is a special case); your sole work is a poorly supported anti-feminist critique of a female anime character posted in the feminism community (lol), with an opening line that is just oh so obvious bait: “As someone who believes in traditional gender roles and views women’s primary value in their appearance and domestic skills.” which then goes on to just make blanket statements with no real conviction or supporting arguments. it’s one thing to argue for traditional gender roles, it’s another thing entirely to post stuff like: “Maomao, the protagonist, is portrayed as highly intelligent and skilled in medicine, a field traditionally dominated by men. This challenges the notion that women should focus on homemaking and child-rearing instead of pursuing intellectual or professional careers.” like, OK, it does challenge the notion that women should focus on homemaking and child-rearing etc. but you fail to explain how this is a negative thing, which means either A) you’re incapable of forming a coherent argument for your own beliefs, or B) you’re trolling.

so, in conclusion: you are receiving so many down votes because you’re either a troll or a bigot (or both).

Nothing is real!!!

Removed by mod

For the same reason people shun gambling: They are designed to be addictive and rob you of something.

People don’t shun gambling. It’s a widely celebrated human pastime that exists in every land, every country, every little burrow and bungalow; hell, even when states try to ban gambling, someone comes along with a cruise ship, packs it with gambling machines and spinning tables, and takes it right off the coast into international waters so that they can continue to gamble.

And all video games are designed to be addictive, and they all rob you of something: your time, specifically. And time is more valuable than money, in fact, money is largely a unit of time measurement.

Regarding gacha, they are designed to be as addicting as possible with a direct line to your wallet, but to me this seems just an aspect of their specific genre; a widely popular genre that many seem to enjoy. Instead of paying $60 bucks and maybe losing hundreds of hours of your life, or maybe not playing the game much at all because you didn’t like it; you pay nothing up front ans can choose to invest more money if you enjoy the game. I don’t see it as worse, only different from the classic-gaming model.

Success in entertainment can be considered from a lot of angles: Financial success, being acclaimed by critics, being able to form a niche but tightly-knit community, being a rare supplier of a niche genre, gaining world-wide renown, etc.

These are each offshoots of popularity; and your list goes from most popular to less popular respectively.

Think of having your spouse/family member forming a real gambling addiction

I don’t see it as being much different than a gaming “addiction,” which seems to be rampant in our society – gacha or not.

Because I can. Who’s going to stop me? YOU? HA!

This is brilliant, and totally not a waste of my time.

I’ll kick things off, I suppose.

A role-playing game should be based on traditional tabletop role-playing games. To truly be considered a role-playing game, a game must have character creation, stats, chance on actions (dice rolls, for example), and turn-based action (true turn-based or some offshoot).

Alright. I did the thing.

The Psycho Wand as a symbol for transient value is intriguing, but it does beg the question: “what is value?” Everything is transient, is it not? From this perspective, how can we say a digital Psycho Wand is more or less valuable than other material possession? Perhaps the answer is to abandon the desire to possess anything at all, but how do we do this when the Western world is built upon fostering this desire from the baby’s rattle to daddy’s new car?

I made a character (nova dragon) but the knock down and slowness destroys me. This is a nostalgia game, which is OK, but let’s acknowledge that.

Mountain Dew and tears.

In the skull/lizard person example, can you extrapolate on why “this creates so many questions” is a bad thing? Is the goal to have no mystery in the games, and somehow this makes the game better? I am not following.

As to why Baldur’s Gate 3 is more popular than Original Sin 2: they’re both made by the same developer, which has always been a smaller, lesser-known studio; Baldur’s Gate 3 piggy-backs off the success of BG1&2 before it, which were both created by different developers and both games were critically acclaimed during the CRPG boom. Divinity has always been a niche series, partially due to the small studio’s lack of advertising and smaller budget, but when you piggy-back off an already highly successful series, you would expect a higher adoption rate; which is exactly what we see with BG3.

Video games with stat systems, online role playing games specifically, tend to turn into competitive games even if there is no PVP to be had. This is due to party composition, mostly; why take a less-than-perfect mage when you could take the perfect mage? When loot and numbers come into play, people get nitpicky, mean, and gatekeepy. The problem is that taking the less-than-perfect mage has no impact on content completion other than their damage numbers are slightly lower and it might take an extra minute to kill a boss; does this minor difference justify being denied a spot in a party? I would argue: no. Some would argue the opposite and I wouldn’t want to play video games with those people.