That's one of my fear of digital purchases; whether its in-game or full games. It's such a quick process that it feels so nonchalant and you think nothing changed, so its just easy to continually buy digital. And it all adds up in the end when it hits you afterwards .....if that makes any sense to anyone other than myself lol

When I buy physical games, I can see what I bought. When I hold it I know where my money went. And when I see it collecting dust in my backlog I can feel it torment me for spending money on something I haven't played yet.

I can't count how often when I read like articles of games/DLC on sale for PSN and Steam/Humble Bundle that I want to buy; only to realize that I already owned it lol The negative power of buying digital for me.

It only makes it worse when we knows most of these companies do actually employ psychologists to design ways to be even more ill-natured with these practices.

Honestly, if you know you've got compulsory buying issues. Never try those games, otherwise the experience will be miserable by the end.

Yep this exactly. My youngest is always on Roblox, it's his way to play / stay in touch with his nephew and now also other local friends. However Roblox is basically 99% gambling simulators, making numbers grow, opening loot boxes.

He's not allowed to spend any Robux on MTX so he's found all kinds of ways to play the system, mostly with ever more complex macros doing the 'playing' for him while he does something more productive / interesting. I don't if that kind of ingenuity is good or not (not good for the environment anyway). But his friends do it too and so they can keep up with the MTX players... You either pay with money or time.

He has plenty real games to play on Steam plus he can play anything out of my physical game library of over thousand games. But he's gen alpha, grown up with you tube and streamers all encouraging those games. I can tell him how good a game is but he'll take YouTube's word over mine every time, depressing lol. He used to play on his Switch Lite, but since he got a PC he hasn't touched the Switch anymore.

It's mostly the communication part of playing on PC vs Switch. He's always on Discord with his friends. And of course the TV is on as well, Gen Alpha can't do one thing at a time, secondary (sometimes tertiary) screen required while also talking to friends. And that rules out games that actually require your full attention...

It's not just Roblox of course, Path of Exile (2) is the same thing once you reach the end game. End game just being a word for stick around and gamble after finishing the actual game. At least Roblox crap is not as addictive as Everquest, WoW, Diablo etc can be. Those are real dangerous time sinks. At least with Roblox it's always a new game, new macros to make, flavor of the day/week. But it's definitely grooming kids to think of gaming as opening loot boxes :/

At least he'll know how to use a PC. Many kids and teens are completely hopeless with that nowadays due to only using touch screen devices. I'm still on the young side at 27 but am old enough to where I didn't get my first smartphone till I was 15 so I thankfully used laptops growing up instead of those.

A lot of jobs are also moving to tablets rather than PCs/laptops. When digital charting started in health care, it was laptops. Now, all the EMRs I use are primarily adapted for tablets. Although writing a narrative note or an email on a touch screen is a huge pain in the ass, and they don't always provide keyboard covers for tablets.

That does sound like a pain. I genuinely don't get using a phone to do stuff like browse the internet and consume media when at home due to things like the small screen size and typing being a lot slower on it but I guess it doesn't feel so bad if someone grows up with it. A tablet at least has a decent screen size.

The extraordinary benefits that people can gain in life by just budgeting.

Budgeting takes the stress out of money. You never worry about impulses, you never worry that spending money out of your entertainment wallet is going to impact your other wallets, including your mortgage, insurance, taxes, investments, and living expenses. You just wait for money to accumulate, and then when something tickles your fancy, and you have the money, you can buy it without worry or stress, and enjoy it.

Money is not the only thing that should be budgeted, time is important too.

I’ve browsed a few Japanese forums in the past (with the help of Google Translate), and I’ve seen people defending these practices under the guise of "contributing." Meanwhile, I’m sitting here thinking "contributing to what exactly? Contributing to screwing yourself over?"

I also remember reading a Reddit thread a few years back, discussing a Famitsu artcile where Famitsu reportedly called players “greedy” for wanting a "pity system" - you know, a mechanic that guarantees you eventually get the character you've often spent $200+ trying to get after multiple failed attempts.

It really seems like the issue isn’t just the companies pushing these predatory practices, it’s also the mindset of a large chunk of the community enabling it.

It's just gambling addiction... just with a wrapper that carefully hides that it's a gambling game.

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