Unless you’re a game by Bethesda, most people (and most reviewers) are going to assess you at release. If the release is shit, they’re going to stop playing and forget about the game. A patch 12 weeks later won’t help, because everyone has moved on.

These ”gaming” companies are even worse than Casinos, because they’re unregulated and are studying the psychology of addiction to exploits peoples weaknesses to maximise their profits.

They use techniques such as an “early win” to hook people and override their common sense. (It’s illegal for Casinos to do this in most places.) Examples of other techniques are using artificial in-game currencies to dissociate it from real money; and soft-gating, where something is technically free but it has a delay, so you pay a little bit to skip the delay. It’s super predatory.

Also, exposing kids and teenagers to this is wiring their brain to crave gambling as an adult. It’s the same reason we don’t let 13 years olds smoke - by the time their brain has finished maturing, the desire for nicotine is hard-wired for life.

Why not give the user a choice? The last 3 games I’ve played all let me create my character. And now I think about it, I played as a girl in all 3.

As someone who used to have a lot of time for gaming, and now has basically no time for gaming, I really like an RPG that puts quality ahead of quantity. The Outer Worlds and Far Cry 6 were the two that stand out in my mind.

I’ve had to skip Diablo 4 because I know I just don’t have the time, and I’m looking forward to Starfield with some worry because it’s going to be Skyrim size.