Gambling In Video Games

Surprise, I’m Grumpy!

So, I’m not normally the kind of person who pursues playing mobile games of any kind. I’m always open to trying new ones but none of them really hold my attention for very long. I’m not really sure why that is, but I’m guessing that it’s probably because most mobile games show off their ‘bag of tricks’ right out of the gate and after the first day of playing them you already know what to expect for the rest of the play experience. The games names change, their themes change, whatever they call the soul-sucking micro-transaction currency changes – but it’s all really the same game. My most recent foray into ‘hey, maybe this will be different’ was Fire Emblem Heroes on android. I looked past the Anime, past the cliché-everything and hoped that at its core it was a good tactical miniatures game.

Now, there is a variety of online casino games that you can play, but most of those are at least out-right gambling games. In Fire Emblem Heroes, you build out your skirmish teams with heroes that must be summoned in from a summoning portal. You can either do this by grinding the game’s repetitive scenarios after skipping page after page of poorly written narrative, or, of course you can pay money to buy some magical fucking doots to push into the fantasy slot machine and summon more that way. I’m not sure at what point basically gambling became a core part of mobile gaming, but it basically has and I’m really not okay with that.

There are a very limited number of mobile games I can actually play without self-loathing for any amount of time longer than a day or two – and those are usually games that also exist on steam or some other platform, usually because the developer is an actual person with a passion for creating games. You know, as opposed to a suit who just sent in his 47th art order for “matte-textured pixar-esque male character wearing a helmet who is also screaming” to use on his latest X of Y game – where X is a random noun, and Y is usually “war” “gems” or some other such bullshit.

Rant over, stay tuned for my next post which will actually be constructive. I promise. Just had to get this one out there. Thanks!

Shoot An Arrow At It