Pokémon Go

[A Black Falcon]

Yeah, I see this as another of Nintendo's efforts towards making people healthier while playing games -- like Wiimote motion stuff, the canned Vitality Sensor, etc. And it sure seems to be working, with how huge the phenomenon around this apparently not-very-good game is... Nintendo's stock price is way up, it's the #1 mobile game in all countries it's released in, etc. But while I haven't played it, the extreme simplicity of the game going by what I've seen brings up a regular question of mine -- why are the popular mobile games usually so awful, from either a gameplay or (financial) exploitation standpoint? Games designed to take your money instead of being fun or worthwhile, games with incredibly basic gameplay and payment hooks like this one, etc... it's sad that developers have figured out that for whatever reason a lot of people are foolish enough to actually play these things for significant amounts of time. If it was only a time thing I'd be more okay with it, but the incredibly explotative nature of the cash shops in these games really seals it for 'this stuff is not okay'.

On that note, Nintendo's first experiments with this are in their free-with-cash-shop games on the 3DS, such as that horribly stupid Nintendo Badge Arcade thing, Pokemon Picross, etc. I have not spent money in any of them, but playing Pokemon Picross, the payment hooks ruin the game -- a few worlds in, you basically have to stop playing unless you grind for an insanely large number of days in the random-puzzle (one time use a day) mode, or pay money. This could have been a good game, like Picross games usually are, but the free-to-play thing ruins it.