The massive amount of work that goes into a modern AAA title is truly mind blowing. It's gross that so little money goes to the people who actually make the games but certainly the effort is astounding even in titles that fall short of expectations.

Now that's an unpopular opinion! With a game like that (which is specifically designed not to be fun but to extract money from users) I'd say you're not a gamer, you're an addict ;)

Office workers played Solitaire on their work PCs before smartphones even existed, would they have called themselves gamers? I think a certain minimum degree of investment in a hobby/culture is required before you can name yourself as a participant, and Candy Crush doesn't cut it imo.

Huh, I'm a software engineer, and when I get home, I'm excited to do stuff on my computer. I even like building software at home for fun.

I'm not big into tinkering with game settings though, I am much more excited about playing or making games than tuning them. So maybe that's what you don't like? I find the Steam Deck's defaults to be extremely reasonable and it feels just like a console.

This is the line of reasoning I used with my parents as a kid. Dollar per hour entertained.

But I think differently about it these days. I'm looking for maximum value per hour, with an eye towards minimal hours, and with a definite end point if applicable.

And value in this sense could be raw entertainment, but it could be something else, like exposure to new ideas and novel perspectives on life etc.

But I suppose that's what happens when you get older and you've got less and less free time to fill.

I absolutely agree.

I do still use the metric, mostly to demonstrate that something that's expensive is still a good value. For example, I've spent hundreds on Paradox games, but I've gotten over a thousand hours from them, so I've gotten incredibly good value from it.

I'm patient because I hate buggy games, not strictly because of cost, though I'll buy something on a good sale if I notice it. If games released mostly bug free, I'd buy a lot more games closer to launch. I don't have a lot of friends who play games, so there's no pressure to buy things say 1, so I wait until the updates settle down.