These games are a modern version of slot machines. It's habit forming, and it burns time and money. tbf it's still slightly better than things that you see in a casino

Coin ups existed a long time ago too. Arguably you got even less value from those per dollar spent.

But with those, it only operated when it was fed coins. It's been shown that people spend less when they pay with cash than credit cards. Casual mobile games go beyond even credit cards and have users spend nebulous tokens. They go as far as they can to disconnect the play from the loss of money, and that's bad.

I see a significant difference between "have people pay for a fun service" and "engineer an experience specifically to be addictive".

Ever carried around $20 in quarters in a fanny pack as a five year old? It's pretty heavy. There's a pretty low ceiling on how much you could spend back in the day and it was impossible to silently, digitally spend an unlimited quantity of your parents' money.

Also, in the early/mid days of coin-up games, a skilled player could win a game with a single coin while having fun in the process and using their skills instead of simply waiting for stuff to happen.

Fighting games and head-to-head puzzle games like Bubble Bobble in a popular arcade were pretty cool like this in that people would line up to go up against the reigning champion who could go hours on a single quarter.

Sort of weird how most "social" games are both a( trash and b( almost entirely single player with a tacked on multiplayer 'tournament' mode in which you play single player against some other player's template. Even in turn based games that would not suffer from a mobile connection's latency, they still have you go up against the AI with another player's template.

Regression from the 1990s: absolutely pathetic. I wonder if legalization of internet slot machines would wipe out mobile gaming revenue and just expose it for what it is which is a workaround for laws against gambling.

> Sort of weird how most "social" games are both a( trash and b( almost entirely single player with a tacked on multiplayer 'tournament' mode in which you play single player against some other player's template.

Most “social games” are like that because if a game isn't like that, even if it has social elements, it's not considered a “social game”, even if on top of the social elements it has either gameplay-affecting (e.g., any of the wargaming.net games) or cosmetic (e.g., PUBG Mobile) lootboxes.

I suppose they have all the downsides of coin ups plus they are also more readily accessible. You don't have to go anywhere to get your fix, it's there in your phone.