"Grinding is a fantasy by which the change you desire can be achieved by continuing to do what you are already doing in small, comfortable increments. Grinding is the copium of liberal democracy: enough small instances of inoffensive protest and general decorum will gradually push society to Max Level. Is Metaphor: ReFantazio an allegory😉 for the Obama administration, some mildly progressive status-quo-ing aestheticized as radical change?" (by Todd Anderson) I disagree with this but it is usefully provocative haha
"I like the skeuomorphism of playing cards in video games because they instantly communicate aspects of chance and probability, as well as common affordances like 'drag to play' or discard. They are also able to represent heterogeneous actions. Had the game been a top-down tycoon game, things like public transportation, job training, or insulation retrofits would have been more difficult to visualize as objects you drop on a map. [...] [A]nother design problem addressed by the deck-building gameplay: instead of choosing an action and then choosing where to apply it, the action is already chosen for you, so your choice is about where and not what."
"The reason that black box mechanics are so dicey outside of the casino is that it’s not always clear that a player has opted into the metagame, or that they are qualified to give consent. Those qualifications are, basically, maturity and intelligence, specifically with regard to the mechanics of the game.
Any repeatable real-money transaction, such as a loot box, breaks the magic circle and turns every armchair into a swimming pool."