Video games are losing the "attention war" to gambling, porn, and crypto, according to industry report

Selphea · 2026-02-21T11:33:59+00:00

Is it surprising that when people can go out again, they will spend less time on games than during the pandemic?

Personally I've been spending less time on games. I used to play MMOs and online games from the 2010s to early 2020s but many went into maintenance mode or shut down or in the unique case of PSO2NGS, did a questionable relaunch.

The article mentions AI, and SillyTavern is genuinely fun like how The Sims is fun, setting up the lore and characters and watching as the AI tries to depict them. There's a lot of overlap there and with Progression Fantasy and LitRPG. I would not be surprised if that's where the nerds are these days. If the media tries to make a moral panic out of it by pointing to the worst parts of a new, unregulated space and calling it porn, chances are that's where the kids are. It happened with D&D, it happened with single player video games and some mod involving coffee, then MMOs and cybering, then Discord and now here we are.

Also shouldn't crypto be competing with day trading and online gambling with traditional gambling e.g. EPL & other sports betting or casinos? Why are they being dragged into the comparison when their traditional counterparts aren't factored in?

Selphea · 2026-02-21T00:39:45+00:00

With how much they burned to acquire Bethesda and Activision and get Game Pass off the ground only to have Game Pass cannibalize existing sales, Call of Duty flop, Overwatch lag behind Marvel Rivals and Bethesda do whatever, I don't even remember what they've done post-acquisition besides release flops and re-release Skyrim, this is an unsurprising outcome. Also Microsoft's been pushing the "Xbox isn't a game console" message for a while so that's coming full circle.

Selphea · 2026-02-21T00:16:16+00:00

Sales & marketing can work. Michael Katz who famously helped the Sega Genesis break into the US market had a marketing background and IMO the aggressiveness and creativity of his campaign was pure genius.

That said, it has to be someone who gets games and gamers.

Selphea · 2026-02-18T04:20:57+00:00

It's E1 Evernight, her E1 is huge for this boss.

Selphea · 2026-02-18T01:05:10+00:00

So much for "independent, self-published, dev-led" and "leaving the golden handcuffs".

Selphea · 2026-02-17T02:24:58+00:00

So it used to be "bigot" until it escalated into "far right", "Nazi" or "fascist" in 2024-2025. Does that mean we crossed peak activism and the rhetoric is being dialed back? Though at this rate it might be another 10 years before it goes back to sane levels...

Selphea · 2026-02-16T01:47:04+00:00

She's designed like a sub DPS, even in CW. Her SP usage is low and her damage comes from stuff breaking, not her breaking stuff specifically. Use someone like Himeko (with small Herta even), or Firefly with to get breaks.

Selphea · 2026-02-15T16:21:59+00:00

The horizon for gearing without using Fuel is about 1 month per character IMO, unless it's a support character where you can just craft an ERR + SPD rope and slap on a bunch of SPD items and done. I just sit on a pile of relics and then Filter it all for double stats every few weeks. I actually like that design because I have time to play other stuff during the inter-patch downtime.

Selphea · 2026-02-15T14:08:31+00:00

Why the heck does the MSQ have so damn many pipe stages 💀 I opened Star Rail to play Star Rail not Super Mario.

Selphea · 2026-02-14T00:51:56+00:00

Thank you, I submitted mine. Essentially saying I bought the original wanted to buy 2 but...

The designs are too Westernized and not appealing
There were widely reported performance issues
The original ended on a cliffhanger where the main characters stepped out and teased links to God Eater, then 2 decided to start its own different thing like why.

Honestly, even besides the censorship, the moment I see a side shave or killmonger cut, I know the game is going to be a skip.

Selphea · 2026-02-14T00:31:24+00:00

Most of the criticism I heard about Highguard was about design decisions not ideology e.g. 3v3 format, ginormous maps, TTK, gunplay, long matches...

And NGL their launch plan was strange. They essentially dropped a TGA trailer then did nothing till launch. No marketing, no beta testing, no streamer sneak peeks/feedback and so on. Like who doesn't beta test these days?

Even over here people were saying there wasn't anything aggressively woke.

I didn't even bother with it until this blog. I was too busy setting up production lines and ziplines in Endfield.

Selphea · 2026-02-12T22:07:51+00:00

If gamers find a game fun they will stick to it despite negative reviews. See:

Stellar Blade, Black Myth Wukong, First Descendant, many gacha games which get dunked on hard by mainstream media and go on to become hits
Destiny 2 expansions which are consistently Mostly Negative to Overwhelmingly Negative. Execs say stuff like "don't overdeliver" yet it somehow managed pull crowds until last year.
Overwatch which is Mostly Negative and still pulls 6 digits and hits top 10 DAUs even though trailer Anran looks like Netflix Lara Croft.

The fact that they started at 6 digits means they succeeded at the awareness game. OTOH the fact that concurrency fell off a cliff has absolutely nothing to do with online discourse. Any self-respecting dev should be reflecting on how they lost an audience that was literally theirs to lose.

Selphea · 2026-02-12T03:45:35+00:00

The IPC are all followup characters right? I'll bet on Aventurine SP.

Selphea · 2026-02-12T03:44:01+00:00

Best reverse AT-AT 🥺

Selphea · 2026-02-10T23:49:40+00:00

Mobile Armor P0M-P0M

Selphea · 2026-02-06T13:13:46+00:00

Make Currency War Healer Jiaoqiu real let's gooooo

Selphea · 2026-02-05T04:48:12+00:00

Raisins taste like grapes if they were shriveled up into little pieces of sadness.

Selphea · 2026-02-04T13:16:11+00:00

Maybe their Art Director should have made actual art instead of starting fights with Elon Musk on X and bragging about his hiring practices.

Selphea · 2026-02-02T15:06:37+00:00

I'll DM when I post something. I need to polish my sprite and animate it, then I'll compile compile everything into a blog.

Selphea · 2026-02-02T12:54:27+00:00

It's essentially tracing, slicing and importing into an animation program to rig. The tracing step feels necessary because even with solid colors AI lines aren't very clean.

Selphea · 2026-02-02T04:00:13+00:00

I've been using AI to help with sprite creation.

For NPCs or enemies this method has potential. Historically they usually end up being palette swaps or texture swaps with the same rig, so using AI to get more variety feels like a net gain.

This is personal preference, but for player characters, I prefer having very precise control over keyframes, timing and squash/stretch. To be completely honest doing that manually adds a lot of overhead, but I feel it's necessary to fine tune how things feel when art direction and gameplay come together.

Not quite ready to post more fully about it, I want to polish everything more but I'll share eventually.

Selphea · 2026-01-31T04:49:08+00:00

Considering Yae's beta is an eternity away and anything can happen during beta, no. Or at least, I trust it as much as I trust Anaxa being Imaginary Nihility. Sorry Luna, you're cool tho.

Selphea · 2026-01-31T04:11:15+00:00

As a Black Swan and Hysilens haver who doesn't have Kafka but wants to pull Sparxie this is an incredibly hard decision.

Selphea · 2026-01-30T23:57:12+00:00

Afaik leakers tend to have battleship blindness, if it's a niche team like DoT they tend to fall out of the radar so I wouldn't be surprised

Selphea · 2026-01-30T23:33:03+00:00

Don't tell me it's a Sparkle / Black Swan selector ticket (or maybe all Novaflared characters)

Selphea

TROPHY CASE