Reading 08

Being that I am not someone that likes to spend hours at a time playing a game where I am interacting with NPCs or paying a monthly subscription to play a game with my friends, I view the growth of social/casual gaming as a positive phenomenon. I enjoy being able to have a game at the tips of my fingers, that doesn't require me to stay inside my house to play and can be fun even if I play it for just a couple 10minute intervals. With games like motocross back in high school, you could still be competitive with your friends and race them in real time, so the aspect of competition is still there, but with games that are not as "intense" as halo or COD. As far as the associated business models go, I have no problems with waiting for a few ads every once in a while, because, in reality, what i'm trying to do is kill time and they still accomplish that. But, the microtransactions can be a touchy topic as some games made it too easy for young children to make accidental purchases and that cost some adults a fair amount of money. I don't have an issue with games which use micro-transactions to allow users to progress quicker, because that is the users choice to spend there money on it and that's never been something which I have justified spending money on. Micro-transactions in games are even moving on to console games which we have seen with the recent release of Star Wars Battlefront, so really there should be no qualms even if you are for console and against mobile computing. I believe that mobile gaming is just giving people that aren't hardcore gamers a way to still kill time/boredom and play games with friends without having to spend $60 on a disk and additional monthly payments for a game server subscription. 

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