Joshua Kronengold

I've been thinking for a while about games that are bad for you.

Not, you understand, games that have bad content. Not that I'm saying that's impossible, exactly, but art is art, and while you can certainly say -terrible- things with art, there's nothing unique about games that make "bad/racist/sexist/violent" games any worse than any other media with those elements.

No, what I'm talking about is games that make your life worse, or at least more hazardous, just by playing them.

( Games that take something from you that doesn't balance the enjoyment you get out of them, that weaponize the urge to play, to win, to succeed into a kind of attack against the players, in a way that doesn't really balance. )

I have a lot more to say on the topic, and I suppose I could go into specifics with individual games, but that was long enough.