> The issue comes down to if games are a legitimate, healthy hobby or not.
For me the issue is not whether "games are a healthy hobby", but whether F2P games are. I think they are not, or rather I should clarify: the kind of games usually called F2P or "freemium", which base their gameplay on grinding and which try to make you spend money to buy coins, which are powerups that essentially "speed up" the boring parts of the game are not a legitimate, healthy hobby. They are preying on people's addictive behavior while providing very little genuine value in return. They are what people like Jonathan Blow (of Braid fame) derides as Skinner Boxes and what Ian Bogost mocked with his game "Cow Clicker" (http://bogost.com/games/cow_clicker/).
I'm a Kongregate player and there are true gems in there, but most F2P games can be safely disregarded. If it has coins you can buy, or you can spend real money to bypass parts of the game, this is a huge red flag. (Another genre that I completely ignore is the overcrowded "Empire Building Strategy Game", which if you pay attention is always the exact same game with a different skin every time -- and most are F2P, while we're at it).
Please see my comment above which discusses Emily Greer's rationale for why freemium isn't inherently evil - people already spend large sums on physical sports. Buying better equipment is paying-to-win.
That said, in most sports your equipment augments a skill. The skill of mindlessly clicking (or not clicking -- see the "idle games" genre) isn't particularly fascinating to you or me so we shouldn't make those kinds of games.
Ian Bogost received death threats for removing Cow Clicker online. Was that a fault of his stunningly addictive gameplay, or a flaw in primate psychology that we as a species can work to correct (genetically, or perhaps through social conditioning eg. teaching people not to gamble)?
This is highly subjective, of course, but I don't think it's the same as with physical sports... or even genuinely challenging videogames!
In those cases sometimes it's partly paying-to-win, but even then there is genuine value in the activity itself. Playing hockey or Counter Strike is its own reward. But clicking cows isn't, it's an exploit of the human brain's tendency towards addictive behavior. Often there is very little "game" in these F2P games, which is why you spend money to quickly progress through the grinding and bypass the boring gameplay. You level up or buy clothes for your mascot or a bigger house, but don't engage in an actual enjoyable activity.
I understand this is a lucrative business opportunity, and of course no-one is forcing anyone to play these games... but I find the whole thing perverse. I don't agree casual games should necessarily be hacks of the human brain.
Most of the games taht works on this kind of model are usually simply not very good. And seeing that at the beginning, for me it's a very big red flag that will say. Don't waste your time on this.
This is because they don't need that many people to make money, and they will always get at least someone, so the better business model is quantity over quality.
For me the issue is not whether "games are a healthy hobby", but whether F2P games are. I think they are not, or rather I should clarify: the kind of games usually called F2P or "freemium", which base their gameplay on grinding and which try to make you spend money to buy coins, which are powerups that essentially "speed up" the boring parts of the game are not a legitimate, healthy hobby. They are preying on people's addictive behavior while providing very little genuine value in return. They are what people like Jonathan Blow (of Braid fame) derides as Skinner Boxes and what Ian Bogost mocked with his game "Cow Clicker" (http://bogost.com/games/cow_clicker/).
I'm a Kongregate player and there are true gems in there, but most F2P games can be safely disregarded. If it has coins you can buy, or you can spend real money to bypass parts of the game, this is a huge red flag. (Another genre that I completely ignore is the overcrowded "Empire Building Strategy Game", which if you pay attention is always the exact same game with a different skin every time -- and most are F2P, while we're at it).