I like the term. It’s punchy, memorable, can be used jokingly and with sympathy, or in critical way to refer to the formulaic/generic side of a certain game.

Taking a break from Junkfood 4, I’m currently going through Chilling Reign - a wintery episode for Heretic. Also, Skyrim.

To go the 100% enjoyable route, I need to know more things which naturally put people in this state. I do such things by experiencing them myself, and once they get there I know this is something which would fit in such a work.

Regarding this point, I think one of the most safe and efficient tricks to do this is to keep introducing novelty. If you have a game that has a fairly limited number of distinctive unique things that are introduced quickly and afterwards are simply repeated in different combinations it will less likely have such effect. For example a sandbox that introduces everything in 10h and then 90h you just play around with it will probably not have this effect, it can even become a chore. But a story-driven game which constantly introduces novelty on plot level but also sometimes introduces some new mechanics and content, have big chances to have this effect. In reality it’s more complicated, and there are many dimensions to this like challenge/frustration for example. There are games that use frustration as a tool to some extent to make winning certain fights feel exceptionally rewarding (soulslikes is the most popular example). But if you make it too challenging/frustrating there is a risk that player gives up and leaves in state of frustration which makes it a big failure. This particular thing is high-risk/reward type stuff.

Prey was very addictive to me. I think I beat it rather fast though, because I just couldn’t stop playing.

I played Morrowind multiple times in past, mostly aimlessly, only recently I decided to give it another go and actually focus on main questline. This way I beat Morrowind + Tribunal + Bloodmoon (TES III GOTY edition in Steam) in 96.4 hours. I don’t remember the price but IIRC I got it on sale very cheap. All those hours were very rich and enjoyable. I played with few dozens of visuals improving mods though, used this guide: https://wiki.nexusmods.com/index.php/Morrowind_graphics_guide

Now ask about tiktok vs games and about gacha mmos vs other games 😅

Finished Pseudoregalia yesterday. Really a special platformer with iconic goat-bunny-cat lady mc, a lot of gradually unlocked trick moves, parkour puzzles, and zero hand-holding in freely traversable non-linear interconnected game world. It’s only like 10h of gameplay in average, but it’s perfect size for its format really. Not too small to feel really small and not too big for wandering around to become annoying.

To be fair, they were smart enough to get some exposure even without accepting the deal. This is not the first place I see this discussion and some people are definitely going to check their stuff now out of curiosity.