Play Patterns and Purchases

My favorite way to play a video game is 5–30 minutes a day. A Steamworld Heist mission before bed, a few rounds of Street Fighter IV after lunch, a game of Alcazar or Rust Bucket before work in the morning, maybe squeeze in a BOTW shrine here and there, a Picross 3D Round 2 while Netflix does a thing, a little Rocket League after we put the kids in bed. My year can usually be divided up into a few different segments defined by which game gets this ten minute slot each day.
(i’m sure this is partly to do with my age, partly to do with my work habits, and partly to do with being a parent, but marathon four-plus-hour gaming sessions are a sacrifice that almost no game really earns. And that’s fine, no movie or TV show really earns it either. It’s not how life is set up right now. But my point is this is a nice way to do a thing. ok)
This is kind of how a lot of mobile games are set up now too. You can play maybe once or twice or (gasp) three times a day for free, but if you want to really rabbit-hole on it, then you better pay up. In Nico Prins’ superb new puzzle game Topsoil, for example, you get three daily plays for free forever, which is about two more daily plays than I want or need (hang on). If you want to play more than that on any given day then you need to either purchase the Infinite Plays Feature or Watch A Video Ad Thanks Crossy Road.
Which works out great for me, I guess, because this is how I prefer to play anyways? And this is a kind of de facto best practice for putting your mobile game out there now. But it is A Super Weird Approach. The kind of mobile games I like are all about short play sessions, squeezed in between all the weird things I have to do in a day, overlapping my bathroom breaks and bus rides and waiting in line to rent the god dam car because of the thing. Mobile games are all about playing a fun little thing once in a while.
(lengthy tangent here about how the Nintendo Switch is co-opting mobile play patterns and that is making it feel like by far the most modern and perfect console maybe ever etc etc)
And Topsoil especially is a game that gives so much if you are only playing once a day. There are so many little experiments to look forward to, so many little surprises, so many birbs, such a calm little place to be. Of course I want to stretch it out, play it a little at a time. It feels like someone brought me some weird candy from some weird country and if I eat it all at once then the gift will be smaller somehow.
But because Topsoil is a mobile game, the only way I can financially support it is to literally purchase the affordance of binge-playing it, which is just about the only thing I don’t want from it. A more … appropriate Topsoil business model would be to sell me the option to play once a day maximum.
Anyways, TLDR, today I purchased the affordance of binge-playing Topsoil. I will never use this purchase, because it is antithetical to why I like Topsoil so much, but maybe Nico will.
