Matt Christian

This ticks all the boxes: 1.) Oh look this game isn't what you think it is (feign surprise) 2.) Designs are easy enough for kids to draw 3.) It's framed as something children might actually play (found footage effect) 4.) Trial and error gameplay you can stretch an episode with

"Damn kids and their nonsensical video games" lol

If it were nonsensical that would be something. It's just that it's hard not to see the formula after enough of these crop up.

You sound upset

Sure. It's sad to not be able to able to look at something popular and see anything of value. To see that the free marketing machine won't be making a stop anywhere I reside in the foreseeable future. I know the follow up will be a "lol you care" but yeah, that sucks.

"value" is a pretty squishy, relative term. You described a particular quality of the game and how it's extremely attractive to streamers, who clearly use it to provide entertainment value to their viewers, but you're dismissing that as a useless thing.

I don't think anyone would say games like this are high art, but when I see something that at first glance looks like a low-effort, lucky cash grab, but that clearly has found a dedicated audience, I try to see what they did right or differently...

The problem is what you see as those "x factors" This worked to perfectly suit a mechanism to gain lots of visibility and the design is strictly based on lubricating that interaction above all else. It's streaming fodder, it's fine that it makes people happy but disingenuous to-