With game design, platforms offer so many platforms for integration/tie-ins. I remember after one steam sale I had bought a bunch of games I didn't like, and I

With game design, platforms offer so many platforms for integration/tie-ins. I remember after one steam sale I had bought a bunch of games I didn't like, and I thought "well I have all these trading cards; might as well try selling them", and the process of checking out the markets/getting steam credit for my transactions was far more engaging in a raw sense than any game I had played that day, and that disappointed me a bit. One rule of thumb that I have when I'm making games is to avoid tie-ins to external ecosystems where it's not necessary - that the reason to play a game should come from the game itself. I know someone who had a game that was well-liked on kongregate (flash games portal), and at some point they did a tie in where you could unlock cards for the the kongregate collectable card game by getting certain achievements in said game. The developer got a giant spike of hate as people forced themselves to get these pretty difficult achievements in a game that brought them no joy so they could do something else. And I also, I guess don't mind so much if people don't like my games/bounce off them. That's ok. And if I find myself pulling tricks to keep their attention longer than the core gameplay can, then I take a step back and reevaluate what I'm doing. Many of my favourite games I never finished (some of the zachtronics ones got a bit too tricky and I dropped out, but never without a smile on my face) - I was happy to play them until I bounced. It's ok for engagement to come to an end - one doesn't need to trap people in loops. But there's an aesthetic pleasure to be got from being trapped in a loop, and maybe you might need to trap people long enough for them to get into the meat of the game, but I'm a lot more wary about that than most I've found. Re the article itself: I'd say clicking the 'next' button is a traumatising experience when it results in a several second load and a pile of ads to scroll through. I just can't get behind it as general advice...I just can't. If the page loads snappily then maybe ^^ I guess GDPR/Cookies prompts may fall into this category as well. I've appreciated them as a barrier helping break me from engagement loops in the past.