I think about this a lot when I’m playing live service games. None of the ones I sink money into are triple A games I think. Even still I can’t say I like how susceptible I am to the fomo of a battle pass or the like.
the money sink is just one part of it. the time sink is way bigger than you think, they use all sort of tactics to keep you coming back with timed resources and drip feeding content, then eventually the sunk cost become too large and you can't quit anymore even if you stopped enjoying the game for a while now.
If you're poor, you can stop being susceptible to fomo tactics on the basis of not having the money to be susceptible to fomo tactics. Read: water found in ocean.
If you're filthy rich, like, you wipe your ass with $100 bills rich, try reducing your debit cards to only one debit card and put all of your money in your other accounts, keeping only a little amount of money in your debit card so that it's an inconvenience to move money from one account to another every time you want to waste money on bullshit. Psychologically, what is happening is you're putting a small mental wall between you and wasting your money on bullshit, by purposefully installing and maintaining an small inconvenience between you and money-wasting. You're banking on being too lazy to hypothetically climb that mental wall, preventing yourself from wasting money on bullshit.
If you lack force of will, there really is only one other way to prevent yourself from doing something by making it hard enough that you're too lazy to do it, and that is by making the consequences of doing it way too real and bad enough that your trauma kicks in every time you have the opportunity to do that thing, so you don't do it out of pure instinct.
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u/knight_in_white 13h ago
I think about this a lot when I’m playing live service games. None of the ones I sink money into are triple A games I think. Even still I can’t say I like how susceptible I am to the fomo of a battle pass or the like.