In the photo above, a Wii Remote is sitting on a table next to an open window. People who grew up playing the Wii might remember it; while playing Wii Sports, the game would give you a pop up window of it with a message politely reminding you that you can always take a break. While it might seem a bit counterintuitive, there’s a couple of different reasons why a game would tell you to stop playing. In the case of online, subscription-based games, the company might actually benefit from you logging off every once in a while (don’t worry, I’ll get to social media eventually). It’s not like you’re cancelling your subscription, and every second you’re online chews up valuable bandwidth. In other games, things like level-grinding, while tempting, might ruin the experience. In a game like Pokémon, for example, if you get your entire team up to level 60 before taking on the Elite Four, you’ll win, but not in the most glamorous or satisfying way. The case of the Wii was a bit different. It seemed like Nintendo was aware that their audience was mostly younger children, and they felt the need to intervene when the player spends too much time playing the game out of interest for the player themself (and maybe the appeasement of the parents). That’s not the sort of thing we see often anymore, and I always wondered why…

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