It feels like a natural consequence of playing a lot of indie games; there’s too many little gems you just don’t hear much about on release, or which you end up only learning about because they end up bundled with something else you were being patient about.
Though I’m not even sure how I’d apply this label to traditional roguelikes, given how many are free, and how many more seem to be in a permanent state of development/‘early access’ (Caves of Qud is hitting 1.0 in a month does break my go-to example there though).
There’s definitely an appeal with some of the better AA and ‘AAA’ games too beyond financial reasons though, given the tendency for bigger studios to launch titles full of bugs these days. (I loved Cyberpunk when I played it a couple of months after release – was lucky to not experience many bugs at all on PC – but it’s so much easier to widely recommend it since it hit 2.0.
The ‘gaslighting narcissists’ point resonated with some trans friends’ experiences. Trans people seem the most likely group to be victimised by bad actors who present as trans; especially younger people who face familial rejection. It’s upsetting that TERF-y propagandising makes it so difficult to talk about actual issues within trans communities, since it’s inevitably going to be trans people most hurt by them.