Old gamers often misunderstand the quality of mobile games.
I realized this a couple of weeks ago when I asked my 12-year-old daughter whether she wanted to bring her Nintendo Switch or her Android tablet on our two-week vacation. She chose the tablet.
Why? Because her Android has Genshin Impact, Fortnite, Roblox, Candy Crush, Wuthering Waves, and Sky: Children of Light. She simply prefers those over her Switch library — which is decent but doesn’t compare to what she’s got on the tablet.
Adults tend to dismiss mobile gaming by saying things like, “There’s no 1:1 equivalent to Super Mario Odyssey, Tears of the Kingdom, or Cyberpunk 2077 on mobile.”
Fine. My daughter has access to all those games. Our family owns over 8,000 games across PC and consoles. She can play Super Mario Odyssey any time she wants, but she doesn’t. She’d rather play Genshin Impact.
And she’s not alone. Most of her friends are on their tablets or phones. It makes sense — gaming is as much about socializing as playing, and iOS and Android dominate for a reason.
Sure, we can scoff and say, “Kids these days don’t recognize a good game when it hits them in the face.”
But I remember feeling that way about Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh. They’re still thriving today, with now-grown adults still playing.
I also think back to my own childhood. My mom hated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yet, I snuck a TMNT Game Boy game into the house and played it behind her back. TMNT never disappeared — it’s still around.
With the original Switch’s price rising (at least here in Canada), it just makes sense to consider Android tablets — especially for kids. Sure, you can’t play Black Myth: Wukong on Android, but that’s why I have PCs ready for that. Kids? They just want to have fun and connect with friends.
Hmm I’m not sure using gacha games which are designed for addictive gameplay loops and predatory monetisation being the games that your kid prefers over standalone experiences is a good argument to make
I understand just fine. The only good mobile games aren’t mobile games. They are ports of normal games for mobile devices. Which is a super incredibly small number of games.
And latching onto Gatcha games as a good thing for kids? Might as well get them cigarettes and alcohol too if you wanna get them addicted earlier.
true on the only good mobile games not being mobile games, though you’re wrong about the number being small. Emulation means that entire console libraries are available. I’ve been plinking away at the SNES library for the past couple of years on my phone and am still spoiled for choice.
Wow, an expert on all mobile games—based on exactly how many hours scrolling and judging from your porch?
There are over 700,000 mobile games on Google Play and the App Store combined. Over seven hundred thousand. You really think you’ve played, let alone fathomed, the quality of that entire universe?
Lumping all mobile games together because of a few gacha titles is like calling all movies “just commercials” because of some awful reality TV. Face it: the world’s moved on, but you’re still shouting at clouds.
One does not need to play every single piece of shovelware to be able to identify shovelware.
Nope. You must play a game before you call it shovelware. Anything less is just lazy, uninformed hot air.
If you can’t be bothered to actually try what you’re criticizing, you have zero business judging it. That’s not opinion—that’s ignorance.
So stop pretending you’re some gaming authority when all you’ve done is shout from the sidelines without ever stepping on the field.
If you can’t be bothered to actually try what you’re criticizing, you have zero business judging it. That’s not opinion—that’s ignorance.
If there are 700,000 games then you must judge games without trying them. Otherwise you’d be constantly playing games to see if they’re any good and would still not get through them all.
I have a more compelling suggestion: only judge games you play.
My point is that you need to decide which games to play and that you have already judged a game when you decide not to play it.
You might not like the art style, or the gameplay, or the reviews or whatever but you have definitely judged it without playing it. The only other alternative is to literally download and play every game that you see.
It’s entirely your prerogative to spend time and money on whatever you think will be likely worthwhile to you.
But without actually playing a game, it’s strict guesswork on whether a game is quality or not.
Seriously, there’s no harm in saying, “I don’t know whether this game is good – I haven’t tried it.”
Buddy please. Its like a farmer ok? Knows fruit, knows what makes it good and or bad, often. And perilously for your world view, at a glance. Effectively your kinda saying you can’t judge a game accurately without playing it through. So then no one can. And it comes off as rather immature/inexperienced masquerading as thoughtful or mature
Its not a person OK. Its a product and sometimes its more then that OK? But a lot of addictiveness isn’t good game. Like addictiveness isn’t a good drug or food or lifestyle choice (looking at gambling and cigs and stuff 👀)
We make it special we get that, what you don’t get is bad fruit your making special cause it is your holiday gift is still when looked at objectively and compared to the greater whole of produce. In general. Its bad fruit. Though genshin seems like its a legit game, not fully legit, cause of all the predatory design. So there. Objectively worse. Predatory by design is bad. Period. Now its better then many others. So with the greater whole it isn’t as bad. Or candy crush. Like don’t feel like a bad parent or anything but its definitely not getting a judgement pass, sorry
Also explain to your kids there tech bros toys when they play and insist upon the addictive games. They can decide but an informed person is always got a better chance of making well reasoned, informed decisions that makes there brains develop away from that bull 💩 you know
That’s my take, hope it helps clarify 💪
I’m skeptical that people here are as knowledgeable as they claim.
I know from several other threads that the majority of folks here stick to a few handfuls of games and sink 1,000s of hours into them. That might make them an expert at a specific MMO, but it certainly doesn’t make them experts in every game at a glance.
So you’ve played every single game ever made, huh? 🙄
I don’t need to have played every game ever made. But I do own several thousand and have played thousands more.
From that experience, I can tell you this: you never truly understand a game until you play it yourself. That’s why I don’t waste time forming opinions about games I haven’t actually tried.
Try it sometime—it might change your perspective.
I don’t need to step in every pile of shit I see to know it’s shit. Seeing it and smelling it is enough to know I don’t want to touch or taste it.
You just told me you don’t play anything, so by your own admission, you’ve seen nothing.
How many of the mobile games that you specifically mentioned aren’t gatcha games?
I could have just as easily listed Monument Valley, Florence, or The Room—none of which are gacha.
And hey, I just did.
OK, just making sure you’re aware that the reason everyone is talking about gatcha games is because they’re the ones that you brought up!
There are over 700,000 games on the play store. … and 699,900 of them are basic, traditional mobile games that are basically a gamified e-store for imaginary goods…
How about we stick to facts instead of making things up?
As of July 2025, there are 14,139 premium, paid games on the iOS App Store—meaning games that are not free-to-play, not gacha, and have no microtransactions.
To put that in perspective: iOS alone has more complete, self-contained games than the NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube libraries combined.
It was obvious hyperbole to point at how you are still hilariously wrong. Congratulations on being too stupid to understand how speech works. No wonder you let your kids engage with addictive games… You’re too simple to understand how it’s still bad.
Bro are you a sales rep for this data company and this whole post is just a way to drive people to your product? Because that’s about the only explanation I have for, all t h i s.
Wow, that’s some next-level conspiracy thinking—just because I share stats with a source, you leap straight to “sales rep for the statistics company” territory?
What’s next, claiming schools teach math just to line Texas Instruments’ pockets?
Here’s the simple truth: I’m tired of hearing people mindlessly parrot the same tired talking points with zero facts to back them up.
If having an unpopular opinion rattles your echo chamber, so be it. I’m perfectly fine with that.
Bro this entire post and every reply you’ve made is just next level unhinged, I was giving you a generous benefit of doubt here, because you being a sales rep is about the only way this isn’t insane cringe.
That’s great—I love being cringe. It means I’ve hit a nerve and said something so contrary that it actually rattles you.
Funny thing is, you haven’t actually told me how or why I’m wrong—just that I’m cringe.
If that’s all you’ve got, I’m doing something right.
Honestly, we all had ‘our thing’ growing up that our parents thought was silly or a waste of time. It’s just the circle of gaming life.
Why? Because her Android has Genshin Impact, Fortnite, Roblox, Candy Crush, Wuthering Waves, and Sky: Children of Light.
These games are all great examples of everything I hate about mobile gaming: full of incessant ads for microtransactions. Literally every mobile game I’ve ever played (outside of FDroid) is this way.
Plus you need a controller anyway, at which point you might as well just carry a handheld ging system.
You could buy whatever your favorite Anbernic device for $50 and have access to a library of thousands of fun ad-free games.
Who would’ve thunk, young people with brains that are not fully developed tend to prefer games with addictive elements.
People used to say the same thing about games when we were kids. Remember that?
I remember plenty of moral panic about video games while growing up.
It’s absolutely not the same thing. I used to play a lot as a kid (still do) and I have no problem with today’s kids doing the same. But I want them to be able to enjoy games without constantly being manipulated into spending as much money as possible.
And it’s not just about kids either, I think these predatory tactics affect adults too.
It’s not a moral panic, the problem is capitalism.
yes, but mobile games now are literally casinos, with research going into making them as addictive as possible to maximise in app purchase and advertisement revenue
source: worked in ad tech for several years, specifically in the mobile gaming industry, monetisation/ad optimisation. a job I regret doing and which feels very scummy in retrospect.
Specifically worth pointing out the research and refinement of the skinner boxes in mobile games today is a continuous and ongoing process, with revenue also being continuous and ongoing. Any games and moral panic of 80s to 2000s were about products that didn’t change after release and were one-time only purchases.
Modern mobile games vs. shareware are incomparable in terms of harm they could do, real or perceived.
I have literally played mobile games for decades and have never spent a dime on micro-transactions.
Meanwhile, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on full length games for PC and console. Sometimes handheld and mobile too.
So I got to wonder, why are all of you unable to just buy a mobile game outright?
Ah, the classic “world hunger is a myth, I have eaten today.”
I’m not saying there are not the rare gems in mobile games (just bought Don’t Starve on Android last month!), but like 99% of games for mobile are just s money making scheme using dark patterns to influence your brain to give them money.
And congrats on not spending on micro transactions! You do realize the world doesn’t revolve around how your perceive things, right? If young people are exposed to micro transactions like that, it alters their brains and not in a good way. And that’s science, there really isn’t much you can argue with.
You do realize that iOS alone has more paid premium games—without microtransactions—than the entire combined library of NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube, right?
Cool, that’s why half the games you listed are just gambling machines in disguise?
You sure are obsessed with people having fun in only your proscribed manner.
Because they all come with microtransaction stores, including several of the ones you’re specifically lauding, ya numpty.
Just because YOU haven’t wasted money on microtransactions does not magically make them unsuccessful in getting many children to blow loads of their parents’ money.
No, they don’t. It’s not hard to find premium, paid mobile games without microtransactions—I’ve already listed examples. And I’ve cited hard data: there are 14,139 such games on iOS alone.
If you can’t find even one of them, the problem isn’t the platform. It’s that you’re not actually looking.
To be fair, the iOS app store will show the top 200 paid games, and that’s it. There are a bunch of categories for games, but ‘paid’ isn’t one of them; there is no other way to see or filter just paid games. It’s always sucked and Apple has never fixed it.
I honestly don’t know how any developer is supposed to be successful on there with a paid game, because if it’s not already in the top 200 list, most people will never be able to see it in the store without specifically searching the name.
Moral panic is unrelated to games having addictive elements.
A better comparison would be how retro games would be designed for you to die/lose over and over because they were based on arcade dynamics, where the customer has to keep putting in quarters to continue playing.
Admittedly, I spent lots of quarters in those arcade cabinets. I have no regrets. 🤣
But those experiences were key to my later financial literacy. They didn’t just teach me the value of money but also of time.
My kid already knows if she’s to spend anything on a game, she must buy it outright—and only if she intends to spend time on it too.
But I don’t see why mobile games receive inordinate hate when you can just decide to not spend money on microtransactioms.
Because the games are intentionally made with micro transactions as the main feature.
Like, if you play Witcher or Control or whatever, the focus is on you enjoying the game. If you play Fortnite, the main focus is on getting you pay. The game is probably still fun, but every single thing in the game is meant to make you pay.
Jesus. People get big mad about this stuff.
The problem isn’t mobile games, and it’s not console games, and it’s not PC games. It’s the profit motive and corporations and enshittification. And there’s plenty of that going on in games for mobile, console, and PC. (And, for that matter, TTRPGs. And it’s not like the 300 different collectors editions of Monopoly released every year aren’t enshittification at play.)
Addictive gotcha mechanics are shitty when they’re tied to microtransactions. Even when not tied to microtransactions, I think they can still be shitty depending on the specific circumstances, and it’s definitely wise to responsibly manage your (and/or your children’s) engagement to not cause other problems in your(/their) life. But is addictiveness in a video game inherently a bad thing? I don’t think so. All games cause dopamine squirts whether it’s Pong or a slot machine. That’s kinda the point of games. There are plenty of Open Source games out there that cause big addictive dopamine squirts. (Mindustry, anyone?) And such games aren’t made to milk whales. They’re made because someone wanted to create and play such a game.
Don’t be talking too much smack about shovelware! Low-quality games create their own vibes. Some are accidental masterpieces. Both of my favorite two YouTube gaming content creators do a lot of their content on really low-quality games. This series got me to buy Radiation Island and I had a great time playing it. And here is a great video on all the shitty official games based on the movie Avatar.
“Gaming is as much about socializing as playing” is an awesome outlook to have on gaming! Addictiveness in games can be… concerning. But sometimes particular games are the key by which your kid can be involved in peer group. I’m not saying that automatically trumps any downsides and you should let your kid spend $∞ on Fortnight skins or whatever. But I think probably in most cases a balancing act is superior to a hard “yes” or “no”.
I should probably specify that I’m admittedly an old fart who doesn’t know shit about mobile gaming. (The only mobile games I play are Open Source ones on F-Droid.) And the only modern console I have is a Switch, and I don’t have any plans to get one soon. I’ve played a lot of Breath of the Wild, though. And a fair amount of Tears of the Kingdom.
Some final thoughts:
- Open Source gaming is awesome.
- The way they’re doing anti-cheat on PC is fucked-up.
- But so is the way they lock down consoles and phones.
- Hack your games. Hack your consoles. (If you don’t hack it, you don’t own it.) Get your kids interested in hacking stuff.
- …responsibly, of course.
- Play games with your kids! (And not just the ones you want to play.)
I would just like to mention that it is called “gacha” not “gotcha.”
“Gacha” is short for the Japanese term gachapon, which means “capsule toy.” You remember gumball machines? You put a quarter in and twist the handle and a gumball comes out. Gachapon is like that, but with a small plastic ball with a random toy inside. Those are less common than the gumball machines, but there were also some that had sticker/temporary tattoo sheets and those hard candies that looks like fruits(mostly bananas).
Gachapon is a bit different from gambling. Gambling comes with the inherent understanding that you have a chance to lose. With gachapon, you always get exactly what you are paying for: a random capsule toy. You just don’t get to pick which one you get. With gachapon, you always “win,” there is no chance that your money is spent and you get nothing in return. This is why games with gacha mechanics makes duplicates of characters or items useful. Whatever you get is still useful to you, even if you don’t get what you wanted.
I think you already understand the negative aspects of gachapon, but I just wanted to add that little bit of information.
With gachapon, you always “win,” there is no chance that your money is spent and you get nothing in return.
Although you’re technically getting something, typically the common items are nearly worthless, and may as well be nothing. You only “win” when you actually get the ultra rare 5* SSR Jackpot waifu.
Sometimes, but most of the time duplicates let you level up a character beyond their basic level (Limit Break, most commonly called), or give you materials to pick a new character (sometimes called Pity System, but that is a little different), or materials to forge new weapons.
I have played many gacha games, and I have only ever spent money on NieR Reincarnation because I wanted Square Enix to see that I like Yoko Taros games and want more of them. I am not a whale, dolphin, or a minnow. I am a “barnacle” F2P player, and I have never had a problem with the games I play. They’re not really designed to be constantly played all the time like a “regular” game would be, instead being level or session style games. I don’t compare my game progress with other players, and I play to have fun and pass time. I get exactly what I want from them for whenever I play them.
The only mobile games I play are Open Source ones on F-Droid.
Can you share some recomendations? I’m looking for something to play on my phone :)
Check out Mindustry.
It’s a cross platform (steam included) game, that is an RTS and tower defense. It’s FOSS and has a great modding community.
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Roughly in order of how much I enjoy them from most to least. (Not that the later ones are bad. Just that they’re more low-key.)
Mindustry is amazing, but as I mentioned above, really really addictive. (The commercial game it’s most often compared to is Factorio.)
Then there’s Shattered Pixel Dungeon. Amazing dungeon crawler.
Endless Sky is a great space mercantile sim.
Luanti is a Minecraft clone.
Unciv is a turn-based civilization development game.
And if you’re wanting to do emulation, there’s Lemuroid. Also, EasyRPG, an engine for playing RPG Maker games like Yume Nikki. Oh, FreeDoom is a great implementation of Doom for Android.
Those are the ones that’ll keep your attention for a good long time. There are tons of much simpler games that are still fun like Frozen Bubble and Hyper Rogue. And plenty of games that I haven’t really gotten into very much but that people really seem to like Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.
Man. There are a lot now that I’m listing them out. Lol.
Thank you very much!! I’ll check some of these out :)
Thank you. 🙏
You’re the first person here speaking actual sense.
Games as a service is a scam and goes hand in hand with gambling and addictive mechanics used to keep people hooked. It’s absolutely toxic.
Nintendo is a corporate shithole but at least they make some sort of semblance of non abusive games.
“Portable gaming” is always welcome but the business model of phone games is fucking disgusting.
Then don’t play games-as-a-service on mobile. Plenty of great mobile games you can buy outright, no strings attached.
Worried about ownership? Back up the APK files—problem solved.
You don’t have to swallow every business model you hate. Choice is still on your side.
I don’t. You are exposing children to those exact mechanics and normalizing that behaviour. Without further thought in the future they will go for increasingly scammy shit tactics.
My kid knows full well what is allowable and what is not. She has never spent money on micro-transactions.
Seriously, you played behind your mom’s back. As did I and everyone else. Be careful, talk to her about the shitty tactics. She has to be aware of them, spot them, and know how they work to be able to avoid them. The hardest part will be for her to actually believe it. Those life service shit uses the most disgusting psychological tricks.
Or she will spent all her money behind your back someday.
We all had our tricks, and children will always be cleverer than their parents.
We all know that decent games exist, somewhere. But the amount of effort it would take to wade through all the shovelware and gacha to try to find an even halfway passable game on Google Play simply isn’t worth my time.
And with the mobile market being what it is, it arguably isn’t worth it for developers to try and sell any serious game as mobile-first, because it’s so difficult for those types of games to succeed when mobile gamers want gacha and those that don’t simply aren’t playing on mobile. If it’s truly worth my time, it should be ported to other platforms.
Honest question: how do you find “decent” games elsewhere?
Because all storefronts on PC and console suck when it comes to discoverability.
Do you just accept what marketers and “gamers” tell you about value?
Word of mouth is certainly a large part of it, yes. People talk about successful games. One way or another, the games I like make it onto my radar when I see buzz about them.
But what are the most successful games on mobile? What are the games mobile gamers talk about? Gacha. It’s all gacha. Whatever else is out there, nobody’s talking about it and I’m never going to see it. Nor do I have any reason to go searching through a toxic cesspit in the hopes that maybe I’ll eventually find something, when it is far easier to look elsewhere, on platforms that haven’t been thoroughly corrupted by the race to the bottom.
But again, the real takeaway I want to stress is that the market has been this way for long enough that both gamers and developers know the well is poisoned, and it will never be unpoisoned. The fact that mobile has become dominated by gacha has reinforced itself - everyone not interested in gacha has left the platform, and mobile developers will keep selling more gacha because that’s what the remaining audience wants. They even know that the average mobile gamer won’t spend money on a more ethical business model.
I know that developers know that I know that this is what mobile is. The way I see it, mobile itself has become a red flag. If a game is trying to be more than gacha trash, well why don’t the developers have the sense to put it on other platforms where non-gacha gamers are? If not, they’re shooting themselves in the foot and I have no pity.
Here’s where you and I differ: I don’t trust word of mouth. I don’t trust canons. I don’t trust marketing. And frankly, I don’t trust the so-called “gamers” who repeat the same tired narratives.
Instead, I dive deep—into the bowels of app stores, into archive.org, anywhere I can find games no one else has played or talked about. Then I judge for myself whether they’re worth a damn.
That’s how I’ve uncovered hidden gems, and why I know most of what passes for “good taste” is just groupthink dressed up as expertise.
The only people with real taste? The ones willing to seek things out and form their own opinions. Everything else is just noise.
So what, you just buy games at random and hope maybe you landed on something good? Without anything that would make for an informed purchase? Sounds like a horribly inefficient way of running headfirst into Sturgeon’s Law.
Sometimes I do buy games on a whim.
But usually, I’m a deal hunter—I scour for discounts, read descriptions carefully, study screenshots, and watch gameplay footage. If it grabs my interest, I pull the trigger.
Surprisingly, most of the games that catch my eye turn out to be pretty good.
You should give it a shot. Ignore the hype, forget word of mouth and influencers. Dive into something completely new and different—you might just be pleasantly surprised.
If the Candy Crush is a quality for you, I feel sorry for yourself. Also comparison to a console is flawed.
I’m not sure why you’re on a crusade to convince people to like mobile games. I’ve always got my phone on me, and I frequently find myself on a subway ride that’s too short to bother with a Steam Deck. Mobile games would fit in great there. My options are pretty terrible. For the kinds of games I like to play, the only ones that actually have mobile versions are basically digital versions of board games and a small handful of roguelikes. I tend to just read on the subway instead. It’s not for lack of trying. The library just sucks, and it offers less value than other places I can buy games. Your daughter is playing games designed to keep you “engaged” and addicted with all of the greatest tricks of the gambling industry; you can find the GDC talks with a quick search on your favorite search engine.
Whenever I see an echo chamber where people parrot the same shallow talking points—no nuance, no real analysis—the contrarian in me kicks in.
You claim there’s “no library” on mobile, but even a basic look at the stats and available titles proves otherwise.
If you actually want fun, premium mobile games with zero microtransactions, they’re not hard to find. You just have to look beyond the surface—and actually try.
I’m not parroting anything. I’ve looked. Sure, sometimes you get a port of XCOM or Slay the Spire, but then it’s not going to carry over progress back to my PC, where I’m more comfortable playing at home, and my reluctance to buy a version of the game like that explains why there isn’t enough money in trying to port the kinds of games that I like to mobile. Sometimes a game has a port, but it fell out of compatibility with modern Android and never got updated; and let me tell you, that’s a great way to convince me to stop looking. Even crazier is when something like Fire Emblem Heroes happens, because it’s adapting a traditional handheld/console game into an interface that makes way more sense for controlling the game, but it’s not a proper version of that series; it’s a gacha game. If I have any kind of extended anticipated desire to game on the go, my Steam Deck is just a better answer than trying to find the few games I would like that also got Android versions, because I’m going to spend more time playing them at home anyway.
I just feel bad for a lot of kids because maybe their phone or tablet has the game they want but often they are playing using just the touchscreen and that interface sucks for anything that requires joystick or button controls (where the touchscreen just has vague areas with pretend joysticks and buttons).
It just does.
I get that kids get used to it, but it’s like getting used to being kicked in the nuts when you have the option of not being kicked in the nuts.
I don’t think of gaming as socializing - that’s your daughter’s metric.
Not all game players are the same, which is why there are so many different categories of games.
To me it is the inverse of socializing. It’s an escape to a world where I don’t have to deal with people.
My 13 and 15 year olds are PC first gamers, then consoles, then mobile. I raised them that way on purpose because I wanted to avoid tablet and phone screens. I could control access better that way.
And yea, also because I’m a pc and console gamer and wanted to play my favorite games with them.
The older one has started playing mobile games more often and yea, it’s Genshin and Honkai. That kid was always in love with Fire Emblem, so Honkai makes sense to me. The stories are all kind of the same.
A friend stayed with us for a few days and they have a 12 and 10 year old. I have every console imaginable, PCs on big screens, and they never left their tablets.
I think once kids get on the tablet/phone/mobile games, they don’t really leave. I don’t know that I would have either.
Yes cause they are designed to be addictive and maximize the profitability with addictive content like loot boxes and fomo tactics to push micro transactions.
Once again, choice is on your side. There are hundreds of thousands of games on mobile, many that are not service-based.
Not for a kid it isn’t.
And that’s the point you keep sweeping away.
Again, my kid has never spent a single cent on microtransactions.
Sky is fun but you know it hooks you with those candles. The only evolution you make clear here is they’ve gotten better at disguising the loot boxes and cash grabs.
Super fancy shinny quad AAAA game with photorealistic (2025 edition) graphics that You can talk about on dedicated forums, that maybe 5 other persons in Your area ever heard of.
vs
Common, whatever graphic, cube themed, low poly game with music in midi… that whole school talk about and every yt influencer too.
It’s all about blindly following the fashion. Again.
I feel like I’m watching a gen x or really fucking early millennial transform into a boomer live in this thread right now.
