PSA: Break Your New York Times Games Streak Today - Aftermath
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The Times Tech Guild is on strike, and asks players not to play the Times' games

The Times Tech Guild is on strike, and asks players not to play the Times’ games

  • NuXCOM_90PercentEnglish
    632·
    2 months ago

    Even ignoring the workers’ solidarity aspect of it:

    It is actually a really good practice to break those login/usage streaks with ALL services. I read a lot of ebooks and I generally will have a “streak” of even two or three years with amazon kindle since I try to read for at least 20 minutes every night. Over the past year or so I’ve started to migrate out of the amazon ecosystem to better support authors and… I definitely find myself hesitating when picking my next book because I COULD read this non-kindle book or… I could read this other book I have via kindle (the prices ARE good) and make number go up. And Amazon realized that we don’t always have an internet connection so they’ll log that to prevent the old streak breaking that came from not bothering to connect to the hotel wifi.

    And the same happens with games. I dip my toe into ESO once or twice a year and it always amuses me how much of that is geared up to make you log-in every single day for a month.

    • snooggums@lemmy.worldEnglish
      52·
      2 months ago

      Yup, streaks exist to encourage the feeling similar to a sunk cost, just like rewards programs.

          • Master167@lemmy.worldEnglish
            15·
            2 months ago

            A 2 year streak on Duolingo did nothing for my ability to communicate with a new language in a new country.

            Very fast uninstall after that trip.

            • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemmings.worldEnglish
              7·
              2 months ago

              It’s garbage for learning a language but it’s phenomenal for memorizing and gameifying learning nouns and verbs. I’ve been going through the Japanese lessons one jump at a time and it’s been great to brush up on all the words I’ve forgotten.

              • brenticus@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                2 months ago

                Yeah, half-heartedly doing French in Duolingo for a few years meant that I knew a bunch of words and could read stuff okay, but communicating and thinking in French was incredibly difficult. I took a couple of classes IRL to fill in those other skills, so now I can actually get by as long as people are a bit patient with me. It was easier for me to learn that stuff than other people in my classes because I had Duolingo experience, but Duolingo definitely isn’t enough on its own.