That’s true, I’ve had mine 2 years and am seeing some up/down drift on the left stick. Not great on the quality but I have used it often, and I can’t find anyone else with that button layout.
The back buttons are near the middle so I’d assume it’s more comfortable for bigger hands, I think the v3 wireless version has the back buttons closer to the outside where the controller grip connects to the middle of the controller like the elites, I haven’t tried that style yet but I think that may be better for a shorter grip or hands.
My favorite layout so far is on the Razer Wolverine V2 Chroma Xbox wired controller. It has x/y up between the shoulder and triggers, back buttons for a/b, so you can keep your right thumb on the thumbstick without moving it to hit face buttons a/b/x/y.
Gamers are not asking devs to work until burnout on social media or forums, that’s management and usually in person or department/company policy and procedure.
Edit: more specifically to the article for solo devs they are talking about critics complaining they should have made something bigger which is not a bad problem to have for securing funding for future games if people like your art enough to request more and doesn’t require working burnout hours.
If you don’t mind a classic chess. Blitz/bullet/rapid/horde are different styles that don’t take as long to learn enough to have fun. Chess puzzles or against the computer are available if you want to keep it strictly single player. Lichess for multiplayer or I like chess tactics pro for puzzles.
Crosswords, there are programs like alphacross that aggregate from other sources to try different puzzles to find ones that aren’t too easy or hard.
A raspberry pi running batocera has been a good cheap way I’ve been using to revisit some classics. You can integrate it with retroachievements.org too.
I agree with the rest but it’s not just modern gaming it was happening back in the 90s on consoles and earlier in arcades. One of the first games I played was an obvious cash grab by Marvel, Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge for the Gameboy. It was barely playable.
Not an astronomer but if I read the article correctly the observations gathered about galaxies rotating and colliding would be explained instead by regional changes in what were previously assumed universal constants, which would be very interesting if true but 1 paper isn’t consensus yet
90s style adventure games like Sam and Max hit the road, day of the tentacle, monkey Island, Indiana Jones, etc. Lots of comedy you can’t hear again for the first time, and puzzles that can be memorable.
scummVM can be used to run those games and runs on basically everything, phones, tablets, desktop.