There’s no real way to look at the Panic Playdate and see hard-edged, economically shrewd value. The metric itself leads you astray, overvaluing 8000-in-one White Label thingama-SouljaGames that are far closer to the predictable accusations of hipster indulgences.

What I love about it is a recently recurring theme that’s, amidst a polarized and increasingly de-humanized society, been easy to disregard: the glimmers of hope. A group of under a dozen people can still create a little thing like this, including its own damn OS, just because they love the feel of technology built by those who care.

There were a thousand reasons to not build it. There were a thousand reasons to run in the opposite direction, to give up, to completely cede the ground to consoles and touch and game streaming, to things that can be screen captured to Twitch.

But there are also a thousand reasons to do it. The reason our world is crap is because of the funneling of everything into gargantuan seas of milky mediocrity. The biggest entrant wins by subsuming everyone else, by swallowing and outspending and walking all over the competition. The only way out is for life to be a puzzle again, a challenge, for someone’s charming ideas and pet projects to be valued beyond digits on a bank balance readout.

Technology, science, human progress all exists so that we may stand on the shoulders of our forebearers. For decades we have bent semiconductors and materials to our will, but to see that a collection of people who can fit inside the average kitchen can build something more or less from the ground up with so much character but also so significantly outside of their comfort zone is truly inspiring. In a world full of cynicism and derivative madness, what could be better?

Who knows if I’ll get one, but I’m on their side.