Pre-existing models/art is something that is a huge work effort. Not to be undervalued. If one can get those for free, it can be the reason some game exists.

Take Auto Chess for example. I can imagine programming that DOTA 2 mod was an effort one or few programmers did as a hobby at first. If they would have had to either pay or network with artists to create the art and other people to do marketing, it would have been a lot more than a hobby.

One of the best games there is, but without any keyboard shortcuts, that will be annoying really soon.

They were a bigger deal. I started learning Japanese when the first Iphone came out and spent quite some time in Japan when the Android phones were a new thing. Internet on the phones was very limited.

Dictionaries existed on the phones, but the usability was non-existent. Even worse if you had to look for a word you didn’t know how to read.

The electronic dictionaries had great writing detection and cross-referencing between language and informational dictionaries etc. At the time they were awesome. One electronic dictionary could contain dozens of dictionaries of various topics, which probably was convenient for Japanese themselves (and not just language learners).

Of course nowadays you can do the same on a phone, but there was a period when you couldn’t.