I love finding them, and they are in so SO many games (e.g. TLOU, Spider-Man, hundreds more…), but it’s so odd now ubiquitous they are in gaming and how uncommon they are in real life. Usually in games you find multiple actual Voice Rocorders. Its highly likely that if someone DID use voice memos, they would just use their phone. If they DID use an older-school recorder, they wouldnt have multiple, just one. It’s more likely that you’d find multiple tapes or SD cards, but the latter hold so much data. Also, the concept that a scientist or something is leaving multiple devices around with one note each instead of hours of recordings is funny.
I don’t mind it, it’s just interesting that this is such a common trope but so unrealistic.
In a lot of games it’s used to build the lore of the world without exposition dumping on the player. You’re also usually able to walk and around and continue to play the game, instead of stopping for 30 seconds to read a note. I liked them in TLOU because the locations where you found them usually made sense, like in a hospital or science lab.