A little while back, Netflix started putting out some games through its app. No further microtransactions, just a game (I think). It gets some good-hearted efforts like Valiant Hearts: Coming Home and Oxenfree. I feel like the best thing for genuine mobile games could be some kind of App Store that curates just to things like that, and disconnects from the past of cheap crap.
Imagine a popular subscription service like Game Pass tying into well-built story-based games, for instance. I think it could work out well.
I’ve wrestled with Mobile games for years. As a player, I love the idea of playing games on my phone. But most phones games outside of flash like games (Angry Birds) weren’t fun.
So I tried to make them myself.
After 5 years of trial and error my conclusion was thus. Phones are a bad platform for games. Not because they aren’t capable, they are extremely capable. But because they have no proper inputs.
Games are built for the common input method. PC games have a keyboard and mouse mode. Console games are built with a controller. And mobile games need to use touch.
The problem with touch, is that it’s a bad input method for all games. Very good for simple visual games, but for the rest, you are touching a textureless, featureless, tiny surface, with no tactile feedback. This means that anything more complicated than angry birds or bejeweled will be difficult to play if it doesn’t play itself.
It’s possible to make games for phones. But due to the design constraints, the game needs to be simple, or not time dependent. Strategy games, puzzle games, board games will work, but action games, or shooters are doomed to be worse than their competitors on non-mobile platforms.
I didn’t have a console or PC growing up, so the only games I played were flash games on school computers. When I got a smart phone I mostly switched to mobile games. So I like mobile games. Not all of them, there’s a lot of garbage out there. But there’s some good ones. It’s a great platform for indie games and I love it when a game actually takes advantage of the touchscreen as an input, rather than simply trying to emulate a controller. I especially love the multiplayer games. It was so awesome in highschool whenever we had a break, we’d just look at each and break out whatever the hottest game was locally and play a round.
I have a Steam deck now and I’m more busy, so don’t play mobile games as often as I used to, but there’s a few that still play pretty often: Pubg mobile, Bombsquad, True surf, Shredsauce. Pubg mobile in particular I don’t think gets enough credit for how well they pulled off mobile controls. Insanely customizable, and with gyro turned on, I would rather play an fps on a phone then with a gamepad anyday. Even with the steam deck, the extra weight makes quick, precise movements with the gyro more clumsy than on my phone.
I really respect mobile gaming. There are a lot of good and entertaining games.
They are really accessible to most of the population even in third world countries, and the communities are generally really nice. I’ve found them to be nicer than PC gaming communities at least.
It’s really really incredible how good people can get at certain games and I like how a lot of their communities are run on mobile. A lot of the mobile gaming youtubers even edit their videos on mobile.
Games like COD Mobile and all of the SuperCell games are examples with great communities and games that don’t have any ads. Sure they still be toxic, but it doesn’t compare to communities like Overwatch.
There are also a lot of beautiful games out there. Mobile gaming is a now niche gaming space where the game has to actually be fun or else it won’t grow all that much.
They can’t just buy their way into being popular through the name of the IP or through beautiful graphics. The mentality of Art Style over Graphic Fidelity is still alive on mobile. Look at games like Monument Valley, Kensho, Pirate Outlaws, Rusty Lake, Pocket City, Mini Metro, etc. and you’ll see what I mean.
It’s also a great platform for indie games with low spec requirements.
I hardly ever play on my mobile, the market of games I enjoy is saturated with ‘free games’ that you can buy to get rid of the ads. Which however are completely designed around the ads. ‘Watch this ad for 30 more gold’ , or shit like that. In other words completely and utterly pay to win, because instead of ads you can just pay for the gold with ingame currency that is ridiculously overpriced in relation to what the ad money would have been. And in order to compensate: more ads.
Guess what, I lost joy. We live in a capitalist hellscape. Nowhere is that more clear than in Google play store.
There are quite a few genuinely great mobile games, especially when you include ports of retro/pc games. The trouble is you have to wade through enormous piles of mtxn shit to find them
It feels like they’re literally only there as a front for micro transactions, so I don’t bother. I did try a few of the Netflix games since those are ad free, but still… Nothing seems to hold my interest.
I have a couple thousand hours of play on Slay the Spire on my iPad. It’s such a perfect game for mobile. I play it on the plane, at night on work trips, been playing it again on vacation this week. Just a fantastic grab-it-and-go gaming experience.
Years ago I put in hundreds of hours in Call of Duty Mobile and got really good at it. I even joined clans and eventually started my own clan.
I really liked it honestly, but I tried it recently and I seriously have no idea how I was so accurate at one point. Honestly it’s not as uncomfortable as it seems once you find a good hand position, but there is definitely a high learning curve
In my mobile I use only games from F-Droid (puzzles, boardgames) for in between. My wife use Eternium, a free single player RPG old school (Optional cosmetic buys in the game menu, no Pay2Win), very nice on Mobile (Gesture driven) and PC (Mouse, keyboard), infinite gameplay. In the stores and in Steam
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