That you didn’t like them doesn’t mean they sucked, look along this thread and you’ll find ppl sharing titles worthwhile back then (me included), ofc, this is not GOTY material, but a game must not be a masterpiece in order to be enjoyable, which ultimately is what all games are for, to be an enjoyable hobby.
I beg to differ. Angry Bird, cut the rope, where’s my water, Space RPG, FRUIT Ninja, and a whole lot more, are classic mobile games in the beginning. They’re sometimes simple, yes, but at least there’s efforts in it to try to be original.
Have they ever been good? The sad thing I can tell you as a mobile dev(not game though) is that people on Android don’t want to pay for apps or games, on iOS it’s a bit better but still way worse than PC or PlayStation. There’s also rampant piracy on Android, both from users but even more so from shady app clones Google ignores. As a result free to play, always online with microtransactions is basically the only way to make money
What you call rigamarole is the standard way to map button presses to tge screen. It only looks like rigamarole to a PC user who is coming to gripa with how a controller interfaces with a screen. A third party mapping utility is STANDARD use case because you’re mapping button presses to the screen. That’s litterally how it works and it works well. When we mobile game players play games THIS is how we play and this IS THE reason why what you call “mobile games” TsumTsum candy crush etc are losing popularity because people be playing more intense games on mobile these days. Because of controller support.
That’s what we do. Xbox controller comes with a clip on. This is mobile gaming. Been this way for about 5 years now. Popularized by pubg at first but then more of this controller style games came along and the button mapper apps got a lot better. Right now the best are Octopus and Mantis. I prefer mantis.
I think it’s because most people play mobile games as a way to pass time, rather than to do something actually engaging. So, people don’t typically want to buy mobile games upfront, meaning devs gotta monetize in some other way, like p2w microtransactions.
For me they have always sucked. The only one I liked a bit was “1112” (also known as Fade), BUT the developer actually cancelled the last episode because they didn’t feel like making it anymore 🤬 So yeah it also sucked big time.
Adventure games don’t sell too much, and four episodes are a lot if you make them separate purchases. Episode 2 would be purchased only by a fraction of episode 1 users, then episode 3 from a fraction of episode 2 and so on. And the longer the time between episodes, the smaller the chance it would generate new sales because existing users lost interest.
It’s instead much more remunerative to think a fun gameplay mechanic, then create a fake ad around it, buy some assets and create an idle game that plays by itself with the possibility to pay to get it faster. Use the fake ad with the fun gameplay to promote the completely different game and users are dumb won’t complain. Don’t worry if the assets you purchased for your asset flip are unrelated, it’s also allowed to be a completely different genre, for example evony (medieval and swords theme) is using zombies, tanks and machineguns in ads
And the longer the time between episodes, the smaller the chance it would generate new sales because existing users lost interest.
True, but with that particular game what didn’t help either was that there were many years between episodes, it was pretty awful. It’s one thing I really hate about episodic gaming. But Valve already proved it to be a failure, only Telltale And Dontnod still do it (and they do it consistently right, to be fair).
The rest of the gaming industry has gone on to “Early access” which is even more awful. Rather than buying the first part of the story for a lower fee, you now pay top dollar for a game which isn’t even finished and never might be because once you pay them there is no real incentive to actually finish it :)
But really, most categories of mobile games don’t interest me. Arcade and other simple crap like angry birds never interested me even in the 80s. Adventures yes but they’re few and far between on mobile and if they are they’re almost always desktop ports anyway. FPS really really sucks on mobile for me, the input is just too crappy and the screens too small.
“Nowadays” ? They’re just getting good! Did you mean to say, “why are mobile games that suck, so popular” ? It’s because they’re accessible and usually F2P .
Oh yeah. I get it. I guess that’s why I stopped playing those long ago 🙂
I’m a huge mobile gamer though. It’s amazing what we can play on our phones with an xbox controller. It’s better than the pc experience for me because I can map the controller how I want to and am not stuck with the defaults.
Tons of amazing games coming this year. ZZZ wuthering waves Azur Promelia Etc.
You can remap controllers on pc though, like at a system level if you use steam. I remember having to go through a whole rigamarole to customize controls for a mobile game that didn’t support controller, I had to use a weird third party tool that interpreted the controller input as virtual screen touches. It almost kinda worked lmao
I remember way back trying to play genshin on my pc and it wouldnt let me map the right button trigger to attack , like i like it and I was like, i’m just going back to mobile.
Horn is pretty neat but I guess its 12 years old now
Baba is You isn’t originally a mobile game but it has a native version which is pretty excellent
To answer your question, its as others have mentioned: catching a whale is more lucrative than appealing to the average consumer. The entire micro transactions industry (which mobile gaming is built upon and makes it the most profitable portion of the gaming industry by a mile) is all about milking your customers for everything they have without them realising it. Why did we reach this point? Unregulated capitalism, probably.
I was wondering this recently, too. The two mobile games I miss most are tiny wings and the original fruit Ninja. But I remember playing Infinity Blade and other random games on my iPad touch that were really good back in 2010
I came across buried bornes 2, and it’s been ok so far. I have no idea if it has microtransactions or ads yet. It claims it does, but I’ve yet to see them. It’s not the best game I’ve played, but the concept is kinda interesting if you use your imagination a bit.
Yeahhh that’s the main issue for me. I’ve stuck with android for the past decade. I didn’t know about dragon fly! It’s not as cute but it’s going to do the trick. Thank you!
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