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So, two decades later, have we all agreed mobile games are damaging for the hobby?

MirageMew2

Member
There’s 48 new Mario Kart 8 DX courses in the year 2023. I’d say that’s the opposite of damaging.

Jokes aside, mobile games are very hit or miss, but I’ve come to appreciate the actual format for remote play (which works great with a Backbone peripheral). Select games ported really well if you ask me too, like Terraria, Wild Rift, Diablo and hell these days I regularly grind OSRS levels from my phone.
 
I havent played a good mobile game yet. Ive been hooked on a few dopamine treadmills for a time, but they only manage to snag me for about a week or so before I realize how shitty they are inherently.

They found out how to make money and stuck with it. Nothing else was needed afterwards. To be honest - and I havent played more than 5 minutes of it, so I am not an expert - it seems like Genshin is one of the only good games to come out of the mobile space, and it still has all sorts of weird psychology stuff going on.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
The smart phone is a plague on the human being anyway, pure cancer.

If you've lived long enough to remember what adult life was like before any of these things arrived, you'll notice that the people currently alive are the most distracted, least mentally capable & least introspectively aware the world has probably ever produced (...even while priding themselves on somehow being more enlightened than the past, but don't get me started on that one again).

It doesn't matter if it's "games" or TikTok, the smartphone as a medium is a horrible poison, no good can come of using it more or putting more distractions onto the platform.
they said the exact same thing about video games & the internet 25 years ago and TV 100 years ago.... books and reading 1500 years before that.

it's an invention and progress like any other. this hatred of it is ridiculous.
 
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It doesn't really matter how we classify them. The market classifies them as games because they are games and they make more more money every year than console and PC combined.

So do casinos, but that doesn't make them games in the same category.

Shovelware isn't a uniquely mobile problem. It exists on every platform where games exist and has since the first generation of consoles.

The difference is that something like 20% of all console games are shovelware. Whereas it's approaching 90% on mobile. If I as a gamer have to wade through endless shit before I can find something worthwhile to play, I'm not going to have a very good opinion of that medium.

There are some people who dump their week's wages into mobile games, but you've generalizing everyone who plays mobile games with that caricature. People today soak tons and tons of money into jumping burrito-type games on PS and Xbox just to inflate trophy counts and gamerscore.

Sure, but on console, those jumping burrito-type trophy/achievement whore games are rare, compared to on mobile where virtually every game is a lootbox/gacha casino.

You say mobile isn't expanding the hobby in any meaningful way

Yes I did.

but you also said that people are buying consoles and COD which is absolutely expanding the hobby by bringing it more into the mainstream.

Read again what I said. I said that no-one buying those BS lootbox games on mobile are being converted to console gaming. So there's no contradiction there.

Mobile gaming has helped pull video games out of the nerdy basement subculture they've been known for into the mainstream and that rising tide has brought more casual gamers to console.

Utter creamy BS.

If this were true, console sales would be approaching multiple 100m unit sales. That's not true at all.

The console gaming industry is barely growing at all. Mobile gamers remain mobile gamers forever and largely never convert to consoles, because fundamentally the race to the bottom on mobile platforms have evolved mobile gaming as its own thing distinct from the wider gaming industry. Console-like games on mobile sell like shit and vice-versa. There's virtually no overlap in the demographics that play games on consoles and those that mostly do on mobile.

You're completely wrong about this.

It's this that actually makes "true gamers" angry. They don't like that casuals as a group outspend them in every way that matters so devs are catering more to them.

WTF?! This is just your own weird fanfiction you made up to justify your demonstrably false conclusions about mobile gaming.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
The difference is that something like 20% of all console games are shovelware. Whereas it's approaching 90% on mobile
the split is more like 65/90 on console and mobile. i mean, take a look at the steam store and the eshop... the amount of junk and hentai on those stores is insane.

mobile has more but consoles have a lot too. the reason you dont hear about it is because the the bigger games on console aren't shovelware whereas quite a few of the most popular mobile games are. not to mention that most mobile games price themselves super cheaply, at like 1-5 dollars a pop. youll rarely see one hit the 10 dollar barrier
 
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yurinka

Member
Mobile games highly increased the gaming revenue and amount of players and developers, and also brought more investors to gaming. As a side effect, this also benefited console and PC publishers/devs/games because the profits and investments from mobile also did help fund console and PC games. So it has been positive for games.
 
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64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Mobile games highly increased the gaming revenue and amount of players and developers, and also brought more investors to gaming. So it has been positive for games.
bringing more greedy money hungry soulless investors to any hobby is exactly how you ruin it, no thanks
 
Mobile games highly increased the gaming revenue and amount of players and developers, and also brought more investors to gaming. As a side effect, this also benefited console and PC publishers/devs/games because the profits and investments from mobile also did help fund console and PC games. So it has been positive for games.
More investors =/= better.

Right now, the only definitive I can come up with is that more investors = more money in game dev.
 

ResurrectedContrarian

Suffers with mild autism
they said the exact same thing about video games & the internet 25 years ago and TV 100 years ago.... books and reading 1500 years before that.

it's an invention and progress like any other. this hatred of it is ridiculous.
TV did in fact have a greatly negative effect as it took over; so has the internet in many, many ways that we're still dealing with.

The bit about books and reading is somewhat misleading (also, "1500 years before"? .... the printing press is barely 500 years old), though it is often cited for an argument like yours. The time in question when some articles chastised reading was when a lot of cheap pulp novels were floating around, and it was just a complaint about wasting time in endless entertainment without value. Which was also partly true; the proliferation of cheap novels was part of the same gradual stream that led to a whole culture that spends most of its time being pointlessly entertained with disposable amusements.

More to the point: the smart phone is radically unlike any other change. It completely reshaped the individual's attention span, their way of relating to the world at all times (everyone is staring at them in public, a total transformation of basic public life), not to mention having a total portal to any kind of pornography constantly in your pocket. Mindless calling every new money printing innovation "progress" is throwing your human autonomy away.
 

Husky

THE Prey 2 fanatic
The smart phone is a plague on the human being anyway, pure cancer.

If you've lived long enough to remember what adult life was like before any of these things arrived, you'll notice that the people currently alive are the most distracted, least mentally capable & least introspectively aware the world has probably ever produced (...even while priding themselves on somehow being more enlightened than the past, but don't get me started on that one again).

It doesn't matter if it's "games" or TikTok, the smartphone as a medium is a horrible poison, no good can come of using it more or putting more distractions onto the platform.
I wish I could bump this comment to the top of the thread
 

nightmare-slain

Gold Member
The smart phone is a plague on the human being anyway, pure cancer.

If you've lived long enough to remember what adult life was like before any of these things arrived, you'll notice that the people currently alive are the most distracted, least mentally capable & least introspectively aware the world has probably ever produced (...even while priding themselves on somehow being more enlightened than the past, but don't get me started on that one again).

It doesn't matter if it's "games" or TikTok, the smartphone as a medium is a horrible poison, no good can come of using it more or putting more distractions onto the platform.
i love tech but the smartphone really done a number on us. it has dumbed a lot of people down. all they care about is pixelated praise or pity. they are so absorbed into social media and have little idea how things work in reality.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
(also, "1500 years before"? .... the printing press is barely 500 years old)
was thinking more about writing in this case, but plato and socrates thought writing and books were bad, and those 2 were last seen like 1500-1600 years ago. used to be a belief to have and the arguments are more than just "books used to be boring and disposable".... they thought that face-to-face conversation was the only way to truly spread knowledge

Which was also partly true; the proliferation of cheap novels was part of the same gradual stream that led to a whole culture that spends most of its time being pointlessly entertained with disposable amusements.
when you consider how all the parks, arcades, sports and fun areas outside have been replaced with tarmac, concrete, mcdonalds and shops.... yeah it's only natural most americans are gonna wanna stay at home and watch TV all day. what the fuck is there to do? It's less of a smartphone problem and more of a society/infastructure problem.

How's anyone supposed to talk, socialize and hang out when everyone's in cars? How are kids supposed to get the fun times and excercise they need when everything they see is road and places they need money to do anything in? Do you honestly think people would be all over the smartphone today if we didn't have better options outside?

The entertainment on the smartphone is a thing because outside these days isn't like how it used to be. 🤷‍♂️
 
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yurinka

Member
More investors =/= better.

Right now, the only definitive I can come up with is that more investors = more money in game dev.
More investors = more money for publishers and devs to make games in all platforms.

So yes, more investors = better because devs need to eat and pay bills.

And mobile gaming skyrocketing in userbase and revenue (not the case PC and console) brought investors and support from many governments to gaming that also benefited console and PC devs.

Many console and PC publishers and devs that exist today wouldn't exist without the huge success of mobile gaming. They would have shut down or wouldn't have been founded.

Live in any other market part of these publishers and devs make great stuff and a majority of them make mediocre stuff or crap. But obviously if there are no publishers and devs to make them, and someone to fund them, there are no good -or bad- games.

yup. most people are more than happy to buy DLC, expansions, microtransactions, etc.

if the majority of people didn't like it then it wouldn't be happening.
Yes, over half of the game revenue comes from digital add-ons (DLCs, IAP, season/battle passes). Around half of gaming revenue comes from mobile.

Most people obviously prefers to play for free, and to spend only in games they think deseve it after playing there many hours and if they are really engaged. In fact, most players in mobile don't pay anything.
 
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TV did in fact have a greatly negative effect as it took over; so has the internet in many, many ways that we're still dealing with.

The bit about books and reading is somewhat misleading (also, "1500 years before"? .... the printing press is barely 500 years old), though it is often cited for an argument like yours. The time in question when some articles chastised reading was when a lot of cheap pulp novels were floating around, and it was just a complaint about wasting time in endless entertainment without value. Which was also partly true; the proliferation of cheap novels was part of the same gradual stream that led to a whole culture that spends most of its time being pointlessly entertained with disposable amusements.

More to the point: the smart phone is radically unlike any other change. It completely reshaped the individual's attention span, their way of relating to the world at all times (everyone is staring at them in public, a total transformation of basic public life), not to mention having a total portal to any kind of pornography constantly in your pocket. Mindless calling every new money printing innovation "progress" is throwing your human autonomy away.
This reminds me of the book "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains" - and even that book, I think, wasn't able to properly predict the profoundly catastrophic influences we are watching play out now.
 
the split is more like 65/90 on console and mobile. i mean, take a look at the steam store and the eshop... the amount of junk and hentai on those stores is insane.

mobile has more but consoles have a lot too. the reason you dont hear about it is because the the bigger games on console aren't shovelware whereas quite a few of the most popular mobile games are. not to mention that most mobile games price themselves super cheaply, at like 1-5 dollars a pop. youll rarely see one hit the 10 dollar barrier

Wasn't thinking about the indie scale games, but yes you're right if you consider those on console and PC, the split is closer to what you said.
 
More investors = more money for publishers and devs to make games in all platforms.

So yes, more investors = better because devs need to eat and pay bills.

And mobile gaming skyrocketing in userbase and revenue (not the case PC and console) brought investors and support from many governments to gaming that also benefited console and PC devs.

Many console and PC publishers and devs that exist today wouldn't exist without the huge success of mobile gaming. They would have shut down or wouldn't have been founded.

Live in any other market part of these publishers and devs make great stuff and a majority of them make mediocre stuff or crap. But obviously if there are no publishers and devs to make them, and someone to fund them, there are no good -or bad- games.


Yes, over half of the game revenue comes from digital add-ons (DLCs, IAP, season/battle passes). Around half of gaming revenue comes from mobile.

Most people obviously prefers to play for free, and to spend only in games they think deseve it after playing there many hours and if they are really engaged. In fact, most players in mobile don't pay anything.
More does not equal better, it just equals more. It also bears observation that games that COULD have been good have been ruined due to the top down influence from investors, and games that ARE good could have been better. More money from investors does allow studios to hire more people, but those same studios have to fit their creativity into the constraints that investors place upon them.
 
Mobile games highly increased the gaming revenue and amount of players and developers, and also brought more investors to gaming. As a side effect, this also benefited console and PC publishers/devs/games because the profits and investments from mobile also did help fund console and PC games. So it has been positive for games.

What evidence is there of this?

Even the big publishers like Activision who bought out mobile games publisher King report mobile and console revenues and profit separately. So what is the evidence of those profits going back to be reinvested in console and PC games?

If anything, it is more that predatory monetization strategies employed on mobile have started infesting console and PC games. That's a hugely more negative effect overall.

I'd rather gaming companies keep console and mobile profits separate and console games not be turned into MTX-riddled grind fests.
 

Davey Cakes

Member
they said the exact same thing about video games & the internet 25 years ago and TV 100 years ago.... books and reading 1500 years before that.

it's an invention and progress like any other. this hatred of it is ridiculous.
Every generation has its "distractions." Every day I walk into the cafeteria at work and they're playing either game shows (Family Feud EVERY SINGLE DAY) or the news which is mostly BAD news. There are also always newspapers around because some old fart (I work with a lot of people in their 50s, 60s, 70s) still enjoys getting their information that way.

And back in the day people always wanted to get home from work and watch their soap operas or whatever.

I don't like mobile gaming at all but is there really a difference between using a phone for entertainment and all these other forms that came before with every new advent of technology. I mean, yeah some forms are more prone to be addictive and predatory, especially with excessive monetization and all these algorithms getting people to stay attached, but at the end of the day using a phone is just another way to keep your mind moving during the most mundane parts of the day.

The problem isn't the phones or the advancement of tech. It's that people haven't been taught to form a personal constitution that lets them disconnect from the nonsense.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Every generation has its "distractions." Every day I walk into the cafeteria at work and they're playing either game shows (Family Feud EVERY SINGLE DAY) or the news which is mostly BAD news. There are also always newspapers around because some old fart (I work with a lot of people in their 50s, 60s, 70s) still enjoys getting their information that way.
its a thing as old as time. every older generation will naturally grow to resent the younger ones and their different ways of entertainment.

I used to hate smartphones the same way too but you eventually realize that the majority of the problem lies with Social Media and not smartphones. You've got a portable MP3 player, calculator, internet browsing, camera, phone and emulation device all in one.... that's not a bad thing no matter which way you spin it. It's because of social media and the corruptive disgusting design of apps like Twitter, Instagram and Tiktok. all apps which can be uninstalled and left alone like i have. Then you're left with the actually useful and helpful stuff like Youtube, Discord, Google, and Whatsapp.

That being said when smartphones actively facilitate social media and the audience for both is more often than not very intertwined it makes sense people would blame smartphones for all the societal problems we have.
 
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MiguelItUp

Member
If anything, I'm not a fan of the whole mobile monetization making its way into full priced AAA/AA games. UNLESS it's a F2P game, because in those moments it makes sense. The developers/publishers have to make money SOMEHOW.

While mobile gaming isn't necessarily something I'm actively seeking, I never felt like it was "damaging" per se. I feel like a lot of "gamers" either don't dabble in mobile at all, or dabble in it periodically to pass time. Whereas the hardcore mobile players probably don't have access to a beefy PC, console, etc. So, in a way, it's bringing some form of gaming to a larger audience. Especially when you wrangle in casual folks. So from that perspective, it's pretty neat.

For a LONG time mobile monetization existed and never touched the AAA/AA market, and that was that. Nothing changed. I just think we've seen a shift because of the amount of live service/F2P games that popped up over the years. Whales gonna whale.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Apple Arcade is pretty cool. I would love for this to be the model for mobile games going forward.

$5/month for a ton of games with no ads or in-app purchases. It totally changes the business model away from “give the player something free to get them addicted then milk them for all they’re worth”.

I think there’s nothing wrong with casual mobile games. The whole problem is just because of the stupid + predatory business model.
 

nkarafo

Member
No. Mobile games have grown and normalized the hobby, making it accessible for hundreds of millions of people who couldn't play games otherwise.

That's not true. These people still don't care about games. They would never buy a console or play a game for a console. Or a PC, unless it's a facebook app on their browser or something.

If you are looking for who normalized the hobby and made it accessible for hundreds of millions of people who couldn't play games otherwise, look at Sony and how they changed gaming with the Playstation phenomenon. Millions of new players who though games are for kids before, started gaming because it was now trendy and for adults too. And after that look at Nintendo with the Wii and how it made games accessible to our moms and little sisters.

Mobile games did nothing of the sort. The only thing they actually normalized is gambling and the rampart monetization and exploitation of so called whales. Millions of people who would never normally spend tons of money on such addictions, including dumb kids who weren't even allowed to such activities or it was much harder for them to access in the past, are all into it now. It's easier and more accessible than ever for them and it masquerades itself using cute characters and bright colors to look innocent and harmless. Gambling and exploitation for all the family. That's the contribution of mobile gaming.
 
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STARSBarry

Gold Member
There is the odd gem in a sea of utter trash but they have been the single most damaging change to the hobby I have seen over the last decade especially.

But as with many radical changes in technology it has behind the scene all been pushed by humans. It just needs humans to stand up and block the paths to this, just because suprise mechanics are legal now does not mean they should be legal tommorow.

And while an argument can be made that its pointless to do anything because greedy companies will just find a way round it, it doesn't mean you shouldn't try.
 
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KXVXII9X

Member
It's also on consumers. When smartphones launched you could get fun games and apps for $5 or less and mobile developers could make a million bucks on one dollar downloads. But people refused to pay even that much. Reviews on Apple and Google app stores griping because everyone thought mobile apps should be free. Jail breaking and side loading became such a major vector for piracy that the mobile app industry responded with what we have now. Everything being free to download but once you get it you have to pay to access the good stuff.
This and I'm still pissed at consumers for it. I remember arguing with people thinking paying $1-5 for a quality game was more than reasonable. No one wanted to pay $13 for Chaos Rings despite is basically being on par with a PSP game that was nearly 3.5x the price.

A year or two later, everything started becoming freemium. And still we have some good premium games on the App/Play store but get nowhere near the kind of revenue that F2P games get.

Even Nintendo tried with Mario Run and that was a failure while FE Heroes is a massive money maker.
 

yurinka

Member
What evidence is there of this?
The fiscal reports from the companies. The revenue and profits from any division go to the company, money that later companies distrubute as they wish, doesn't need to be invested back only in the division or subsidiary that generated them.

AAA games require way more budget than mobile games, while successful (I mean, the ones from the big publishers like Activision, Take 2, MS, etc) mobile games are more profitable. Budgets of AAA games grow a lot every generation while their revenue don't. So it's common sense that these AAA publishers try to find extra revenue and profit sources to compensate it and this is why they buy successful mobile gaming companies like King or Zynga. They don't buy them because they like match 3 games, they buy them for the money they generate.
 
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yurinka

Member
If anything, it is more that predatory monetization strategies employed on mobile have started infesting console and PC games. That's a hugely more negative effect overall.
One monetization strategy allows you to play 100% for free playing thousands of hours during years without paying anything and 80-90% of the players don't play anything. And 80-90% of the players who pay only pay 10 or 20 bucks.

The other monetization strategy mandates you to pay $70 before starting to play the game and if you don't pay you can't start paying. And on top of that, in many caso also has the optional addon payments.

Are you sure that the predatory one is the F2P one? The majority of players play F2P game, and most of them play without paying.

And btw, F2P started and became in PC, not in mobile.
 
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The distinction was made by the Ngage which you have to thank here ironically.

Because they included games for it eventually separate from the games that were on the earlier smartphones and Pocket PC's, and they were eventually declared portable console games, where all the other games were separated into "portable" which turned into "mobile" as the Ngage was considered a console with phone capabilities, that was like what the PSP would become, a multimedia gaming device, where as the others were just phones that had multimedia capabilities and could also play games.

Since then, despite some journalists and analyst combing numbers including mobile into the "game industry" the credible ones don't do that because they are always tracked separately. You have to combine the reports but the data shows that there's two different industries and the mobile one is lumped in with other apps, it's not really the "gaming industry" which is separate.

It's stuff like this why the media outside the industry was using the term "gamer" for the Ngage and not for the other games on other mobile devices. They considered gamers a separate thing, some made the term sound like an insult.

Thank you Nokia for saving gaming from being lumped in with mobile.
 
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diffusionx

Gold Member
the problem isn't the games or the concept, it's the business model. When it first came out the games were priced like $10-$20, but it just became a race to the bottom and there is no price lower than $0. So then the devs had to come up with all these schemes to turn people into addicts, and then it spread to regular games.

Yes it's been a disaster. Some companies like T2 and Square release real games on the stores at a reasonable price and it's great, like I played FFT on my phone it was awesome.
 
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nush

Member
Mobile games are shitty money grabbers, now join the dots back to arcade games.

Now the difference is arcade games had the best graphics and great gameplay at the time.
 

Gamerguy84

Member
Mobile us for lots of very useful apps. From controlling lights and hvac to financial apps, and many in between.

Mobile is not for games though. It sucks for gaming. From the controls to the graphics Mobile sucks a d&%_.
 
Remember when we used to call them "handheld games"? But when mobile phones start having games, we called them "mobile" games from day 1. Why the distinction? It's like we knew how these games are not the same as the other ones. There was something that differentiates them. Some will say it's because the device is called a "mobile" phone, i think it's because the quality of the games was at a different rank, that of shit.

I believe the quality problem started by the fact that phones are not designed for gaming. They are not good for that, they never were. They are just devices everyone and their mother carry so that's the only reason they are used. That's why mobile games where simple, casual and more about time killing than having actual fun.

I always thought gaming is not about "killing time" though. It's always about having fun for me. You can have other things to do and still pick gaming because it's more fun that some other activity. But all games on phone i ever played felt like time killers, not fun games. Like, you don't have anything else to do waiting for the bus so that's a better option i guess? I would never choose to play them if i have more choices. Even on the bus i prefer listening to music or idling browse the internet than playing those "games".

Of course now, they are more than just time killers. Now they exploit people's gambling addictions or the small dopamine surges of earning something shiny that glows. There's no "gameplay" or "game design". There's no difficulty balance. The "game" is either impossible/takes forever to progress, or it's too easy and trivial if you pay for abilities, "boosters", etc. There's no skill or strategic thinking involved. There is no satisfaction of overcoming a challenge, there's only the satisfaction of a shiny, glowing thing you added in your collection of shiny things that glow.

I just tried Mario Kart Tour. I thought, hey, it's been a while since i tried a mobile game. And this is Mario Kart, by Nintendo. I love Mario Kart, i have all the games, this is the only one i never tried. So i did. And what the hell was that shit? This is not Mario Kart. It's some kind of collectathon where you spend more time in menus and opening "presents" and things you earn left and right and less time racing. They even made it so every race ends at two rounds. And the gameplay during those rounds? The controls are so awful, the game almost plays by itself. There is no way to get out of the road for instance, the game automatically pushes you back on track. I mean, it's touch controls. The worst controls ever created, even worse than randomly waggling the Wiimote. At least for the majority of genres. It's great for turn based strategy games where you pick things but for racing? Or most other things? Not so much.

Now it's the time where someone will interrupt by saying "not all mobile games are like that" and "you should play this game and that game". Eh, no. I used to try almost every game everyone ever suggested to me in the past. I think the only game i ever enjoyed was a Game Dev simulation, i don't remember the exact title. And that got boring after the first time you became a successful, big dev, which didn't really require too much thinking or strategy tbh. That's it. And eve if there's one masterpiece or two, having one every 100 shitty apps is not good enough for a "not all games are bad" argument. And that's not a hyperbole, i truly believe if there's one good game, there should be at least 100 crapy ones to compensate.

So it's bad but is it damaging? Does it poison the actual gaming in consoles and PCs? I think it does. There is no handheld gaming anymore, for instance. Even Nintendo doesn't have a handheld device anymore, they have a "hybrid". Because now handheld gaming is permanently associated with "killing time" not fun. That and gambling/shitty/casual apps. There's also the case of game IPs getting murdered after going mobile. Dungeon Keeper being the one that hurt most for me. Mobile gaming is also so successful (because of the way it exploits people with very easy to make and cheap apps) that it's seen as easy money for devs and studios. So the mobile space is stealing devs and studios from gaming and rarely the other way around. So many studios, devs, recourses, time, wasted for making useless mobile apps. And if that's not enough, a lot of devs who refuse to go mobile still use mobile app practices in their console/PC games. All this gambling loot boxes, shiny item collecting and monetization is poisoning the console/PC space for a while now.

I remember some forum discussions many years ago, where this case was argued. There was a lot of debate. Is there such a debate anymore? Just making sure.
Pull up some statistics and some facts otherwise everything is opinion and based on feelings.
 

simpatico

Member
Let those developers eat. None of the games I care about the most are effected. It's usually just skins anyway. I don't really notice mobile games at all.
 

ReBurn

Gold Member
That's not true. These people still don't care about games. They would never buy a console or play a game for a console. Or a PC, unless it's a facebook app on their browser or something.

If you are looking for who normalized the hobby and made it accessible for hundreds of millions of people who couldn't play games otherwise, look at Sony and how they changed gaming with the Playstation phenomenon. Millions of new players who though games are for kids before, started gaming because it was now trendy and for adults too. And after that look at Nintendo with the Wii and how it made games accessible to our moms and little sisters.

Mobile games did nothing of the sort. The only thing they actually normalized is gambling and the rampart monetization and exploitation of so called whales. Millions of people who would never normally spend tons of money on such addictions, including dumb kids who weren't even allowed to such activities or it was much harder for them to access in the past, are all into it now. It's easier and more accessible than ever for them and it masquerades itself using cute characters and bright colors to look innocent and harmless. Gambling and exploitation for all the family. That's the contribution of mobile gaming.
I can understand why you would want to credit Sony with making gaming mainstream, but Sony isn't the reason why. Even when giving away PS2 consoles for $100 Sony never achieved the reach and audience that mobile gaming has. At most they reached what, maybe 250 million gamers? Billions of people play mobile games every day.

Your presumption that the reason mobile gaming is so big is that evil mobile developers have hooked everyone on gambling and tricked them into spending their entire paycheck is kind of ridiculous. It happens to some people, sure. But that happens on PC and console, too. China and South Korea have had serious issues with PC gaming addiction and people dying in PC gaming parlors. MMO's and Battle Royale on PC and console have bled plenty of people dry. Do you chalk that up to mobile?

You know why mobile gaming has been so successful? Because it is how the majority of people want to play. They can play games wherever they are whenever they want on the device that they have and it doesn't require the commitment these massive AAA games require. Not every wants to pay hundreds or thousands for specialized hardware and $70 per game that you may not even like to feel like some kind of true gamer. With mobile gaming if you don't want to wait 4 hours or watch an ad to get a new screen of bubbles to pop or a new campaign to fight through you can pay a dollar or two and keep going. It's a model that works for a lot of people.
 
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One monetization strategy allows you to play 100% for free playing thousands of hours during years without paying anything and 80-90% of the players don't play anything. And 80-90% of the players who pay only pay 10 or 20 bucks.

The other monetization strategy mandates you to pay $70 before starting to play the game and if you don't pay you can't start paying. And on top of that, in many caso also has the optional addon payments.

Are you sure that the predatory one is the F2P one? The majority of players play F2P game, and most of them play without paying.

And btw, F2P started and became in PC, not in mobile.
It’s predatory when the F2P model negatively impacts said “free” gameplay design, turning everything into a grindfest in order to funnel player towards spending more on MTX.

It’s predatory when devs intentionally gate game progress behind timers that you can only speed up by spending money on MTXs.

It’s predatory when devs strip cosmetic content out of games that would have otherwise been free unlocks, only to sell them back to players at obscene prices as MTXs.

Need I go on?... i certainly could.
 

March Climber

Gold Member
I don't agree, but I also think that mobile isn't being utilized properly.

Most of the old 80s and 90s D-pad and arrow key genres, the ones that are slowly dying out from mainstream that this forum loves so much, can and should work on modern phones.

For example, turn based games should be thriving on mobile. RPGs, JRPGs, SRPGs, Turn-based RTS etc. should all be thriving on mobile. The issue is when they're cut off at the kneecaps either in story or in progression due to monetary needs.
 
A lot of the exploitative methods that are used in this smart (or is it S.M.A.R.T?) devices (It's not just games as some have mentioned), were there before. These devices just, intentionally or not, provided the opportunity to unify all of said methods. Outside of this, video games, or even non video games (heck entertainment in general!) have been expolitative to various degrees. In this sense, there have never been any "good old" games, just some relatively better middle (ps1 to ps2 era) games.
All this, and my personal exprience with mobile games, is why I could never agree with mobile=bad. There's a lot of good ones out there.
I always had hopes that mobile gaming would become the new "Kongregate". Where you could play this amazing flash-like games but nope.
It kinda was before this supposedly smart devices took over.
 
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