Most popular games in mobile devices are for casuals.
I know what you're thinking after hearing something like that. Here comes another elitist douchebag to lecture us about what a "real gamer" is. And you'd be right. What gamers typically expect to qualify as a video game is something that --even in the early days of the Nintendo RPG were expected to be. A game that could --and should-- be played over an extended period of time. Mobile games, more often than not are designed around the lifestyle of someone who games on a phone, or while waiting in line at a DMV or something. Games like angry birds, Farmville and Candy Crush only barely qualify as a gamer's game, because they never demand any serious use of your time or attention. Most games that mimic modern FPS titles employ bullshit like "timers" in order to stretch basic upgrades over the course of several hours --if not entire days-- in order to build some artificial obstacle course of depth of playability. It isn't hard to see why this is the case, when you consider that the top 3 mobile games are built around this model. Each game can be shelved at a moment's notice if you get a call, check email or social media, or whatever else, and you really won't be missing much. None of these games require dialogue, or a progressing narrative that requires you to shut out the rest of the world in order to experience the world you're playing.Most mobile games are too small to cary story-related content.
Game developers don't care about immersion on mobile platforms.
Hardcore games on mobile don't sell as well as low-end casual games do.
Mobile platforms have garnered a reputation for not taking themselves seriously. The market disproportionately favors micro-transactions over gameplay. It's not hard to see why: When it comes to this platform, people are more willing to pay for an in-game advantage than to take the time necessary to work toward a goal in games like these. Unlike on a console, where one could argue that just buying your way to the top diminishes the experience, the average mobile game barely has much of an experience to begin with. There is merely an objective, and the satisfaction that comes with buying your way into a slight advantage to reach that objective. As you might imagine, buying incremental advantages is a business into itself in gaming these days, and unfortunately it's the primary business model of the modern mobile game.
Most of these games barely qualify as games at all, like some a thinly veiled digital department store where you buy imaginary things, in order to pay for the privilege of even being there in the first place. Sure, a lot of top-tier EA titles have that in common with mobile games, but when big game studios pour an average 20 million dollars into quick-time events, atmosphere and storytelling, it's a lot less noticeable than the average bare-bonesed pseudo-games with more asset flips than an Olympic gymnast in a tumble dryer, isn't it?
There already are, but --as you might imagine-- they hardly get any attention unless a triple-A publisher pumped thousands of dollars into marketing it. Even then, it will have less than half the following of candy crush or Fruit ninja, for all the reasons I mentioned earlier.
Most of these games barely qualify as games at all, like some a thinly veiled digital department store where you buy imaginary things, in order to pay for the privilege of even being there in the first place. Sure, a lot of top-tier EA titles have that in common with mobile games, but when big game studios pour an average 20 million dollars into quick-time events, atmosphere and storytelling, it's a lot less noticeable than the average bare-bonesed pseudo-games with more asset flips than an Olympic gymnast in a tumble dryer, isn't it?
0 comments:
Post a Comment