Mobile games and their decline.

ETierhuman

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Sorry for any spelling mistakes or grammar issues.

Mobile games have seen a really sudden decrease in quality since 2019. I don't know why. One low effort game popped up and got popular and now everyone's doing it. Not like tiktok is helpimg either,stealing stories and putting those dogshit games as background footage. Sure the play store still reccomends good games and i can just get an emulator on my phone, but I just want something good, something quality. I don't wanna play twerk battles 3d I wanna play something that isn't spamming ads and pop ups in my face.

I remember a mobile game about doge coin when it was popular. Game got bought and everyone said "Dont update, voodoo bought them" And seeing some of the gameplay now it's just shit. Used to be minimal ads, just fun and now I'm being booty raped with ads.:(
 
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elia925-6

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Imagine having 800€ smartphone and you realize most of the games on google play store are crap. I remember making a list of quality mobile games without ads and junk.
* Stardew Valley
* Anything SIGONO makes
* Nitrome stuff
* Kingdom two crowns
* Monument valley 1 & 2
* Gorogoa (Even though is short, the art is amazing. Better than 98% of games available).
* Professor Layton series
* The room

And of course emulators
I kinda wish Submachine series get ported to mobile. One of my favourite flash games
Apple tried to create a subscription service for mobile games(Miles away from the junk plaguing mobile storefronts) called Arcade and it flopped at the same time Switch grabbed all the attention of indie game developers. It's kinda sad to see interesting games which developers put actual and genuie effort(No asset flipping) got buried by the junk. Still remember most mobile games came with demo and if you liked it, you bought it and having hd versions for tablet in early 2010s.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_u1lMuIuNc
 
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elia925-6

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I can't think of a time when mobile games have ever been good.
Late 00s-Early10s was a promising era for smartphones. There was more variety in devices, the stores had ok image compared what we have today and you could find interesting games easly.
 
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VoutonBag

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The last mobile game i enjoyed was the Marvel Moba (MARVEL SUPER WAR). Sadly, the game is focused on asia only and the global server was closed :( Since then i just can't get interested in anything new. I don't even get close to these games so focused on gacha content or games that aren't challenging at all. Today except for legends of runeterra emulators from portables are my first choice.
 
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LostintheCycle

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It's literally just money. There's no nefarious psyop at play as far as I know, probably just Indian programmers who got told by some article they can make a 'passive income' by excreting as many mobile apps with ad revenue as possible, and have finally min-maxed their effort-to-profit ratio. Whatever, the free market gets what they want.

I earnestly recommend against mobile games though. I know the consensus is that short-form video media is usually at fault. but mobile games would contribute somewhat to digital brain-rot. I don't know how influential they are in that, but they do plug up the times you normally retract into your thoughts with cheap garish entertainment. Literally the McDonalds of gaming. If people stop playing mobile games because they all suck, that's only a good thing, we should just stick to dedicated games and not play them all the time, because that's how it's meant to be, and can exist beside good being of mind.
 
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I don't play mobile games, but semi-related to this I have noticed a sharp decline in all mobile software quality. Even my banking app now freezes my phone for almost a minute when I open it. This phone has 3GB of RAM and 8x 1.6GHz ARM CPUs. This thing has more compute power than my craptop from 10 years ago that ran photoshop but now it nearly chokes to death trying to load some text and tiny icons.
 

Orlando Smooth

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Late 00s-Early10s was a promising era for smartphones. There was more variety in devices, the stores had ok image compared what we have today and you could find interesting games easly.
Just out of curiosity, how old were you at that point? Because to be completely honest I think games are just as shit now as they've always been on mobile, the only difference is that now they look decent.

Mobile games come in 3 types:
1) Shovelware made by students/aspiring programmers attempting to make money
2) Malware
3) Slick, professional looking games that are mindless and pay to win

Very, very rarely a type 1 will go viral and get popular for a short time. At that point it will either be forgotten quickly or be bought up and turned into Facebook spam. It's been this way since the original iPhone.
 
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elia925-6

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1) Shovelware made by students/aspiring programmers attempting to make money
2) Malware
3) Slick, professional looking games that are mindless and pay to win
4) Some rare indie gem awarded by Indiecade, or some local indie game festival or event. They cost around 3.99.
5) Ports of old games
 
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JihyoParkXX

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In countries where gaming consoles aren't as popular like India, China and most South East Asian nations, the only device the people there have to game on is their phone. Competitive games like PUBG or MOBA games are the hottest shit there; fucking Tencent is the most profitable gaming company in the world. There never really was a decline, we had good and shit games right from the start and it's the same now.
 
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elia925-6

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In countries where gaming consoles aren't as popular like India, China and most South East Asian nations, the only device the people there have to game on is their phone. Competitive games like PUBG or MOBA games are the hottest shit there; fucking Tencent is the most profitable gaming company in the world. There never really was a decline, we had good and shit games right from the start and it's the same now.
Japan's mobile gaming scene is huge because people's move too much and hence the ports of final fantasy and professor layton. Combined with the high sales of Switch if you want to play quality stuff in less time.
 
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elia925-6

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In countries where gaming consoles aren't as popular like India, China and most South East Asian nations, the only device the people there have to game on is their phone. Competitive games like PUBG or MOBA games are the hottest shit there; fucking Tencent is the most profitable gaming company in the world. There never really was a decline, we had good and shit games right from the start and it's the same now.
But the ads are awful
 
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Andy Kaufman

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As a "boomer" I never really warmed up to mobile gaming. I think big game devs missed out on a huge market here.
While the hardware is unsuitable for any type of tightly controlled precision or action game like an FPS, fighting game, aRPG or platformer it could've been a new home for CRPGs, JRPGs, tactical RPGs, 4x games like civilisation and the likes.
Puzzle games that would make creative use of the phone's other functions too.

Most we got on that front however were bad ports from existing games like Shadowrun.

Biggest loser imo was Nintendo. Instead of letting another firm reskin Ingress as Pokemon Go, they should've let Gamefreak design a mainline Pokemon game for the smartphone. (Anyone remember the hype before Pokemon GO was released and early speculation was all we had?)
This would've set a precedent that a full price, one time purchase game for the phone would be a viable business model and we would've gotten an alternative to freemium garbage gacha cancer.
Now that lootboxes, games as a service and gacha are established that ship has sailed forever.
 
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karamuki

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I have played and bought a lot of mobile games, I consider them to have the same potential of quality and value equivalent to PC or console games, however the way app store environments are and the casual market, it just makes finding good stuff really hard as the most downloaded games are usually just free apps that are just money sinks or just ad players with nasty psychological manipulation to keep a person drugged up on serotonin or whatever makes a person addicted.

I hate the fact that whenever I play some mobile games, I can't help but think that they could be so much more, there could be so many unique stories and experiences that could be done by being a handheld device using only touch controls and/or gyroscope and/or camera. But no, studios rather make something that can make a steady stream of income in the long run than a "flash in the pan."

I have made a rule for myself to buy games as they're usually of better quality and no ads, and because of that I have had some really awesome experiences. If the app stores (especially Apple's) had a way to show sales/discounts like steam maybe people might be interested in buying good mobile games.

Also a list of my favorite mobile games so far:
  • Wayward Souls - Rougelike soulslike pixel art goodness. The most dark souls game I ever played on my phone.
  • Downwell - Need I say more?
  • Desert Golfing - 6474 holes down, 3526 more to go
  • Card Thief - Super hard card game
  • Spaceplan - Quality idle clicker
  • Kittens Game - Idle clicker I'm currently playing. I cant put it down, and no ads
  • Universal Paperclips - HYPNODRONES
  • Literally any game published by Devolver Digital
  • Xibalba - A free short Aztec doomclone, I can't get enough of this game.
  • Mindustry - quality factorio like for phones, takes a while to get used to.
  • Dandara - great metroidvania
  • Cytus - Good rhythm game series
  • The Room series - Quality puzzle games dripping with atmosphere
 
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