No matter how old you are or how long your gaming history is, the chances are you still remember what intially caught your attention, sometimes for hours. That something that makes a game a game, that amalgamation of shapes, colors, sounds mixed in with emotions. With time, the standards for gaming have changed drastically, what we look for in games has stayed the same. With the gaming market rapidly growing, especially in the mobile domain, everybody is trying to get a piece of the cake that is made up of the mobile gaming industry. More often than not, instead of producing something unique, something really worth playing, developers sacrifice quality over time and development costs. Sometimes, the lack of imagination is at fault. Finding a game on the mobile platform, that provides a truly immersive and intruiding experience requires alot of effort to say the least. It seems that rather than creating something new and unique, developers are trying to ride the wave of success of other developers by producing similarly built games with only a few changeups in overall gameplay. I can not be the only one who gets the feeling that the mobile gaming industry is just about copying each other, who can make the best knock-off of a knock-off. Imagination and creativity have been abandoned, the greatness of a game is only valued of it ability to generate income, not paying attention to whether it actually serves its purpose.
I’m a big fan of quality sit down games. I’ve never been a fan of mobile gaming. I was one of those kids that bought the adapter so I could play game-boy games on my snes. No matter how advanced mobile gaming becomes, I will never desire to play on the go. I have no desire to be lost deep in a game on the subway so I can have the device snatched out of my hands by a thief. I don’t want to show off my mobile device to friends. I like my own space when gaming. I will always be a desktop/console gamer, never a mobile one and I’m not alone. I think developers should keep this in mind before they are swept away in the commotion that mobile gaming is the future.
What you say is true, many devs feel that getting into the mobile scene gives them a broader market that impulse buys more, so they whip together a game to make money, not because they have a good game idea that is suited by a mobile device as a platform. I would argue that a market is only as good as its developers. Steam is testament that a desktop market is still relevant. This mobile craze will come and go, the desktop/start menu/dos prompt/sit on their ass style gamer will persist.
For business, mobile gaming totally matters, but not quite in the way you’d think. For reference, try watching this video, a microtalk for the Austin IGDA by Denis Loubet.
What I like about his bit, is everything that I’ve seen griped about here on the forums - as an indie developer, with few resources, your app will be pushed back in the iOS app store so quickly, that making money is difficult, if not downright impossible unless A) you’ve got an awesome IP, B) you’ve got a ton of money for advertising, or C) you’ve got something so awesome that it naturally draws customers.
However, the iOS app store is far from useless. I’ll spoil the video a bit, but Denis’ conclusion is that the app store is a great experimental platform to gauge user engagement with a title. The A and B are probably not going to happen so easily for an indie developer barring luck, but the iOS store is a great way to move toward success cause C.
Personally, I like sit-down gaming more myself, be it at a console or on PC, but in the end, I find myself more and more wanting to do this for a living - games had a really positive effect on my childhood, and I want to write games that give that to someone else.
If it’s not a dedicated device w/ buttons, I won’t okay it. Simple swipe and flick controls are alright, but on-screen buttons are BS.
If you think mobile gaming is just about knockoffs, and you think non-mobile isn’t full of them, then you have not been paying attention to the industry since the early 80’s.
Gaming started with knockoffs. Atari became huge by copying Magnavox’s version of Pong. The game industry evolved by slowly adding features to these rip-offs to the point they became all new games (Breakout is just pong, only the ball is now solo playing against a wall and it breaks blocks on its way while doing so vertically instead of horizontally.)
The 90s were loaded with slight changes to the Super Mario formula, heck Sonic is not much different, just a side scroller that adds one concept: speed, to the run and jump on foe’s heads formula in Super Mario Bros.
Shooters in the desktop and console market are all rip-offs of each other, with only story setting them apart from each other, while the overall environment and feel being the same.
Yes, I acknowledge there is a lot of uniqueness, but there is also lots of unique stuff in mobile. Just because Game Loft makes a lot of titles that are major brand rip-offs does not mean others are not making all-original experiences.
One thing, on that note - it’s been advised in some publications (actually, explicitly in The Art of Game Design - A Book of Lenses) that everything has been done at least once at this point; the best strategy with game design is to take a known formula, that gamers are familiar with, and add some kind of interesting twist.
Case in point: Halo did this with the recharging health (ostensibly, your suit’s shield system). After all, when you look at what Halo really is, it’s not that far off from Doom, really. After all - it follows ‘the’ FPS formula: you are a super-soldier who is in a war on evil alien space-zombies intent on the destruction of mankind and the universe. You’ll win because you have courage, guns, and a better graphics card than anyone else.
There is the small fact that the Xbox controller was perfectly suited for FPS games, but eh. I don’t sweat the small details.
The other side though, is that while blatant ripoffs - like the plague of Slenderman yoinks we’ve been seeing on these forums lately - are decidedly not doing a thing for the industry, too much innovation/experimentation on a title or genre can ruin a good game idea as well. Sure, adding RPG stats to a FPS can have some interesting consequences, but there is a point you can cross where your FPS stops being one.
Wrong! you are a space marine!!! lol.