What should and shouldn't a good mobile game have?

Target Platforms Mobile
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Our small studio has been working with Unity since 2010 and back then it wasn’t nearly as cross-platform as today is. So from the start we’ve been a Desktop-oriented studio and have been working on game mechanics, requiring a keyboard, a mouse and an average CPU. However, times change and everything is moving to mobile nowadays so almost all of our clients want mobile games made. Since desktop gaming is our specialty and we’ve always been more about the passion of making games instead of making sick money, we made a short video to share some thoughts on the mobile games. You can see it here:

I’d really would like to read other developers’ points of view regardless of whether or not they are a mobile developer.

We make four points there:

  • First is performance: This one is maybe more for the mobile developers. Should we at all cost always aim to make the game as light as possible? Does low performance (and I’m talking about something around and under 30fps) bother your players? We know that Desktop gamers can’t stand low performance and I personally can’t play well if the FPS drops below 35 (don’t judge :smile: )

  • Second is ads: They are a great source of income when it comes to free games but aren’t they too distracting? I’m interested to hear what kind of mindset everybody has here. When making a game, are you driven mainly by the profit or by the passion? Which do you think is healthier for the game and for the studio in your case and why?

  • Third is the touch screen: While it could be great for some types of gameplay like puzzles and point-and-click games, when there are on-screen controls involved, things get very messy. How many of you have developed games with on-screen controls and have you implemented joystick support? If not, have you met demand for that feature? I personally have played lots of on-screen control games which don’t support a joystick and it’s pretty frustrating.

  • Finally is the gameplay: Most mobile games have a simpler gameplay for a reason: They are mostly played by casual gamers or people who are not getting along with technology that well. But how simple is good enough? In our practice we’ve had clients requiring one-tap games that you basically can’t fail if you tap the screen regularly and it was targeted for players of ages 8 and above.What’s more interesting is that it had tens of thousands of downloads and was rated above average. What do you think about that? Are people demanding simplistic gameplay and developers are conforming to that or is it the other way around?

So these were four things that we in our studio had a discussion about. There are many things like that and if anybody has something else on their mind, we’d be happy to hear it because we are starting work on our own mobile game and would be awesome to hear what other people thing.

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I watched your video and read your text.

Personally I think you are heading for failure if you try to go to mobile given your current perspectives. You’re trying to force mobile to be like desktop. If you listen to your attitudes about the various differences, you have quite a strong allegiance to the idea that the way desktop does things is ‘right’ and that mobile is ‘all wrong’. You are inflexible. It sounds like you want to do a desktop-like arcade action game but you want to do it on mobile for reasons of the market or whatever, trying to force that game to fit into the mobile space. But what that really means is you are very attached to and holding onto your desktop ideals which, honestly, maybe just do not ‘fit’ in a mobile environment and should never even be attempted.

You are going to have to let go of a lot of what you have been used to and let go of a lot of your viewpoints that, for example, only desktop games are ‘real games’, that mobile games like flappy bird are ‘not real games’, that the control system sucks because it doesn’t handle fast action precision and skills very well. You are comparing different platforms, difference devices, difference audiences, different types of gamers, different user interfaces. And instead of YOU changing to fit into the platform and audience, you are trying to expect the platform and audience to adapt to you. You think they are going to just bend over backwards and worship you just because you tried to force mobile to be not mobile?

The audience does not care. They don’t care about your ideals or your opinions. They only care about what they care about and what they want and what they are used to on their chosen platform of choice. Either you go to THEIR party or you stay home and be ignored. This can’t be all about you and what you want or what you think is right in gaming. If that’s going to be your approach then I think you would be better advised to stay where you are, keep focusing on desktop and maybe make some smaller-scale desktop games.

Going mobile isn’t a sudden key to success. Just because there’s a lot of games and players doesn’t mean just by putting “something” on the platform you will have success, especially not if you haven’t stopped to really get a sense for what mobile is all about. It’s kind of like you’re walking into a bar with an anti-alchohol attitude and judging everyone for drinking and demanding that they stop. They have chosen freely to participate in the limitations and nature of the platform and if you want to give them what THEY want then you’re going to have to open up and be open to change.

You can’t just accuse the platform of sucking or being not real gaming or not desktop-like or having inappropriate ads or whatever else you are ‘used to’ on desktop. Its a whole different set of rules and different kinds of people playing for different lengths of time for different reasons. You’re going to have to learn to adapt if you want to go mobile. If you can’t adapt and let go of your strong attachment to desktop ideals then I think you will fail on mobile, you’ll launch something that just doesn’t fit the platform, it’ll suffer from all the quirks of mobile such as the touch interface (and all your points are valid). I say either you do a game that SUITS mobile well and does not have all these headaches and difficulties of control schemes and so on, or you don’t do it at all. You are right that most mobile games requiring ‘on screen joysticks’ suck pretty bad and that’s a pretty good reason to avoid making those kind of games for it. Games that have super success tend to really focus cleanly on the control scheme (swipe/tap/tilt) and forget everything else.

You need to make sure that whatever game you do, if you do it for mobile it is a “proper mobile game” and suits the controls very well without compromises and suits the type of players very well (and learn exactly who your demographic is). It needs to be a good fit, otherwise you’re going to be inconsistent with the platform and users expectations and it will just not sit right. For example most platform games you’d consider need really tight responsive controls, maybe keyboard controls or a joystick, but the Rayman games managed to turn platforming into a one-finger-touch control scheme (later with more complexities of swiping) which broke new ground in mobile platformers. It adapted to fit the platform rather than trying to make the platform adapt to it (which = fail). You could do action games but you’re going to have to really rethink the control method and screen layout and how fast the action is… if it really requires SKILL then I maybe suggest you seriously reconsider. Nobody can wield intricate finger skills on mobile. And going to mobile “just because” mobile has all this hype and activity is a really bad foundation.

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Hi imaginary, thanks for your input!

First of all, your point is valid and well said, but I think that for some reason you are being overly protective to mobile games and kind of distorted the point of the topic. The point was to hear different developers’ opinions on what they think is best and what they’ve encountered in their practice and not label games “good and bad” according to the platform they are released on. In this line of thought we haven’t accused the platform of sucking - just pointed out facts about it, accompanied by our opinion (what we’d like to hear from others). Also, in our video we never said that we are not going to conform to the platform’s specific audience and in my opinion we don’t need a discussion on that because everybody’s on the same page. We haven’t yet disclosed details about our project but it’s definitely not going to be “a desktop game adapted for mobile”. If you stick around, you might see the project yourself and I’d love to hear your opinion since I’m sure you’ll be able to give a helpful advice :slight_smile:

That being said, I’m skipping to the Rayman part (hope you don’t mind) because that’s exactly what we were looking for:

The Rayman games for mobile devices are a great example of good controls utilizing the touch screen and the game’s complexity nicely fits the platform. However, a curious question arises in my head:
Rayman is a big IP and has its long term fanbase coming from both consoles and desktops. What percentage of the mobile games’ players would be the console and desktop gamers who have come because of the title, not because they are mainly mobile gamers. And also what has the developer done to meet this group of gamers’ expectations? I think Ubisoft has expected that because the game has quite nice joystick support and the mechanics of the game have been carefully thought out to resemble these of it’s predecessors. However, I’ve read complaints about the in-games’ monetization system and people complaining about the free to play model. My guess is that gamers like me who have played the previous games on consoles and PCs are frustrated because they are used to the premium model. So: When does free-to-play have an advantage over premium in the mobile industry and what would be a good example of the opposite?

EDIT: I just realized that in the previous post I have misspelled “sick” and instead written the word “suck”. I apologize for that as it has kind of changed the meaning of the sentence. :sweat_smile:

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It makes me sad that Rayman plays like that on mobile. I would rather have a watered down portable console experience in my smartphone, than reducing it to a tap screen game. Fantastic game art though, both console and mobile.

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Yes, I agree that reducing Rayman to that is sad from the point of view of a life-long fan who’s played all the games before but if the mobile versions were ports of Origins and Legends for example, that would have been a nightmare to play. That’s the point that imaginaryhuman was making - when releasing a game on a certain platform you need to take the input method into account when designing the mechanics. Sadly Rayman falls into the platformer category which isn’t very well supported by the touch screen interface (not in its classic form) and therefore a redesign of the game’s mechanics was needed to simplify them and make them accessible to the average mobile user.

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Sure, trying to port Rayman to mobile as it is would be a nightmare indeed. But there should be a good compromise between 100% of the gameplay controls and 3%.

Of course, mobile gaming can’t orbit too far from casual gaming. There’s the battery life that keeps you from investing too much time. And the diverse occasions chosen to kill time with mobile games, on the bus, at a waiting room, waiting for someone who is picking you up, a commercial break on the tv, etc.
I’d propose a mobile game is playable quickly with few and short loading screens, simple menus; and be able to stop playing quickly, frequent saving points, or be able to quit playing at any moment without losing much important progress.

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This guy is right you know.

Succesful mobile games are those that embrace the platform limits, not those that try and stretch them.

Let’s have a look at some cases. Some of the most succesful games on mobile include Candy Crush, Crossy Road, Flappy Bird, Pokemon Go. These all embrace the platform. Specifically:

  • Uber simple one touch controls
  • Simple gameplay
  • Short play sessions

On the other hand there are no hit games on mobile that use an on screen joystick. There are none with complex gameplay. This is not for lack of trying on the part of devs, plenty have been published. But the market just doesn’t support them.

Think of it this way. If I’m a serious gamer wanting to play heavy games, I’ll sit down at a PC or console. I have virtually no interest in an inferior mobile experience. The only time I will pick up a mobile game is in the bathroom or the doctors waiting room, essentially giving me the short attention span of a casual player.

On the other hand if I am a casual, I want casual games.

So I’ll reiterate what @imaginaryhuman_1 said. If you develop a PC game for a mobile platform, you will loose.

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Hey Mormon,

Thanks for joining in on the discussion. I totally agree with what everything said so far but… did you read this post?

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Yes - 30fps keep it - and not below. More than that is wasted effort by the developer. 30fps is acceptable to a high majority of players on mobile. Fringe cases like you who can’t play 30fps games will need to consider an alternate experience.

Ads suck. No discussion about it. If the developer chooses to monetize through ads they have to be 100% certain the target audience will be acceptable when ads are unobtrusively included in the experience. And the game is setup to allow unobtrusive ads to be implemented.
I work full-time and make a profit every 2 weeks, so I’m attempting to make my own games people like to play because I love the frustration of it all! If I eventually end up making a profit from a game I make - Party time! But that is not the number one motivator. If it was - I wouldn’t have a full-time job doing - other stuff.
Personally I prefer developing for premium and playing premium games but some great concepts just don’t fit that premium model on mobile. It’s just a fact of life. I also am not opposed to free with IAP - as long as IAP is not pay to win.
Any game that time gates behind a pay wall - is a shit game made by a manipulative crummy developer. They should be banned. Personal opinion only. :wink:

Anybody making a game exclusively for a joystick on mobile is going to go bankrupt. There are like 3 people in each US state who play mobile games like this. That is a plan for failure. Build the game to fit the platform and attempt to capture the largest audience you can using respectful developer techniques - ya know - quality visuals and mechanics supported by a story and awesome animations! Cause awesome animations make everything more awesome!

What is the other way around? Developers are creating simplistic gameplay and the gamers are conforming only because that is the only thing available? No - simplistic games are being developed because they fit the platform best. That is all. Although there is room for more complex games - even with swipe controls. There is a design stage for game development. This is where developers figure out the best game to develop on the platform of choice, using the best control scheme possible. This is how it’s done. I know you know - just saying - there is room to figure it out - design it.

A good example of the opposite is The Room. This game would have been a tough sell as a free-to-play game with ads imo. Not to say it couldn’t work, but the proof is in the results. The Room has garnered enough funds for the developers to work on 2 sequals. So premium also works when the game is a high quality product. Check out the devlog to gain some valuable knowledge on using touch controls very well.

Personal note - Val is entertaining and funny, unfortunately Mitko isn’t. I watched a couple of the videos and even subscribed but I cringed slightly when Mitko attempted humor.
He seems to have well thought out opinions - but when he speaks - he speaks a little to fast and it’s difficult to understand completely some of what he says when speaking so fast.
Try to slow down just a bit - and leave the funny stuff to Val. :wink:

Umm - I think one comes to mind Dead Trigger right? It was a hit game - and also had a sequel that was an even greater hit.
Only from knowing a bunch of people who enjoy playing it. FPS = boring to me.
I agree with everything else you said though.

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So no hits might be a bit of an exaggeration. But the sentiment is accurate. Screen joysticks are a relatively small, niche market.

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Yeah - it’s pretty bad I can only think of one example, and I’ve been following/researching mobile dev pretty closely for nearly 6 years.

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i guess the problem is that people that like the more complex games just KNOW that all mobile games are trash so they avoid it like the plague,

ive never played a mobile game, and i know they are trash, i dont give em a chance… i just know

hmm… like apple store or google store or whatever should have a separate section for not-trash games … particularly games without microtransactions

microtransactions make games unworthy of interest

… i mean if the stores had differentiated sections like that, it might get more customers that usually shrug off mobile games as garbage, eliminate the futile search for non-garbage lol

apple, google if you read this you can pm me for payment information, you’re welcome

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By trash you mean not your taste
People like different things

A ‘premium’ or ‘non trash’ section could work but might not have a big enough customer base to be feasible

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Isn’t it time we all agree that trying to gather a list of “best practices” (with sometimes undefined goals) that work for most cases is impossible?

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Hi Animator, that’s a great reply!

Good to know that! And do you think that it would be a good idea to cap the max FPS to some value as a battery saving measure for devices that could go a lot higher in the framerate? I’m asking that because you said that 30FPS would be acceptable and if that’s true, then maybe a framerate cap of about 50fps could not even be noticeable by the majority of players. Then again, I haven’t done a research on how much CPU power capping the framerate would save…

Glad to hear that you have a similar perspective to ours! It’s really great that your number one motivation is the passion for developing and our studio’s point of view is that when a game’s done with passion, this could do wonders for its success and profit that’s made out of it. Of course only passion is not enough.

Damn! :hushed: We thought that parallax occlusion mapping was enough to make a game awesome but I guess we’ll have to change the strategy and make stuff move around a bit. They’ve taught us wrong in university! Joke aside, to be honest, what you’re saying contradicts a little bit with the bottom of your post but we do kind of agree here. Having only one control scheme could be really dangerous for the accessibility of the game especially when that control scheme is complicated (like the controls of an FPS game). So if a game is made with an on-screen joystick, there should always be alternatives to that or that control scheme itself should be an alternative. What we were saying in our video is that if a game should require a similar control scheme, it’s often a good idea to add a joystick support. We haven’t disclosed almost any details about the project we are going to be making but what we are thinking of doing is adding several control schemes. Actually, we were thinking of adding about 5 control schemes. We made prototypes of each one and we felt like each one fits our game mechanics great. Now I know that you don’t know nothing about the game yet, but what would your thoughts on adding that many control schemes be (and that’s a question for everyone)? Would that appeal to mobile gamers or would it have the opposite effect?

Actually most of the games from Dead Trigger’s developer (Madfinger) have on-screen controls including a joystick. Other examples would be some big Gameloft titles like N.O.V.A and Modern combat. Another pretty popular game would be Minecraft Pocket edition but that’s not a good example since Minecraft is a desktop game before anything else. Since FPS is something we in our studio like, we’ve been digging for mobile FPS titles and we found quite a few that seem to be played a lot. Last title I remember playing was called PixelGun. When it comes to FPS games, Desktop gamers are the master race - no doubt and consoles are far worse for this mainly because of the analog joystick aiming. Now, that being say that mobile FPS games seem to have much better aiming than console FPS games due to the touch screen. However, I’d prefer playing an FPS on a console any time of the day over playing it on a mobile device.

Thanks for the criticism - that’s much appreciated! :slight_smile: We write our scripts together but I guess for a joke it really matters the presentation, not only the script. We both have different sense of humor and find different things to be funny so we constantly ask people around what they think. We have received very contradictory opinions from different people so right now we are kind of confused as to what works for us and what not. But we’ll keep trying to improve and keep asking for opinions. So your opinion would definitely be kept in mind! It would probably take another 10-20 videos for us to find the formula, haha.

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Mobile screens refresh at 60FPS. Go for that if things move fast on screen. Go for 30FPS is they don’t. Nothing in-between.

As imaginaryhuman said, you have the wrong attitude. Mobile games are made with passion and still include ads. Paid games, IAP games, games with ads. They can all be made cynically, they can all be made honestly. Your assumption that games with ads are not made with passion is very wrong and insulting to the developers making them. Developers make games with ads because that is what the market wants.

Many people are happy to get something for free in exchange for seeing ads. Just the same as they are when watching TV. But you have to do it right. Rewarded video ads appear to get the best reception, but it must suit the game.

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This isn’t intended to be a rant, but might come out as such.

I don’t mind mobile performance constraints. It is just a performance budget that you have to live with and you have the same problem on every other platform too. Mobile performance budget might have different constraints than desktop, but problem is the same.

Why I hate designing games for mobile is combination of the three other things you mention: ads, controls and game design. These three are so intertwined that most of the time you can’t decouple them on mobile platform. When designing mobile game you have to take into account mobile controls and ads and/or IAP in your game design. It just can’t be an afterthought.

Ads: Whatever time developers spend working on free-to-play monetization isn’t actually spent to make the gameplay better. For this reason, I like paid model. Then, only goal you have as a developer is to make a good game so people feel it is worth buying. Sadly, paid model isn’t very feasible on mobile. There are exceptions, as always, but that is the general rule.

Controls: On mobile you have touch, camera and few other sensory inputs. This restricts the type of (good) controls you can have and that in turn restricts the type of game you can make. Sure, you can make complicated control schemes but then you are fighting the platform and will most likely offer subpar experience for your players.

Game design: This is tied to and limited by two of the above points. Can I design a game with all of the above points (and more) in mind? Yes. Do I want to? Not for my own personal projects. There are so many other platforms that are more appealing to me. You guys seem to be frustrated with a lot of the same things that frustrate me when developing mobile games. I guess my question is… Why do you want to make a mobile game in the first place?

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Just to clarify:
We don’t assume that games with ads aren’t made with passion :slight_smile: Nobody said that neither in our video or throughout this entire thread. There were opinions that ads are annoying/suck etc. but that doesn’t imply that the game isn’t made with passion so no need to get insulted! :slight_smile:

As we stated in the video, we also watch rewarded ads but it’s really bad when they are out of context. Speaking of which, could somebody give an example of what a well integrated ad would be? Should the ad’s content be somehow related to the game or is more about when the ad is shown and in what context?

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Sorry for double posting but this thread became quite active and I want to answer to everyone.

Very good point and a good question!
Actually the one thing that really ties our hands is the performance, the rest of the things are things that we think there is a workaround to. It’s really important to mention that a mobile game is a game, meant for mobile devices, not a game with super-simplistic gameplay and lots of ads. And that’s what we are aiming to do - create a mobile game which conforms to the mobile market but has it’s own unique ways. Whether or not the game would be a success it’s not that important to us, as we plan on selling some of the code and assets we are going to make for the game on the Asset Store. We want to make something that we’ll enjoy working on in first place.
Anyways, I digress,
The reason we want to make a mobile game first is because we need to release a game product out. We want to join a funding program that requires at least one released game and the mobile platform seems to be the most easily reachable to us at this point. Also, the game mechanics we have in mind aren’t that suitable for a Desktop machine and probably not a point of interest for most Desktop gamers.

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I want to know really what is your motivation for going to mobile. It sounded like you wanted to make some small games to make some money because you had a bigger project that was taking a long time? But why mobile? It seems to me like your heart is still mostly in the arcade/action gamespace which is hardly a staple of mobile. Yes there is a niche there but it’s a somewhat watered down one. The main problem as you have said is the user interface combined with the type of people that play mobile games. The only game I can think of that is action that I liked on mobile was Robot Unicorn Attack which has one left finger tap for a jump and one right finger tap for a speed boost, and that’s it. 2-button, pretty doable. But I tried enthusiastically to play like geometry wars? Have you tried it on mobile? It’s absolutely awful trying to control a 360-degree double rotational thumbsticks implemented on a flat glass surface with no tactile feedback or sense of where your fingers are. That was an instant fail for me, totally put me off the game. It was just too hard to control. If you are adamant about going with something arcadey or action or skill oriented then you’re going to have to really seriously think about how it’s going to be controlled and I really wouldn’t recommend on-screen joysticks. Have you thought about targetting ipad instead of iphone so you have a bigger screen and less covering up by the fingers and maybe can have bigger control areas?