In the last 5-7 years I’ve noticed that mobile games have devolved info always online p2w shit

What the fuck happened?

The only good games on phone are now emulators and a few Foss games

  • Weird take, imo. Mobile games are probably the best they’ve ever been. They were traditionally a place for rampant p2w garbage gacha machines, and while those are still there, the platform has actual decent games nowadays. Real PC games are being ported to mobile and the platform is being taken seriously. Even in the world of micro transactions and gacha games, there are far more that are actually decent as games then there ever has been.

    I’ve been playing Monster Hunter Now and I’ve been really impressed with it. The entirety of the Riot games are good games with reasonable microtransactions. Vampire Survivors, my go-to “I am offline” game, is the exact same game on mobile as PC, save the fact that it’s free and you have a choice to watch ads for marginal farming speedups (which can be disabled if you buy literally any of their ~$1.50 DLC expansions, which are hilariously large considering their price). Fucking Warframe is coming to/already on (?) mobile.

    I genuinely can’t say mobile games have ever been in a better place than today, despite the existence of the shovelware P2W games that continue to roll out.

    • I’ll side with OP from a slightly different perspective here, because you’re not wrong but neither is OP. First and foremost I think the word missing here is innovation – mobile games in their very initial start were exactly what you are describing, but mobile games that OP are talking about took some time to find freedom to innovate. The very first mobile games, almost all of them, were PC ports. Solitare, poker, mahjong, snake, tetris… These were all games that had existed for years and were just now put into a 160x128 res screen and played with a circular slider (first iPod), or whatever the specs of the Blackberry was back then. Few unique games were created for these devices.

      By late 2009 the iPod Touch 3g had released. It was this and the following few years where OP is talking about, where not only were old games like Spy Hunter being remade, and funnily enough, I’m pretty sure Rockstar also released a few GTA’s on this device. But there were also entirely new games like Doodle Jump, Canabalt, and to a lesser extent Pocket God. (Well, relatively new and unique, at least.) These of course paved the way for Temple Run and honestly I had so many amazing mobile games back then that remembering them all would be a trip down memory lane far too long for today.

      Anyway, my point and I’m assuming OP’s point is that it’s harder to find truly unique and “new” experiences in the mobile game world. The idea of Talking Tom when he first came out was something truly unlike anything else available. Not that it was particularly good, or that being unique makes it good, but rather there were more games willing to take a risk on being different.

      And yes, of course back then there were plenty of shovelware games trying to pine off another apps success. I think it’s simply a difference of mindset, for the good games that are available today generally seem to follow the same principles – a good game comes first, and if you accomplish that the expenses pay themselves. For your examples, the only games that didn’t already exist were semi-MH Now (Pokemon Go/Ingress, but I agree they are unique and fun) and the Riot mobile games. I agree that the other games you mentioned are good as well, I’d even include the fact that there are other full PC/console games like Monster Hunter Stories 1 and 2, Final Fantasy, and plenty of others.

      But none of these were made specifically with the attributes of mobile gaming in mind. Where are the disjointed IRL vs. on screen games like Panoptic! There’s so much potential for mobile phone games of really wild and unique stuff, but it’s easier to make money by iterating and porting existing things to the platform.

      I found a little list that was fun:

      • Jetpack Joyride,
      • Plants vs Zombies
      • Real Steel World Robot Boxing,
      • Real Steel HD,
      • Pacific Rim,
      • Ultimate Robot Fighting,
      • Cut the Rope
      • Fruit Ninja
      • Flappy Bird,
      • Where’s My Water?,
      • Crossy Road,
      • Asphalt 8,
      • Call of Mini Zombies, Call of Mini Infinity,
      • Clash of Clans Real Steel Champions,
      • Transformers Battle Masters,
      • Geometry Dash,
      • Minecraft Pocket Edition,
      • Hungry Shark Evolution,
      • LEGO Hero Factory Invasion from Below, LEGO Hero Factory Brain Attack,
      • Beach Buggy Racing.
      • Hovercraft Takedown,
      • Table Top Racing,
      • Smash Hit,
      • Riptide GP, Riptide GP Renegade,
      • Mechanic Escape,
      • Robo5,
      • BombSquad.
      • Draw a Stickman Epic Free,
      • Zombie Tsunami,
      • Badland,
      • Hill Climb Racing 1,
      • My Singing Monsters,
      • Despicable Me Minion Rush,
      • Bad Piggies HD,
      • Star Warfare Alien Invasion. Star Warfare Payback,
      • Pixel Gun 3D,
      • Block City Wars,
      • Pac-Man 256,
      • The Impossible Game,
      • Gravity Guy.
      • Laser Air Hockey
      • That one game where you’re a 2D spider-man swinging
    • I beg to differ. Angry Bird, cut the rope, where’s my water, Space RPG, FRUIT Ninja, and a whole lot more, are classic mobile games in the beginning. They’re sometimes simple, yes, but at least there’s efforts in it to try to be original.

      Nowadays, it’s all Freemium p2w cash grab.

    •  kratoz29   ( @kratoz29@lemm.ee ) 
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      57 months ago

      That you didn’t like them doesn’t mean they sucked, look along this thread and you’ll find ppl sharing titles worthwhile back then (me included), ofc, this is not GOTY material, but a game must not be a masterpiece in order to be enjoyable, which ultimately is what all games are for, to be an enjoyable hobby.

      • I was ok with the Angry Birds franchise right up until the shitty kart racing game they pumped out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more wretched collection of bare-faced advertising and micro transactions as that fucking piece of shit.

        The game was crammed full of new pop songs, and when one would play the game would display a link to buy it from iTunes. I couldn’t let my kid play it, it was just too egregious.

        Haven’t touched any of those games since. Which is a shame, because I really enjoyed the original.

        • That kart game was genius programming, give you a few initial levels where it let you think that you’re driving the kart, that you’re winning because of your skills, then start the real routine of “autopilot simulator programmed to lose until you activate the paid power ups”

          Edit: and I can’t believe that more than ten years passed from the release of that “game”, I remember I was playing it on my BlackBerry Z10, i can see why many itt are saying “always has been shitty” - just a year before they weren’t shitty. Gameloft released games like “9mm” and “batman the dark knight” that for just one dollar were console like experiences. And beach buggy racing, and riptide.

  •  popcar2   ( @popcar2@programming.dev ) 
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    7 months ago

    It’s a two part story:

    1. The mobile market mostly targets kids and boomers and their resistance to microtransactions has been basically non-existent, making the market quickly become predatory and full of spam

    2. Modern app stores have become abysmal, making it impossible for smaller games to see the light of day. 99% of google play is a dumpster fire, and the 1% that is decent isn’t published by a multi-billion dollar company so you’re unlikely to ever see it. There are good games out there, but the way the algorithms and ads work makes them constantly pushed down in the list. This isn’t “a problem” to a company like Google because they’re making bank off of all these ad spaces.


    Anyways, most good games are paid, but here’s a list of stuff I’ve enjoyed playing on mobile:

    • Fancy Pants Adventures

    • Bloons TD 6

    • Dicey Dungeons

    • Dead Cells

    • Slay the Spire (but the mobile port is rough on small screens)

    • Knights of Pen and Paper +1

    • The Enchanted Cave 2

    • Let’s Create! Pottery

    • BAIKOH

    • Data Wing

    Probably a lot more I forgot. Have at it.

    • Has it ever been better?

      Actually, yes, by a big margin. Back in ~2011 mobile games were actually trying to be great. Games like Edge Extended, World of Goo, Bounce Boing Voyage, Zenonia 2 & 3, etc.

      I remember early Humble Bundles being full of exciting games for mobile, now you’ll be lucky to find just one of them that isn’t filled to the brim with MTX or ads.

      • I remember buying Bioshock on my iPhone way back in the mists of time, before decent controller support existed for iOS. The on screen controls weren’t great, so I didn’t spend much time playing it, always planning to come back at some point.

        Then it got removed from the App Store so completely that it disappeared from my purchased list, and that was that.

      • i mean its not like you cant go onto the mobile store and buy games like stardew valley or terraria. its just that pay to play games have taken a back seat due to the profitability of free to play games.

  • Probably the only good mobile games are ports of console/pc games. There are some surprising ports, like the KOTOR games, medieval 2 total war, and lots of square enix’s older catalogue. Fortnite, genshin impact, and pubg are probably the biggest games on mobile right now. But yeah nothing really worth going out of your way for, or even bother with at all, if you already have a gaming pc or steam deck.

    Maayybee the only real usecase is if you are going backpacking and want to bring some games into the backcountry with you without lugging a steam deck along lol. Digital board games like Root and Wingspan would work well there and have pass around modes if you are with friends. Just remember to bring a battery bank with you, or a portable solar cell.

    • I truly don’t understand how people are playing games like Fortnite or Genshin on a phone and enjoying themselves. That’s probably the single worst possible interface to play the game on, that’s like showing up to a counterstrike tournament with a racing wheel. I can’t even play Minecraft on my phone without getting extremely quickly frustrated and Minecraft doesn’t give half a shit about your reaction time or accuracy most of the time. If you want me to play an FPS on a touch screen I’m just gonna take the L and save myself the trouble, it’s not happening.

  • If you’re a gamedev trying to make a decent mobile game, you’re competing on all the usual fronts like price and perceived quality, but competing for attention has gotten a whole lot harder when [arbitrary card game] has a hour of dailies, [arbitrary gacha game] always has a special campaign going and [arbitrary fake gambling game] is about to have its battle pass end and they’re only halfway through. And that has gone up by so, so much over the past decade. It was never good but it’s gotten absolutely egregious. At this point, even any generic snake clone will have a battle pass.

    Every person that ends up committed to a couple of those long-term-commitment games ends up having much less time for other games. And they make a lot of money, which means they also end up having a hell of a marketing budget.

  • The Pathless is pretty awesome

    Sky: Children of the Light is splendid

    Horn is pretty neat but I guess its 12 years old now

    Baba is You isn’t originally a mobile game but it has a native version which is pretty excellent

    To answer your question, its as others have mentioned: catching a whale is more lucrative than appealing to the average consumer. The entire micro transactions industry (which mobile gaming is built upon and makes it the most profitable portion of the gaming industry by a mile) is all about milking your customers for everything they have without them realising it. Why did we reach this point? Unregulated capitalism, probably.