Things can change over a decade

@@jamesbevan9939 So does horse armor. The problems for monetization run deep and the industries behind mobile games and modern IP owners & publishers see everything as "any way to extract wealth is justifiable."

@@severdislike4222 Yeah, at least back then we didn't have to gamble for the cocking armour.

I remember Moviebob proselytising over 10 years ago that PC GAMING IS DEAD! And had gone over to mobile.

Ah yes, the defining mobile games that definitely weren't rip-offs or convenient copies of games that Newgrounds artists had been pumping out for fucking 10 years previously. I have never seen an original mobile game (not that i've really looked) beyond the likes of Donut County (which is absolutely fucking brilliant, btw).

Well, you can buy final fantasy for £25 on mobile currently

I’m old enough to remember when gameloft did this too. Sell a game for six bucks straight up and no in game purchase (the model wasn’t there yet, not that they probably weren’t trying). One of the sci-fi shooter that was a bit a of a halo clone, a Medal of Honor licensed game, etc I remember 2014/2015 is when this endless ripoff trend really calcified. When what was once 6-10$ became free with in app purchase or endless ads

@@user-gk1mp1zk7n or emulate it for free

Alien Isolation decided to just be ported over to mobile for $15. A rarity but a welcome one.

@@andrewl3779 Sega have been surprisingly active on that front, they've ported a lot of Total War as premium games, too.

I agree, this is the far greater scourge.

Simpsons: Tapped Out was a nightmare.

Fairly sure that's a subject for a future EP, since Gacha-style gaming is far from just a mobile thing. It can be just as prevalent on PC.

While they are certainly pulling in a lot of money, I would argue Gacha games can be some of the most immersive and mechanically complicated games on mobile right now. Quite a few of them require actual thought, some skill and dozens of spreadsheets to play, not to mention the much deeper storylines that the best of them offer.

@@hamham_6411 True, but it did start on mobile with games like Clash of Clans, bled its way into SOME console games like EA and 2K sports stuff, but is a larger chunk of the mobile space.

One of the most annoying things ever, at least let us use the 20-30 seconds to do something

Mobile game ads are bullshit

as someone who has worked extensively helping design games built around microtransactions, I completely agree.

and create regulation on how/when you can show ads

Stop calling them microtransactions. Call them what they are. MACROtransactions.

@@Mernom Actually, that's another thing- we really should call them micropayments. It means the same thing and it's a whole one less syllables.

Mobile games have other monetization models too. There are games on the store where the entire gameplay loop consists of watching an ad every few minutes. The rest of the game just plays itself while the player watches

Game devs have to market to the $100 Wal⭐Mart smartphone audience in the same breath, completely invalidating the relevance of an excellent piece of silicon within a $600-$2000 housing. Basically devs aim for the absolute bottom line as always. Expect disappointment, never be disappointed 😎7

If we had more games like CoD:Mobile, Genshin Impact, Alien Isolation, Xcom 2, Sky" Children of the Light, Fornite, Pokemon Unite, Apex Legends, Pascal's Wager, Battlechaser's Nightwar, Shadow Fight Arena, and other ports, that would make upgrading to better chips more wothwhile. The clones need to die out. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I am kind of glad some AAA devs are making games for mobile now. CoD" Mobile, Apex Legends, Pokemon Unite, Diablo, Valorant, Fornite, and Final Fantasy Ever Crisis tells me there is potential for games with bigger production value.

Mobile gaming peaked in 2012

"Our phones can deliver console level experiences." "Our consoles can deliver PC level experiences." Why can't we just focus on what makes each platform unique? PC will always be at the top, so design games that maximize the use of console or phone advantages!

Pc is always catching up to the latest released consoles ​@@NoobsDeSroobs

wasn't it that one presentation where the presenter actually opened with something along the lines of "let's put morals aside for a moment"?

@@Konpekikaminari that was "let's go whaling" i think

Doesn’t apple arcade have a ton of original games though? Like sneaky Sasquatch or exit the gungeon? After all, paid games generally rise from the rubble due to having an actual price tag and needing to convince people to pay for it.

That's pretty much true of all mainstream games tbh. There have definitely been original stories since 2010 but there really hasn't been that much innovation in gameplay. It's all third or first person shooters OR first or third person stealth action games as far as the eye can see, optionally open world... or stuff that's even older in concept like 2D platformers.

Least genshin is somewhat original.

@@jaklawrence4301 But these are the same stories these are literally the same exact games Subway surfers has been in the top games since literally 2012

@@GamerKillance Bruh Zelda ?

I remember reading a call for smart watch game devs, to make games that can be played in a few seconds, like while you're standing there waiting for the cashier to ring up your groceries. Because you can't just look at the gums and mints for ten seconds.

Well it's not that they're wrong, it absolutely has the capability to make handhelds obsolete now, it just doesn't have the market/games available to allow it to do so, I mean take Stardew Valley for instance, if you already have a phone would you buy a handheld or whatever to play it when you could just buy it on a phone? I don't know if it has changed as of lately, but of course the other problem is developers have or had to manually add support for controllers, putting the burden on them makes compatibility with other input devices kinda spotty and even harder to get more traditional games on there.

In a way, they did. The 3DS and Vita released when mobile was taking off and they sold a lot worse than their predecessors, then Nintendo announced the Switch as a console you can take with you instead of a handheld you can play on TV.

Thing with handheld gaming is that, for the most part, you don't really see dedicated handheld consoles anymore. You don't see Sony hyping up a Vita 2, or Microsoft pushing their own portable on-the-move console. The only real handheld console you see nowadays is the Nintendo Switch, which reigns unchallenged in the niche while still having a foot in the home console space by virtue of its docking mode. So while mobile technically didn't erase handheld gaming, handheld gaming doesn't seem nearly as prominent anymore. Though who knows, maybe the Steam Deck will change all that somehow. I don't know if it's gonna do much, but if it does somehow revitalize the handheld gaming space by some wild miracle, maybe that'll help renew interest in the niche outside of Nintendo and Valve.

@@GmodPlusWoW | The Evercade is the closest to a dedicated handheld I've seen outside of the Deck and Switch and it's basically a emulator device that went through the trouble of actually licensing out its library.

Mind you, he said he enjoyed those ones too.

It's like instead of making us have fun, they figure out how to hack our brains. Sadly it's fairly easy to make a game that people want to play even when they're not having fun playing it.

Of course it is, it would be fine if not for all the BS that surrounds mobile games.

@@Shinku_no_sanbun I think we've all instinctively known this since kindergarten. The first time we got crafting glue on our fingers and had to peel it off. 'Satisfying' is more powerful than 'fun'. Alternately, the discovery of bubble rap.

Yeah, I see those all the time and figure it'd be a nice mindless distraction, exactly what I want to do on my phone (if I wanted anything of actual substance, I'd use a bigger screen). The deluge of ads is enough to keep me away from actually trying - I leave my mobile gaming to something I can throw $3 at to permanently turn off ads.

That might be like saying Reese's has made more money than one of those real exclusive restaurants where a single chocolate torte is 4 grand. Yeah the profit margins for charging rich people a normal person's monthly wage to artfully smear raspberry sauce on a supply store plate are amazing, but have you tried selling ten trillion things for $1.09 apiece?

And that's just the eighteen games that made MORE money than any movie in history, what about all the mobile games that made equal money? Or were just very profitable comparably to the development budget (that probably consisted of coffee and strong mints)? There's still a great platform to be found in mobile gaming, but I believe the big issue is that the audience actually willing to pay for a game is very small, thus we get games with predatory monetisation practices, and all the cheap knock-offs a bottom of the barrel market creates.

You cant just say 18 mobile games and not list them. Could you please list them?

I don't think that a game really _needs_ to create IP, so long as it creates a fun game experience. I mean, who wants to see "Tetris, the movie?"

@@timogul and here I was thinking that that was demolition man.

You heard of Flashpoint emulator? IDK if your still intetested in playing old Flash/Java/Shockwave games, but that program will let you run them on a modern PC.

@@scottthewaterwarrior Yeah I know of it, but I would like those kind of experiences on my phone, you know because it's nice having a good handful of simple games to take anywhere.

I think a big difference is that a lot of those Flash games were made by people, not by companies. There were outliers, like Nitrome, but usually those games were developed by some guy on a bedroom with an idea and a computer.

Agree, i have been well have to play mobile i dont have mi pc for over a year, and yes, i haate that, no matter how much you play, oyu dont make visible progress, they block you to play, i have install and uninstall so many games, fro gatcha, to the worst strategic builders, hardly any one of the ones i install like a year ago remains only one, and that is because it is fun, and fun beleive me fun, even when some can gave you is harldy ever or not endure. I only manage to win two games, one a visual novel, and the other warhammer 40 freeblade, and i have install tons of them.

Bloons Tower Defense.

Spaceflight simulator if you are a person who would like KSP

that game was so good

*cough cough **_Cyberpunk 2077_** cough cough*

@@utisti4976 Or those cockroaches of ads of mobile games you get on KZfaq.

@@utisti4976 That was more over ambition and poor planning rather than false advertising.

Pull away barriers to redirect lava and water. Pick which tool should be used on which problem. Work out which number is bigger than the other number. These games could easily be made! ...but, of course, the actual games are all match-3s with microtransactions.

@@utisti4976 Or _Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity._ Marketed as a prequel to Breath of the Wild; turns out to be someone's alternate-timeline fanfic.

thats probably what people thought of the playstation and ps2 era's of console gaming

No amount of potential innovation can penetrate dense skills hellbent on earning most profit. Companies might not necessarily need that much money, but if they don't get it, others will. And that is not something desirable within the system. Hence the infinite race for greater profit that never ends and throws out every ounce of humanity.

@@garr_inc That really is the worst thing about it. The knowledge that if you don't try to hoard all the money, someone else will do it. Why is the human race capable of being so shit?

Devolved you mean?

@@e.y.d.6079 Capitalism might not be perfect but it's self correcting; Because ultimately, what sells: is what is desired. Companies and corporations can trick people for a while, but eventually people will get tired of it, and eventually they'll be forced to innovate or be upstaged by young promising companies. Probably why capitalism has been so successful, because it taps into human greed to drive innovation and contribute to society.

Second this! It's such a great little collection, and he has .exe files on his website for PC too!

Thank you for the suggestion, I’ve downloaded this game and I love it

This is truly a gem for anyone into puzzle games or puzzle game design. There's lots of interesting ideas, some better than others, and exploring their depth is part of what makes it interesting (at least for me). The customization options for each one are especially nice to have.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon recently had a 1.0 release on iOS

@@adamvincent7086 And from what I hear, there's a version coming to Steam soon, too (if it's not already up there)

Shattered pixel dungeon and monument valley are both fantastic. I haven't played the other one, but seeing it lumped with these two is a good indication that I should check it out.

@@DonkoXI A Dark Room is one of those experimental games that not everyone enjoys, but if you're one of the people who can enjoy it, it hits you hard. It's also one of those games that's really hard to talk about without spoiling anything.

@@hoodiesticks I've been playing it for the past ~2 hours and it's very cool. It's taken a few unexpected twists already.

I mean as much as valve started it with loot boxes what have they done more recently?

​@@Jay_Johnson I used to be a big Valve fan, so part of the problem is that I held them to a higher standard. In a nut shell; They went from being innovators to trend chasers, and their odd company structure is leading them to create very polished games on launch, that gradually turn into a mess (or get completely abandoned) down the line. TF2's aggressively priced store is still raking them a good amount of money, yet they can't even be bothered to bring their game to a playable state. There is a "bot apocalypse" going on, where the majority of public servers are dominated by hackers. This is so underregulated, that these hackers actually advertise their presence as much as possible (with spamming sound items etc). They halfheartedly implemented some changes that didn't help the issue at all and only made it worse by taking away features from free to play players. This was just the nail in the coffin, as around the time Overwatch launched, it was becoming evident that Valve was being lazy with the game, as every update the game got was a bug riddled, unfinished mess. Cactus Canyon, Asteroids, Mann-Power mode are just a few examples of this. What truly killed the game (to the extent that most major players migrated to other games) was the completely dysfunctional "competitive" mode they released after allegedly working on it for 5 years. TF2's art style is a masterpiece, yet they continually added community cosmetics that butchered it to oblivion. So when they announced that Dota 2 would have cosmetics, the community expressed their concern that the game would turn into a visually uncoherent mess as well. At the time, Valve promised this wouldn't be the case, going as far as removing some of the cosmetics from the game upon hearing complaints. Fast forward to today, and I legitimately cannot enjoy playing the game, nor even watching streams of it because the annoyingly goofy cosmetics, taunts and voice clips completely ruin the game for me. This is obviously a "me" problem, but I lost a lot of respect for them when they started prioritizing attention grabbing cosmetics (many of which cost hundreds of dollars to get via battlepasses) over a visually (and audibly) coherent and pleasing experience. Speaking of cosmetics, most of them (practically all of them) are made by the community. Yet Valve's lack of communication really puts community creators in a difficult position. Dota2 Workshop artists in particular where hit hard when Valve implemented unannounced monetization changes that cut their profits to such a level, that a lot of them had to leave the workshop scene all together. I attribute a lot of these issues to Valve's unorthodox company structure; The games turn into a hodgepodge of ideas (none of which given enough time to go anywhere) instead of keeping their distinct identity they had at launch. I used to respect them a lot more for being innovative, but their games and updates have been very trend-chasing in recent history. LoL was popular, so they made Dota2. Heartstone was popular, so they made Artifact. The best thing that happened to Valve recently, was the complete failure of Artifact. Turns out, you can't just hire someone (even if they're a pioneer of the field) to make you a different version of something that's popular today, and release it years after the trend you are chasing dies out, while launching it with aggressive monetization. I truly believe Half Life Alyx wouldn't have been made, if this failure didn't serve as a wake-up call. They lost so many of their talented artists and writers over the years, no doubt because they took ages to get any project done and likely half-finished a hundred along the way, and all the real development efforts were focused on the in-game stores of their multiplayer games. As you can tell from my long rant, this is mostly from the perspective of a bitter fan. The other game companies mentioned show much clearer signs of problems (botched annual games and mistreated employees). This might be partially due to Valve's secrecy, but I will at least give them that; They are no Blizzard or Ubisoft.

@@Mick0Mania Yeah I don't play TF2 or Dota and they essentially haven't made another game except for Alyx which according to reviews was definitely innovative (shame no-one can play it tho)

Indeed, is sa to think the best moment for games, were when they were niche stuff, for me the moment i realize just how bad things are where with MK11 and street figther 5, in MK11, all womans are cover, Kitana with a burka, and the final boss, i see a guy that play like a god, and the final boss was so hard and so full of BS, it was not fun, the only reason he buy t was because the terminator character, but outside that said that the characters and mecanics are lifless the womans are so ugly that it didint bring atention and these is a guy that love MK. For me was with streetfigther 5, i love street figther, i win the second one like a million times , i play four a lot, i remember going to arcades to watch 3. But 5, what a bunch of crap, the only good thing was Mika, and they censor her, they censor her but slapp, half the rooster, half the rooster lock, stages, stages locks, music, the music suck, and loading times are unberable, and it looks worst, the story is bs that put the main characters nearly as secondary, Chun li, CHun li is a side character. And six, street figther six, logo loocks like bs, Ruy, Ryu, looks like the hulk, and instead of ken a guy that looks like MMA ninja appear. And five, mi, the only character i cared was Mika, Cammy was mi fave, but now they get rid of her leg tatoos, and instead one of the most powerful characters in canoon she is second to Yuri, a boring character that is evil because evil and lesbian, censor also, i mean when i see that i really see what games are, nothing. Also when i find good games in obile better than triple AAA is sad, mi last seen of how bad are games, come in mi last visit to one of the last game palces in mi hometow, the guy there, siad, that games are a disaster now, the last GTA, loocks more or less the same, games come broken, and something these triple AAA companies is taht they focus only in rich regions, for latino america, the console, or computer, plus the game and all of that combine when the game doesnt work or is buggy or is a grind fest to push loot boxes, at least mobile games are free, you can play a bit, for free. Yes games in the moment are a shadow of theyre former self, as both enterteinment and art, i mean come on, very few games generse ike strategy and 4 try to do soemthing else and yet they barely prosper

Doesn’t matter who did it first, Angry Birds did it best at the time

Not really. Castle Crushers (I believe that’s the name) was more complex and had better physics.

@@alexanderfreeman3406 and also an ost by waterflame??

@@alexanderfreeman3406 The name you're looking for is Crush the Castle. Castle Crushers is most likely a misremembering of that name and that of Castle Crashers, which is the comedy beat 'em up flash game where you and up to 3 friends play as knights trying to save kidnapped princesses.

The original creator of Crush the Castle just released The Last Stand (hurk!) Aftermath. He's doing alright at least

Thank you, I used to play that game all the time but I could't remember what it was called. Yeah I actually brought a couple of the micro transactions for that game because it had earned my respect as a real game not an ad revenue generator.

@@Clara_Page I don't pay for hints ever, I did pay for the extra levels and just watch ads to get hints since they're easy to grind, but eventually I just stopped using hints altogether haha

@@Mickspad I didn't even know you could get hints tbh. I brought a couple of alternate colour palettes for the lines.

@@Clara_Page oh I gotcha, I just always relate the term microtransaction to "consumable items that cost money that can be replenished" so that's why I thought you meant hints

Flow Hexes is the best casual puzzle game

Except the intended audience is people with gambling problems to exploit till they’re broke. It should be illegal but hey, it’s just games!

@@jacopovilla1590 do whatever you want. Yahtzee doesn’t seem to care

The mentality of letting people hurt themselves is such a shit mentality

Takes a lot of maturity to say “Do whatever you want. Yahtzee doesn’t seem to care”

@@jacopovilla1590 dude are you alright? What are you doing?

On game quality, big companies are doing great strides. On the hope of innovations from mobile games, consider it dead.

There are definitely some good ported games. Should probably check Stardew Valley. But as Yahtzee said, touch screen requires a different mindset and design. I spent impressive amount of time playing Xcom, Supergiant or HBS games on mobile. But only because they are had some what sensible controls. For shooter ports you better to just take a laptop and be done with it. I remember really complex and innovative games around n-gage era: Ancient Empires, Revival, Deep 3D/GoF, Doom RPG/OaE series. Most of them are actually being ported to iOS/Android. But now you just google "top mobile games of 20XX", see "Raid Shadow whatever" top 1, and delete the rest of the list after testing it for 2 hours. Sometimes you actually better installing a GBA emulator with the same game, but better and without ads.

Of course it’s you opinion Captain IMO, nobody was confused who typed this…

​@@MaztRPwn what an unnecessary clapback over a completely innocuous instance of a very common ordinary turn of phrase lol

I've recently been playing Hunter Assassin. The notion of being a stealthy killer wiping out entire warehouses full of enemies intrigued me, but now that I'm at level 170 (with no end in sight, I might add), it's starting to feel like this was a wrong choice.

Nice to see a fellow Doktah in this comment section, lmao. You hit the nail on the head with that last paragraph, there's still hope for mobile games yet.

Becoming a Dokutah is what got me out of the lockdown rut way back when. Even if it is a bit formulaic and tropey, you can tell that the game was made by people that want to build a world that one can escape into. Among many other things, there's an interesting worldwide zeitgeist with the divide between the Infected and the Healthy, the world itself is very interesting to learn about and explore, and most importantly, you can't help but think about how you might insert yourself into the game as your own character, which is to my mind a sign of worldbuilding done well.

It took me 3 years to break an addiction to a gacha puzzle RPG game. I'm sure we have all heard stories about how people spend so much money they go broke. Well that didn't happen to me, luckily I had sense to budget myself. But what no one talks about is how much time they suck out of you. Really, that's what I'm never getting back and I am still sad that I got addicted to begin with, all because the games clan / alliance system makes you feel obligated to log in and repeat the same tasks daily. I wish I would've been honest with myself and those teammates sooner, that I just didn't feel like playing anymore.

@@DavidCosmanCozySmash thank you for bringing your story to this chat. There are many people who would benefit from understanding your experience.

The difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. Logging in every day isn't fun, but it gets you to open the game and well, at that point you've got the game open so you might as well play, and so on and so forth.

@@AccountProto5X your right. I just sort of expected that a market place this big would have a product that cattered to me instead of being more or less all built from the same flat pack. It's all so very generic, and boring...

@@Tyler-gg6xt The idea on mobile seems to generally be that you, the customer, are part of a captive market. If the only thing you're offered is crap, then you'll take it. They don't want you to have the choice between something good and something bad, they want the entire market to be flooded with homogenously bad games, all with the same depressing "flat pack" design. Maximum returns for minimum effort.

Yeah, Genshin sets a really high bar. Ironically people at first called it a Zelda clone, which was just unfair. The game is fantastic.

@@insertcoolnamelater9334 the production value is great. the monetization and time sink is still bullcrap

What I find funny about this is the sort of "journey" Mihoyo has gone through, basically until after Genshin impact, every subsequent release from Mihoyo has been bigger and bigger. Starting with flyme2themoon you got some generic mobile game, then there was GGZ a pretty decent mobile game, then Honkai impact a pretty damn good mobile game but a sorta eh pc game, and then we arrive at Genshin impact and we all know the story from there.

Given the state of mobile gaming, calling it a Zelda clone wasn't really an insult.

@@insertcoolnamelater9334 It was called a Breath of the Wild clone because it blatantly is one. That doesn't mean it's not a good game. But I'll stick to BotW and other games that allow me to pay one price and receive a full game with zero microtransactions pushed on you by progress-gates.

I would say that there is nothing inherently wrong with choosing monetization. After all, after putting in all of that effort to create something that, hopefully, many will get to experience and actually enjoy, getting a little money out of it is a tangible reward and would certainly feel nice. It is just that monetization is so overwhelming stacked over everything else that choosing it only leads to what you experienced. Given your experience, you could probably tell us how much control over monetization you were given, though I am betting that it was a binary choice: monetize or not. I'm sure if you had any choice of level of monetization, you would've scaled it down as much as you could have gotten away with. It just sucks @$$ that, like internships, the people in charge expect you to net them massive profits while giving you very little, if anything at all.

Completely agree. In my experience, the three add types I could chose from were banner, video, and rewarded ads. I chose the video ones to play after each player death thinking they would be the least annoying, unfortunately these are the most common ones that force the player to watch 5-10 seconds of the types of games Yahtzee described in this video. In retrospect, mobile developers may be better off just charging a flat rate for their games

I guess now you know more about the ads. As for what you do with them, whether you monetize or not, well, that will be up to you should you continue to develop and publish games. Still, you had put in the effort, so it is a bit of a shame that this happened. Hopefully, should you publish another, it will not go as badly.

​@@spd9190 Well, I'm not sure of the specifics behind each option, but if the "rewarded ads" are the ones I'm thinking of, then perhaps you should try those? Those might get a better "reception" than the other options. (Assuming those work the way I think they do anyway...)

So my understanding of the rewarded ads is that when the player clicks on them and watches the entire ad it takes a survey they are rewarded with something to use in game. Out of the three I agree that would be the ideal option, but unfortunately my game doesn’t have any sort of in game currency or items to give. It would probably work best for something like Clash of Clans

I miss mobile games from 2011-2013. Even games like Angry Birds were solid with neat physics gameplay. I remember feeling like N.O.V.A. 3 and Chaos Rings would bring about more console quality games to mobile but then people bitched about them being expensive (they weren't) and the rest is history. Only till recently have I seen somewhat of a surge in more quality titles, but they are still drowned out by a bunch of shameless filth.

There's also plenty of great games that aren't PC ports

Dead Cells is an S-tier game, it's great with tons of replayability. I don't have the mobile version because I already have it on Switch and on PC, but I've heard the mobile version works pretty well.

Dead cells is great, but the mobile version is not up to date apparently.

Staring? It already started when EA went to the dark side and started eating children when a game doesn’t satisfy their sales projections.

I too miss the days when Jack Thompson and Uwe Boll were the biggest enemies of the game industry, not the industry itself and its obsession with greed

The game industry, the main game industry was going to be like that even when mobile wouldnt have ocurr, later rather than sooner

It was doing it before the mobile market was even a thing. Online connectivity on its own fucking DESTROYED the game industry, whilst not the only culprit.

Thank God for him!

I heard a story once (don't know if it's true) that when he and Jim Sterling were going to be on a panel together, they'd never met before and Jim had to tell him back stage to feel free and cut loose on stage with his ascerbic public persona, since that's what people were there for. I don't think you could do this job and be angry all the time. You'd die of aneurism in your early 30s.

I agree, but to be fair, at 6:02 he did clarify that he was talking about "most of the guaranteed audience". Most people gaming on their phones aren't even casual gamers. Unlike portable consoles, which everybody buys specifically to game, phones, for most people, aren't purchased with gaming in mind. The kind of experience "gamers by opportunity" (accidental mobile gamers) want, might be significantly different from the kind of experience portable gamers want. "Gamers by opportunity" are people who didn't necessarily intend to game on their phone. So the kind of experience that might convince them to, is probably different than the kind of experience that convinces someone to purchase a dedicated gaming device.

@@danielalorbi I knew exactly what he meant, it was meant to be a joke. Though GBA flight simulators are a real thing, as wild as it sounds.

He likely also differentiates between mobile and handheld gaming. Could there be a flight sim on a device with only a touch screen and no buttons?

@@ZipplyZane Plenty actually, I remember playing a version of Microsoft Flight Simulator on an old Palm Pilot many years ago. Had some interesting physics too: if you rolled the plane inverted and then stalled, you would fall up! Think most the phone ones these days use tilt controls, though I haven't actually played any of them.

@@scottthewaterwarrior I believe it. The GBA is surprisingly powerful. If anything controller inputs and screen real estate are what makes it hard to swallow.

Aren't that bad compared to what? The radioactive wasteland they encouraged?

@@thejusmar they're time wasters meant to be played in short bursts over a long period of time, and then monetized for people who are to impatient.

@@thejusmar They didn't create the radioactive wasteland, the money-grubbers made it from their garden.

These two games have some genuine strategic depth and good mechanics, it's too bad that to play these games on any decent level you either need to fork out thousands of dollars or grind it out for actual years. Don't understate their extremely shitty practices just because their games aren't some mindless ball-sorting puzzle.

I was surprised on how much I got into Brawl Stars. I turned my nose up to it as a game for little children, but it has offered me so many hours of fun and I have yet to find the need to spend a bunch of money like some other games. The progression (at least where I'm at) is still steady. I'm sure later on I would have to spend some, but there is enough modes and a solid gameplay loop to keep the game engaging. Clash Royale was also fun. Their games are super polished as well.

Huh, that's a good way of putting it.

I thought you were talking about the movie for a second

@@blxrwtch I thought of that after I posted it, but that might just draw some extra eyes to this comment, so I don't mind ;P

I think I saw a trailer for the Switch version of the game, it looked fun.

It's why the only thing I play on mobile nowadays ARE the freemium slot machines. At least they're upfront about wanting all your money

I used to write for a long defunct mobile game review site, I went to the East Coast Game Conference in like 2013 or 2014. There was a seminar about mobile game design. I thought it'd be about control with a touch screen or unique design philosophies or something. Nope. It was all about interrupting the game play loop with frustration points to encourage micro transactions. Basically, breaking the enjoyment of your game to squeeze a few bucks out here and there and occasionally grab a big whale, who at least at that time according to that speaker, made up most of the profits for most games. I thought the industry was in a bit of trouble then.

well here I disagree angry birds didn't just rip off crush the castle it did more. it added more mechanics then crush the castle ever did so I wouldn't call it a ripoff id call it inspired

without capitalism the only video game we would have is tetris, going "hurr durr capitalism bad" is shortsighted and ignorant at best