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
Enshittification, the rise of micro transactions in mobile games over actual in-game mechanics that make the game interesting etc
Has it ever been better?
What happened was that they made a fuckton of money that way.
Ports of older PC games are also often quite good.
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.
Money
They always sucked.
I don’t know man, I had my fair share of fun with a pair of Nyan Cat games, the original Plants Vs Zombies, Nimble Quest (I just got this again on Android and cracked the heck out of it with Lucky patcher, and still suck lol), Tiny Wings, Angry Birds and I could be missing some others.
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
