The potential has always been there for phone games, but its far a few between that are worthwhile. Touch screens suck for controls, really limits to a few good genres, but the stores suck too for any form of support. I’m still bitter that they updated iOs and not xcom so I lost that game and couldn’t get a refund. Most good phone games are ports though, and otherwise so riddled with poor design and mtx its not worth the time. Honestly, the buggest disappointment with phones is that games could be awesome on them and they’re not.
Kids are easily entertained by all kinds of arguably crappy things. Similarly mine has access to tons of great games but will spend weird amounts of time on some janky web based crap. Its not a sign its good, he just has no taste cause he’s an inexperienced kid. I similarly wouldnt look at his choice of mismatched clothes and chicken nuggets for every possible meal and think “wow that stuff’s great!” Maturity and judgement take awhile to develop, so I dont think its bad that he does that, but roblox is still utter garbage no matter how much him and his friends love it. A lot of people love garbage - it doesn’t make it good.
The inverse is just as true. Just because you and many “gamers” accept a rigid canon of what counts as “quality” doesn’t mean those games are actually good.
Go to any retro gaming board and you’ll hear the NES era hailed as a golden age. I’ve played nearly all those games—and apart from a few true gems, most of them don’t hold up.
Yet people still pay hundreds of dollars for cartridges like Action 52 and treat them like holy grails, even though we all know that some of the worst mobile games today are technically better.
The truth is, I don’t think the average gamer really knows quality. I think most of their taste is just parroting what someone else told them to like.
Quality deserves to be judged on its own merits—not nostalgia or consensus.
Action 52 committed a crime worse than all those gacha games combined: it was not fun. And you had to pay good money for the privilege of being bored out of your mind.
But seriously—what’s stopping you (or anyone else) from buying games outright for your smartphone?
No one’s given me an answer, so here’s the truth:
Nothing.
But sure, keep pretending every mobile gamer is chained to gacha hell, like their phones come pre-installed with Only Microtransactions Forever™. Everyone with a smartphone is forced to play gacha 24/7, no exceptions.
Yeah, sure. Yeah, and I’m the CEO of Bigfoot Sightings Inc.
Mobile is so thoroughly dominated by gacha that any game that tries to have an ethical business model has almost no hope of succeeding on the platform, no hope of competing with the endless sea of gacha.
And I'm sure you're about to cherry-pick like two counterexamples, but I know you know that those exceptions are so scarce that I have every reason to decide that it simply isn't worth my time to go out of my way looking for them.
Have you ever considered that many people make games not just for some arbitrary measure of “success,” but because they genuinely love the craft of creating video games?
Some of these creators simply want to share their creativity with the world—no gimmicks, no exploitative business models.
There’s an entire universe of these passionate developers out there. We call them “indie” devs. You’ll find them on platforms like itch.io, and they’re far more common than most realize.
Many make games for PC, some for the web, and plenty for mobile as well.
If you want to play truly good games—without being at the mercy of marketing machines, no matter the platform—it’s on each of us to seek them out and discover what’s really worth playing.
Kids are easily entertained by all kinds of arguably crappy things.
Guys traditional games AND mobile games are going the way of the dodo because my 6 month old plays with their fisher price phone more than our phones or tablets. - OP
My kid loves roblox because its controls are pretty much completely ideal for her ipad and apple pencil
Roblox is entirely unplayable to me because its control schemes inevitably break all my millennial expectations and I don’t have great internet connectivity at home anymore. It hurts me and makes me angry, lol. ANY game that properly works with an Xbox controller is superior for my personal experience because of decades of that paradigm. Touchscreen controls are death and other control schemes are second class citizens in the modern landscape
A technique I used to use for when I used פיסכורפ was to use a text editor to type out my message, then copy&paste. Now I just use slidcord at my convenience, and will use a scraper&archiver soon™ to export stuff in communities I want to maliciously extrapolate. 🖕 Network Effected folks. Aint scanlating on JASRAC friendly snitches.
It’s kind of impressive that you managed to squeeze in so many links to references but without including any that actually back up the accusation you’re making.
No, I mean the completely unfounded claim that discord’s typing indicators are somehow a tool for analysing users’ writing styles and selling that on to data brokers.
It’s so bizarrely specific that it comes across as an unhinged conspiracy theory, especially when it’s delivered as part of a link salad.
I hope things get moving in a positive direction for you on the 17th. Until then, I hope your cabin can take your mind off things a bit. Looking forward to the next time you’re able to write!
Just chill in the cabin with some chicken soup as much as needed, and comeback to your happily rambles whenever you feel like it. Btw, have you finished God of War by now?
I played so much SoT back around 2019/2020! Was such a blast just hanging out on the seas.
I agree with your comment about the water, it really is beautiful.
I know folks have mentioned disliking the pvp aspect and believe me I get it - I was never particularly good at it especially in close encounters. But I will say some of the most genuinely exciting memories I have are of those times when we had a boatload of loot with some pirates hot on our tail and managed to get away with it.
The crew I played with eventually moved on to other things but I still miss it now and then.
Urgh, every sale season I see people that don’t know any better post sales for Disco Elysium and I’m obligated to encourage people to pirate it instead
bin.pol.social
Ważne