Now that you mentioned this, I do recall in the early days of mobile games, back when the App Shops were first introduced, there were games that you would pay somewhere between $1 and $5, and you get the whole thing. No in-app purchases, no ads, and no lotteries for special characters or gear. I remember Square Enix had some really good JRPG games that were made specifically for the iPhone and iPad. Chaos Rings and DrakeRider were two games I recall playing, but they were much more expensive compared to the usual games I found. But, when you paid for it, you got the whole game and all.
I think mobile app developers have realized that they could get more engagement and cash from their users if they made games that had a gambling aspect to it. Kinda like the casinos in Vegas, the house always wins, but you keep putting in money on the hopes you get a jackpot.
That being said, there is one freemium game that I do find quite fun, and that is Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe. The thing that makes this freemium game a bit different is that Square Enix is quite generous in their in-game currency. You can actually do quite well without making any in-app purchases.
I’m in the game industry. This is entirely person observation I have not studied this topic so can’t source anything
The people I saw going to early mobile market were a lot of handheld console and flash game devs and companies. They were adapting the closest existing game designs and brought with them a “small game small cost” philosophy. It also wasn’t really known yet how impulsive people are on phones. So it was an unproven market with smaller teams and people making yester era design choices. There also used to be a few bigger games with bigger price tags but people didn’t buy into those because anyone willing to spend that on a game at the time would have had a console or PC and could buy a better experience there for the same price.
The only mobile game experience I have was back in like 2012, smart phones were really taking off, and the market for mobile games was proven. The company I worked for we built a release ready game but it never got released. We couldn’t sell it to investors because the monetization was never aggressive enough for them (the investor money at that point was less about making the game and more to fund marketing and stabilizing the studio as a long term business). I quit when my job stopped being dev work and started being round tables about how to psychologically trick players into paying more. Anyway with so much focus on heavy monetization it stopped being economically worth it for a lot of startups to actually make good games when thinly veiled skinner boxes pleased the investors all the same
I’m feeling the same way about Minion Masters. I just play it on my Steam Deck, but it got an Android release recently. They gave away a few of their “DLC” packs (which is how I found it about it), so maybe my experience is a bit atypical, but I’ve just been playing for a week or so and I already have more than half the available cards and enough currency that I can craft any cards I really want to finish a deck.
I haven’t paid a cent. It’s so generous with its freemium model that I’m probably going to buy an in-game currency pack if I’m still playing once my Google Rewards wallet ticks high enough to buy one.
You get what you pay for. If you download a free game, then of course it’s going to be full of pay-to-win microtransactions. Although there are issues with greed in some larger games run by big companies, the reality is that game devs deserve to earn a living too, and that means at some point a game needs to be paid for.
There are still plenty of good quality mobile games out there, they just don’t tend to be free to download. Back when I had more free time, I actually got good usage out of the Play Pass on Android, which was £5 a month and gave me access to a catalogue of excellent mobile games with no microtransactions at all, the vast majority of which were single-player, offline games. Literally the only reason I’m not still subscribed is I just don’t have time to play mobile games at the moment - the chances of me subscribing again over the summer when I’m not at uni is high.
You also don’t get what you pay for when it comes to mobile. Had some games get delisted so it’s not even downloadable anymore and even though I kept it on my phone I can’t run it because it fails the license check. Mobile game isn’t worth spending money on.
In addition to what others said, due to the architecture it was notoriously hard to develop for. The Playstation dev kits were a dream to work with in comparison. Sega of Japan hedged their bets on 2D remaining king due to the Japanese market preferring arcade ports and slowness to accept change, and slapped on some 3D capabilities almost as an afterthought. Meanwhile Sega of America assumed the US market would scoff at spending 500 on a console when the 32X had just released and was very similar (and also selling poorly).
Sony took risks by pushing 3D hard, were aggressive with pricing, did a ton of marketing, and completely ate Sega’s lunch. Despite the Saturn being arguably more powerful and better made than the PS1, it wasn’t enough to right the ship. And it continued on this downward spiral due to the negative impressions that Sega was dying with the Dreamcast where they again flubbed the launch timing while people were enamored with the N64 and the PS1 had a massive library.
There were lots of other shenanigans involved, I’m skimming the surface here. Regardless, both consoles have some bangers and I recommend trying some out if you ever have the chance. The hardware is also very cool if you can find them cheap but might need refurbed at this age.
Yeah ps4 works a charm, the hard part for me was figuring out why an Xbox controller didn’t. Turns out some of the older models had deprecated Bluetooth that it couldn’t connect to, so went with a ps4 one instead.
I'm glad you enjoyed Alan Wake 2! It is definitely a great game.
Still working on Lies of P. This game is taking me way too long to finish. I am still making progress, and I'm still having a good time, but I think I'm going to find a shooter style game to add to the mix so I don't get too burnt out or too bored with the combat style.
I don’t know why but 4 years after the official launch I started playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons.
I like it because other than the stores schedule there is no timer constantly running like you have in Stardew Valley. I tend to get very anxious/FOMO in games with timed events and where 24 hours are like 1 hour or 20 minutes in real time.
And for those games that aren’t Steam based, I use Bottles, and then use the feature inside a Bottles that adds the game to my Steam library, so they can be launched directly from Steam.
Fedora seems to have the best support for hardware, of all the distros that I’ve tried.
There’s potentially some cloud-based options for this, if someone doesn’t want to maintain a gaming device.
Basically, it seems like Game Pass Ultimate will let you play games like The Sims 4 and Minecraft using a constant video connection to an Xbox server. If I’m right, these are in fact the mouse/keyboard version of the game. Probably not as moddable though.
It’s not a great option especially considering the subscription, but it sometimes feels more hassle-free depending on the user.
If you’re still looking for folk to playtest your game, I’d be down to give it a go! I’ve not done that kinda stuff before, but I have played an unhealthy amount of games, including the Stanley Parable. c:
Uh, what method are you planning on using? I have my phone and a super 8 as far as recording goes. I mean I’m down, but I need to know what’s involved.
Hi, the way I’ve done it before is we get on Discord or any other screen sharing site and you share the screen and play the game and we discuss in real time what you like, what you don’t. What work, what does not so can get the feel of someone else of experiencing the game for the fist time. : ) If that is okay with you we can do it
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