Users who expect low prices - This partly because of the history of mobile games being smaller and/or ad-funded but also because the vast majority of people playing games on their phone are looking for a low barrier to entry, time waster, not specifically a game.
Lack of regulation or enforcement - other gambling heavy fields tend to be at least somewhat regulated, but mobile games are very light on regulation, and even lighter on enforcement. This allows them to falsely advertise their games and how they function (both in terms of misleading ads, and lying about chance based events and purchases in-game).
Monopolistic middlemen - On other platforms, theres more direct competition (IE, Sony and Microsoft’s generally more direct competition) or companies that prioritize long-term growth and stability (IE Steam or Itch.io). Apple and Google, on the other hand, largely compete on brand perception and hardware specs. These means that their app stores, where they make most of their money, have zero competitors. Seeing as they have no reason to make the stores better, they can instead promote whatever makes them the most money; that being exactly these manipulate, sketchy, virtual slot machines.
Shoutout to Slay the Spire, Balatro, and Slice & Dice. They all cost a bit (around 10€) but are excellent ports of the originals and among the best mobile games. Slice & Dice even started out as a mobile game and was ported to PC later.
Wild Rift is my poor man’s League (although the skins are way more expensive than on PC). Don’t have a PC to play League on and WR is a good, chill alternative. Plus, I can play with my SO
Mobile games are the equivalent of those "100 great games pack"-type CDROMS you'd find in the electronics section of stores in the late 90s/early 2000s. Not many invest serious money and time into gaming on a tablet or phone like they do on a console or PC, because games on phones and tablets are more like an afterthought. Something to do in between group chats and work emails.
CoD mobile is good… when played in an Android emulator on PC. It’s basically CoD: Greatest Hits, and it’s way better than Black Ops 6 (or any console/PC CoD, for that matter). All the best maps from the old games are there. Takes me back to the days of MW1 & 2 on the XBOX 360.
The only issues is that it takes some tweaking and the right emulator (Gameloop) to get a steady 120+ FPS, and it can take dozens of matches before game starts pairing you with other mouse and keyboard players (instead of just bots or controller/touchscreen users), but once you’ve established your rank, it becomes ton of fun cause you’re not just destroying everyone you match against. It becomes a legit challenge.
Making a good game is hard. Making brainrot garbarge is easy, and people play it just as much. So what is the point? I knew a guy who was cheap as fuck. I didn’t know his girlfriend as well, but people said she was pretty much the same. Once i remember he made fun off someone spending like 60 dollars on a video game and he said he’s not a “gamer”. A few month later we talked about some video games that we liked and i didn’t really include him in that conversation because of what he said before.
He chimed in and said that he’s been playing clash of clans since release. Now i hardly even know what coc is, except mobile pay to win garbage (imo) so without even thinking, i asked if that game is even playable without spending money. He said oh no, he spends around 500 buchs a month. We were all shocked a bit, and he realised how ridiculous that is and immediately threw his girlfriend under the bus saying that she spends at least 1k a month for candy crush.
Not that it succeeded long term, but I salute Apple Arcade’s venture on this. It’s a subscription service that aimed to highlight iPhone games that had no monetization, and were usually small indie games with a fun idea.
Yep, getting people to pay $40-60 bucks for a mobile game is basically impossible, and as a result the business model is either F2P or $3-5 bucks with egregious monetization to earn back the costs.
I think it’s cultural differences. In the west, we abhor pay to win and predatory aspects. But in Korea, China and other countries in that region, players demand it.
So then it comes down to which market region you’re targeting. If you’re not a NA/EU mobile developer, how do you choose? 🤷♂️ Can’t keep everyone happy.
I personally don’t care which game wins the awards. I’m there watching for entertainment. I see lot of discussions and people take the awards too serious in my opinion. It’s like taking IGN scores serious. :D
What’s wild to me is, that Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom didn’t appear once on this list.
It won awards, but it didn’t get the “overall game of the year” award from any of those 5 outlets. And, compared to baldurs gate 3 I think its quite easy to understand why. Totk was a well polished experience but it suffered quite a lot from “mile wide inch deep” syndrome IMHO. Probably one of the best games Nintendo has ever made, but it isn’t as good as baldur’s gate 3.
It’s quite remarkable how Larian slowly climbed their way to the top of the industry. While they have been around since 1996, they only created eight “proper” games prior to Baldur’s Gate 3 (if we don’t count their obscure educational titles) and most of them only received review scores in the 7/10 range. It would have been far more likely for them to remain a mid-tier developer that eventually faded away, like so many other studios producing games of similar scope and quality.
I would wager that prior to “Divinity: Original Sin”, which was their true breakthrough game, most, especially outside of Europe, had never even heard of this studio.
It says a lot about the passion of their team, I think. Larian was not even on my radar until a little while after DOS2 came out, and while I enjoyed dos2 I burned out in act 3. It was, however, plain to see that they poured buckets of care and attention into the game, even if it wasn’t exactly for me.
With Baldur’s Gate 3 made an upward trend in quality and kept the same love, care, and attention. If that level of care and attention is present in their previous titles (I have no idea), then I think it was all but inevitable that they’d find this critical success.
What’s wild to me is, that Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom didn’t appear once on this list.
Makes sense to me IMO. 2023 was a stacked year, and while TotK was a pretty good game, it was way too close to Breath of the Wild for me to even consider it as game of the year. Other games that could’ve won the award over it include Alan Wake 2, Resident Evil 4 Remake, Hi-Fi Rush, and Octopath Traveler 2.
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