Have you ever sat in front of a casino’s slot machine. They are also trash, awful and disgusting. But they’re also engineered with the worst dark pattern psychology to manipulate any human being that sits on it to keep playing and be so addictive that people will burn their money just to keep playing. The qualities of fun, and additive are independent of each other. A game can be very addictive and really bad at the same time. Unlike slot machines, they have the advantage of constantly sitting in your pocket and going with you everywhere you go.
I played a new gacha game 2 nights ago that was so overloaded with crap to do I found myself not even playing the game but just clicking the stupid rewards buttons for everything i “accomplished” and I hated it. I continued to play for another 4 hours… thankfully, once I closed the game, I removed it. I also didn’t pay a dime outside my wasted time.
Idk. I got extraordinarily drunk in Vegas, put a twenty in a dollar slot machine, thought I would get 20 pulls, pulled once, lost all my money, them never touched a slot machine again.
Aside from all of the praise that BG3 gets, I haven’t played a linear story-bssed game with such length and depth for YEARS! I got to around 70 hours of game time in my first play through, and I wasn’t remotely bored, ever. For any major game to achieve this almost seemed impossible in this generation.
“Linear” is not a word I would use to describe it, hah. I’m pretty sure you can go back to the start, make different choices, and play another 70+ hours of content you’ve never seen. Which is even more insane.
that’s the thing that set it apart. AAA games don’t do this because it’s a ton of extra work and most players won’t even see it. this is only achievable by a creatively independent studio that respects the medium as an art form. if you think in pure bang-for-buck value, it’s literally insane to even attempt to do what they did.
Most mobile game developers just want to attract whales. People who spend thousands of dollars in their app. They don’t care about everyone else because they don’t make any money off anyone else.
Because the ones that we hear about are the ones that are good enough to have even made it out of Japan. If a game was bad, it wouldn’t be localized to an English-speaking audience, and we wouldn’t even know it exists.
It’s the same sort of thinking as asking why (insert media here) was better in the past. The answer is simple - good songs, games, movies, etc. tend to be more memorable, and so we remember the good ones and forget the bad ones. To put it briefly, there’s survivorship bias.
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.
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
I feel like the best time for mobile games was back around 2009/2010 when touchscreen just became good and most stuff was either free or paid and without intrusive ads and monetization or other predatory bullcrap.
I recently tried Angry Birds 2, and I was baffled it would only take a few levels before I had to buy my way to more “ammunition” to keep playing. The original used to be good, I even wouldn’t have minded if there was like an ad between games, or if it was just buy-to-play, but even that isn’t an alternative option anymore. And they also pulled the original from the stores, I thought they had re-released it before, but couldn’t find it either. And also when I first opened the game there was so much shit on screen that it was even difficult to navigate to just even find the actual game, it’s absolutely fucking ridiculous.
Agreed. There was a fantastic time for mobile games before things went downhill.
I have a strong memory of being in an apple store, finding a display iPad, and becoming enraptured by Plants vs Zombies. I would eventually get my own and put dozens and dozens of hours into the game.
I just hate its relentless sudden-death format, which kills you from a single misclick. At least Slay the Spire gave you HP and was far more forgiving.
As someone who played each demo version, I was really expecting a different pace in the final game. I was surprised to find that the release version was just as feast-or-famine. Most runs only get a few extra cards or extra stamps unless you get jokers that seriously accelerate the rate. I was expecting the game to have more of an RPG curve to it where I would have more time to shift toward a suit and preferred card quantity.
If you factor in every Japanese game in existence this statement will crumble really fast. Your examples are both Nintendo games and they have particularly high quality standards and a focus on fun gameplay (ignore the water temple in Ocarina of Time).
Those are both Nintendo, not merely ‘Japanese’. However you may feel about Nintendo’s legal proclivities, they are a longtime major player in the industry and, despite the gimmicky nature of the last few consoles, produce a very consistent, high quality with a brand perception in the ballpark of Disney. Those two things make them the default choice for any content-conscious parents or grandparents buying for kids, which has historically been the bulk of the market.
//edit: I guess that is half the explanation- the other half is the now large population of gamers with very warm, nostalgic feelings for Nintendo IP after the massive impact it had on their youth.
It becomes even more impressive when you remember how many amazing games came out in 2023. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Pikmin 4, Street Fighter 6, Alan Wake 2, The Talos Principle 2, Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon, Final Fantasy XVI, Hi-Fi Rush, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Lies of P, Pizza Tower, most of these would win GOTY if they had come out this year instead.
fedia.io
Ważne