How I feel about the mobile gaming industry.

Let’s get right into the topic. This is going to be a very long article but i am just trying to express what I feel honestly.

I love the mobile platform and gaming. But if you combine these two together, it’s definitely not up my alley, especially these last few years.

I still remember the days when Fruit Ninja came out and everyone was clamouring about it on their iPhone. It was revolutionary, cutting fruits on your mobile phone, who would have thought. It was fun, simple and elegant.

Fast forward a few years later and now what do you get? Dot Arena, a watered down version of a RTS game where there are no strategies, you just spam all your skills whenever you can. You have 3 different types of resources to juggle between and they all generally mean money. You have a lot of buttons to click in the main menu compared to the game, which kinda makes me wonder if it is a management game or a RPG game.

Just a screenshot of the game, look at how much stuffs there are on the main menu? How many different resources and currencies it has? Gosh.

Oh and did I mention that this is not the only one? There are tons and tons of this kinda game on the Google Play Store, and a lot of them are just blatant clones of one another.

With the introduction of In App Purchases(IAP), apps have been trying to shove paid items, booster packs, cosmetics, promotion bundles down our throats more than ever. Whoever thought a shrunken DLC and put them into mobile is a good idea, I applaud you, you just ruined gaming for mobile.

Now I am not trying to say DLC or IAP is bad. It’s good if you want to give your players multiple choices to continue playing the game. I think DLC on PC and console kinda nailed that part, take Witcher 3 or Fallout 4 for instance.

On the other hand, IAP on mobile is just stupid. You have to pay $5 at a possible chance of getting a certain unit from a group of them that you really want. You can pay $10 for a bundle that gives you cosmetics and booster packs that doesn’t even mean anything, it just helps you advance faster. There are almost no story telling or whatsoever in these stuffs and yet you have to pay up till half the price of Witcher 3 Blood And Wine expansion to use them.

Yes I get it, developers and publishers have to earn money from their apps and games, I get it. But to the extent of getting your players hooked and pay $10 and get almost nothing out of it, at least for me, and you still feel good about it? Where are your moral values?! With ads, I still get it, it’s kinda like TV commercials, at least it still worked for me back when ads was introduced.

Next up are the games, you would think well paying $10 for a mobile game then that means the game must be good right? No. Absolutely ridiculous if you’re thinking that way.

Like I said above, a lot of free to play mobile games are mostly management games of some sort. You build stuffs, fight other players, upgrade stuffs, continue building stuffs, fight other players, upgrade stuffs, continue building stuffs. Oh wait I totally didn’t know I already said that. Oops.

But you see what I mean? Why don’t people just go play StarCraft or C&C of they love building stuffs so much. One can argue that they are PC games and not mobile games, then let me ask you, why don’t you play something similar on mobile?

Most likely they are going to be a paid game, but why not just pay it once and forget about paying it again. If an average player spends $10 ona free to play title. I rather you spend it in Final Fantasy titles or Kingdom Rush titles on mobile. They are much more polished. Go Google them if you don’t know what they are.

Now I am not saying all the free to play games are like this. Some are actually pretty good and I think this is how free to play should be done. These games include, well basically almost all of Rayark games, they are the creators of Cytus, Deemo and Implosion. Vainglory, a MOBA on mobile. And there are a lot of them out there.

I just want to say that I am, and a lot of people out there, getting really tired of how the mobile gaming industry is doing now, especially for free to play.

And phew, there goes my rant. I hope this article will affect how people think of mobile gaming now and perhaps together we can build a better place for mobile gaming.