Game play: Tried and tested, or new and innovative?
Mobile gaming has risen in popularity to the point that companies are able to make tens of millions of dollars per month on in-game purchases alone. Take for instance King, the makers of the popular Candy Crush Saga game for iOS and Android. The company earns more than $860,000 per from in-game purchases. And this is not even the top-grossing game for mobile devices.
You can name a few other titles, and you would be sure to find out that they’re earning buckets of cash, too, mostly from in-game purchases. Take Clash of Clans, Angry Birds, Temple Run, Subway Surfers and whatnot. With social buzz and the sheer number of mobile devices out there, these games have quickly gained traction among both casual users and avid gamers.
Which brings us to the question of innovation. A handful of games out there would usually copy or clone the idea of other games and perhaps do some tweaks or improve on the platform a bit. This made me consider whether we’re just playing the same games over and over. Take endless running games, for one. An example of an endless running game is Subway Surfers, in which the player takes control of a young graffiti artist running away from the subway security guard. But if you’ve played Agent Dash, where a spy runs inside buildings or across terrain, or Minion Rush, in which Minions from the Despicable Me movie series collect bananas while running through neighborhoods and science laboratories, the basic game platform is similar. Yes, you’re probably going to find differences, but there are familiar gameplay elements.
The formula remains, and yet developers would usually launch games based on the same premise. And so, while you are running away from different things in these games — monster monkeys or gorillas in Temple Run, for example — it’s still an endless runner, and it might get tired after so many similar iterations.
Still, some would deviate from the formula a bit in their updates, in order to keep things fresh. Think of Angry Birds Space, which put a new twist to the flick-and-release physics action that made the first Angry Birds title so popular. Just recently, Rovio released Angry Birds GO!, which drastically deviates from the premise of the original.
Early reviewers are already saying that GO! might knock out Mario Kart as the most popular in the racing genre. And what’s even better is that it shares some of the physics-oriented properties of the earlier Angry Birds releases (because the go-karts run downhill, dependent on gravity to run), while mixing in racing elements (and bonus items) reminiscent of Nintendo’s Mario Kart.
But would Angry Birds fans agree, and suddenly switch from breaking structures to driving cars? That is the big question. We will have to wait until GO!’s actual release come December to find out. But if early reviews and previous are any indication, casual gamers will keep on downloading and playing these games — and spending money on items — anyway.
Personally, as a fan of Mario Kart, I’m excited for GO!
Image credit: Playing video game on smartphone / Shutterstock
