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Atari Co-Founder: Mobile Games Make Me Want To Throw My Phone (theguardian.com)
Will Freeman, reporting for The Guardian (condensed): One industry veteran sees arcades and mobile gaming as almost indistinct. He is Nolan Bushnell, co-founder of Atari. Often referred to as the godfather of video games (a phrase he dislikes), he is just about to make his debut in mobile game development, having established a partnership with Dutch publisher Spil, where he will help deliver at least three as-yet-unnamed titles. "When you look at mobile and arcade gaming, they're identical," Bushnell says. "Mobile has some of the same game constraints for the player, and that 'easy to learn, and difficult to master' metric." [...] "Generally, a tremendous number of mobile games are poorly designed," he says. "They can be so focused on graphics that they forget they have to get the timing right, and they have to have proper scoring constructs. I have been so pissed off with some mobile games I've wanted to throw my phone, even if I'm only going to hurt my phone there, and not the game."
The only mobile games I play are tower defense or RPG, where you usually don't have be perfect with your timing, in large part because of this:
>> "They can be so focused on graphics that they forget they have to get the timing right
My kids mostly play PvP games involving decks and armies (rather than "punch" buttons, etc.) on their phones. The home console or PC emulators are what we all use for action/arcade games.
Well-designed. Unlike this Google Chrome-on-phone keyboard entry system.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Gen Z is missing out and going backwards. Soon they'll be back in the Black and White era, trust me it'll be the next big thing for them.
The irony of a game developer pissed at a platform designed and intended for communications.
Anytime people want to stop calling it a fucking phone, I'm ready. It's not like we actually talk on the damn things anymore, and voice is about the last priority with smartphone development these days, as evidenced by the mood of a game developer driving next-gen phone software.
I would also recommend Get Off My Lawn.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Firstly, arcade games have a physical joystick and buttons which allows for high skill games, while mobile games have to do with imprecise touch screens with laggy input, which limits how challenging you can make the game (which is why most mobile games are dumbed down crap).
Secondly, arcade games allowed for other novel forms of input, such as light gun games, dancing games, and racing games where're physically on a jet ski or motorcycle and are leaning to steer. Mobile games don't offer anything like that.
Thirdly, arcades were as much about the social experience as they were about the gameplay. You'd be playing a fighting game and someone would come along and challenge you to a match. You'd get to know them and you'd meet the same people on a regular basis. I'm extremely unsociable but I always enjoyed the social site of the arcade.
The only comparison between mobile and arcade is that both can burn through your money at an alarming rate, but at least in the arcade you were having fun while most mobile games try to exploit human psychology to get you addicted to doing boring and repetitive tasks in exchange for a false sense of achievement.
Comparing mobile games to arcades is frankly an insult.
Other than Square games, which tend to be worth the cash, I've found that after Apple introduced IAP, it entirely destroyed game quality on iOS, with Android quickly following when Google introduced their IAP API. Tower defense games went from decent to impossibly hard, expecting people to pay a few bucks for powerups every game. Virtually every game out there changed to F2P/P2W.
Sorry, I'm not buying $100 in smurfberries/brains to actually play a game to its conclusion. I'd rather just not bother playing a game on my mobile device, and just buy a game from GOG or Steam, which will be well worth the price of admission with gameplay.
when is E.T. getting released ;)
Download for free, then pay through the nose for everything you want to do.
Graphics or gameplay are essentially secondary. It's basically all the same game.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.