Where did everything go wrong? (pic: Supercell)
A reader is frustrated with the current state of mobile game and how free to play has ensured a focus on microtransactions and monetisation.
Many years ago, I sat, happily, playing the Sims Mobile on my Sony Ericsson Walkman Phone. It had me wondering, as phones improve and more games companies jump on board, just how much potential there was, how much better mobile gaming could become… should become.
Fast forward a couple of years and the free-to-play model of gaming has not only become the standard but, to customers at least, the expected. To supplement the lack of sales income developers began running pop-up adverts after every few minutes of gameplay or locked bigger rewards behind longer video ads.
While it may have kept the games free for you and I to download it also meant the cost of entry for people wanting to make mobile games was dropping lower and lower. And with lower costs, generally, comes lower quality.
The top trending games on the Google Play and Apple Store began shifting away from pushing the envelope AAA titles to cheaply made, ad-riddled nonsense.
To see the wasted potential in mobile gaming you just need to take a quick glance at the current Play/Apple trending charts:
Incessant and dumbed down adverts, falsely representing their games.
Advert heavy, low budget clickathons that barely function.
Quick cash grabs and copy/pasted garbage
Pseudo-gambling games aimed at children, like some sort of digital vape pen addicting a whole new generation to loot boxes and the lucky dip mentality.
The top grossing games made the adjustment to generate more profit through small, in-game content transactions. This not only kept the game free to download and free of advertising, but it also locked progression behind limited timed events and tempting special offers. These could range from a few pounds for a quick boosting welcome offer to a game breaking bundle in the hundreds.
But it’s not all been for the worsening of the industry.
Some of the giants in gaming (Fortnite/GTA Online/Call Of Duty for example) have started making parts of their games free to play, with huge amounts of extra downloadable content. Then they can then offset the costs with these microtransactions.
Again, this is a double-edged sword, with the consumers who pay larger sums of cash typically having an equally large advantage over the average player. Eventually, the playerbase is divided into free-to-play and pay to win tiers in terms of progress; this is especially true when it comes to leaderboards and rewards.
Now, nearly 20 years later, I hold a phone in the palm of my hand with a thousand times more computing power than my old Ericsson W810i, and it’s still sitting on all that potential from two decades past.
As of right now, the only way I can get a satisfactory gaming experience on my mobile is by downloading a (not so legitimate) Game Boy emulator and playing that.
What a shame. What. A. Shame.
By reader Jay
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A reader is frustrated with the current state of mobile game and how free to play has ensured a focus on microtransactions and monetisation.
