I think the biggest issue is titles; what people expect of mobile games, perpetuating itself into a weak catalog of original titles, with a few good ports. Mobile games are largely designed to be heavily-monitized, Games as a Service, and/or gacha titles… profitable design choices, but not because they make games better.
Having a more standard control scheme would help get more ports of console games, but I’d love to see more mobile games that use the existing interface/formfactor well. Pokemon Go circa 2018 was a good game that only works on mobile, and I’d love to see more of those.
Plenty of enjoyable classics run in emulators on midrange phones. I was actually quite excited for the Android Switch emulator that used the fact the Switch is just a weird Android tablet to its advantage, which would let games run at near-native speed or even faster, but they got DMCA’d to death.
People make gacha games because hundreds of millions of people are paying serious money for them. They’re not the only option, though. Better games are available and play just fine, people just don’t want to play them on their phones. RPGs like Genshin, interactive multiplayer games like Roblox and Fortnite, In China and some other Asian areas, mobile gaming (as in, gaming, not the weird loading bar simulators with microtransactions) is actually very popular, to the point that there are specifically PUBG Mobile eSports matches.
As for games on phones, games like Mini Metro, Super Hexagon work very well on phones, even better than on desktops in my opinion. Card games (Heartstone, Marvel Snap) work very well on tablets. Various fitness-oriented apps also exist that can’t work on any other platform (except maybe on smart watches?). I’ve also tried a bunch of puzzle games that can only work on handhelds because they required turning the phone or moving around the room.
You need to look beyond the most popular games on the Google Play frontpage, but if you scroll down a bit past the shitty cashgrabs, there are some real gems you can play on mobile phones.
I think the biggest issue is titles; what people expect of mobile games, perpetuating itself into a weak catalog of original titles, with a few good ports. Mobile games are largely designed to be heavily-monitized, Games as a Service, and/or gacha titles… profitable design choices, but not because they make games better.
Having a more standard control scheme would help get more ports of console games, but I’d love to see more mobile games that use the existing interface/formfactor well. Pokemon Go circa 2018 was a good game that only works on mobile, and I’d love to see more of those.
Plenty of enjoyable classics run in emulators on midrange phones. I was actually quite excited for the Android Switch emulator that used the fact the Switch is just a weird Android tablet to its advantage, which would let games run at near-native speed or even faster, but they got DMCA’d to death.
People make gacha games because hundreds of millions of people are paying serious money for them. They’re not the only option, though. Better games are available and play just fine, people just don’t want to play them on their phones. RPGs like Genshin, interactive multiplayer games like Roblox and Fortnite, In China and some other Asian areas, mobile gaming (as in, gaming, not the weird loading bar simulators with microtransactions) is actually very popular, to the point that there are specifically PUBG Mobile eSports matches.
As for games on phones, games like Mini Metro, Super Hexagon work very well on phones, even better than on desktops in my opinion. Card games (Heartstone, Marvel Snap) work very well on tablets. Various fitness-oriented apps also exist that can’t work on any other platform (except maybe on smart watches?). I’ve also tried a bunch of puzzle games that can only work on handhelds because they required turning the phone or moving around the room.
You need to look beyond the most popular games on the Google Play frontpage, but if you scroll down a bit past the shitty cashgrabs, there are some real gems you can play on mobile phones.