God I fucking hate mobile games. It's so sad that's what kids are growing up on now.

  • hypercracker
    ·
    2 months ago

    Slay the Spire is a mobile game

    I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is a mobile game

    Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is a mobile game

    Hyper Light Drifter is a mobile game

    I mean yeah I know what you mean when you refer to "mobile" games but another way to look at it is that the gender gap in gaming basically disappears if you include mobile gaming, so the view that mobile games are not real games is arguably springing from male chauvinism.

    • Acute_Engles [he/him, any]
      ·
      2 months ago

      I think non men deserve to game without predatory skinner box mechanics regardless of platform

      • hypercracker
        ·
        2 months ago

        there are a lot of non-predatory mobile games which you would know if you know anybody who plays mobile games

        • Tabitha ☢️[she/her]
          ·
          2 months ago

          there are a lot of non-predatory mobile games with no marketing budget, no front-page presence on the google play, and no way for your average gamer to pick them out from the ocean of trash

          • hypercracker
            ·
            edit-2
            2 months ago

            Looking at the front page of the iOS app store games category page I see (excluding ones that say they're "for you"):

            • Age of Empires mobile pre-order (idk what this is, maybe it's got a bunch of in-game currencies)
            • MONOPOLY GO!
            • Roblox
            • Subway Surfers
            • Pokemon GO
            • Fallout Shelter
            • Genshin Impact
            • Monster Train (deckbuilding roguelike battles)
            • NYT Games: Word Games & Sodoku
            • Call of Duty: Mobile
            • Minion Rush: Running game
            • My Talking Tom 2 (some kind of game where you talk to a cat?)
            • Smash Hit

            idk it feels like this site is stuck in the mid-2010s perception that everything on the app store is a Zynga clicker Clash of Clans clone with a yelling man as the icon

            • Tabitha ☢️[she/her]
              ·
              2 months ago

              here's a review from Monopoly GO!

              From someone who has been playing for a year, it's going down hill big time. It was never this bad before. It's near impossible to complete any events, ANY of them without spending hundreds of dollars on dice.

              are you actually personally vouching for any of these games, or are you just assuming they're not skinner box pay to win cash grabs?

              • hypercracker
                ·
                2 months ago

                I'm not vouching for them, they certainly aren't all skinner boxes though. You could find a few but the skinner box rate is way above zero for PC and console games these days too.

            • Acute_Engles [he/him, any]
              ·
              2 months ago

              I don't know what most of those games are but if you say they are just regular games where you play them and can't use your wallet as an extra controller i admit to being stuck in the past like a big ol' silly billy

              • Tabitha ☢️[she/her]
                ·
                2 months ago

                that person literally copied a list of games from the iOS app store games, did not investigate if any were pay-to-win, did absolutely no fact checking, made no actual claims about the games, but has successfully convinced you that you are stuck in the past.

            • CantaloupeAss [comrade/them]
              ·
              2 months ago

              There's a game called Subway Surfers? While teenagers are killing themselves "subway surfing" in real life? Jeez lol

              • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
                ·
                edit-2
                2 months ago

                Subway surfers is an "ancient" mobile game by today's standards, basically a temple run clone, endless running game. Similar format to minion rush. I remember playing it over a decade ago on my first smartphone.

        • AndJusticeForAll [none/use name]
          ·
          2 months ago

          All the good ones like Monument Valley and Alto's Journey get ported because they actually transcend the extremely low bar of entertainment for being stuck somewhere with a phone and 7 minutes to kill.

        • Acute_Engles [he/him, any]
          ·
          2 months ago

          A number of my co-workers play mobile games and they all have like 2+ ingame currencies and "optional" ad boosts and shit.

          I will admit I don't have many friends into mobile games though. I'm old and crotchety so I can accept that my view of the entire platform is biased

    • Dirt_Owl [comrade/them, they/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      I disagree. More than half of those are ports and I actually find it more male chauvinistic to assume that women prefer mobile games.

      That's like telling someone who thinks Barbie is vapid "Actually most women like Barbie so actually you're sexist."

          • hypercracker
            ·
            2 months ago

            maybe you don't hang around women who play mobile games, but I know a few including my own mom, and they're mostly word puzzle games. wordle obviously is big, but that really crowbarred open the door and now there are an absolute ton of word-based games with pretty innovative mechanics.

            • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
              ·
              2 months ago

              Gen alpha kids generally aren't addicted to sudoku and crosswords lol. This seems like a major reach when it's obvious what the post is talking about.

              • Tabitha ☢️[she/her]
                ·
                2 months ago

                were people actually addicted to those, or was there just nothing better to do? Accoring to le reddit sudoku has had a decline, and it seems to correlate with the availability of do literally anything on your smartphone.

                • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
                  ·
                  2 months ago

                  No, that's what I mean. My nieces and nephews aren't playing puzzle games that older people may be on their phones. They're playing the modern day equivalent of 80s cartoons: corporate unregulated apps designed to get as much screen-on time as possible to push ads and microtransactions. If they were addicted to sudoku it would he an improvement!

        • BeamBrain [he/him]
          ·
          2 months ago

          49% of mobile gamers are women

          Unless nonbinary people are a huge part of the mobile game userbase, that sounds like a pretty even split of men and women to me.

    • Tabitha ☢️[she/her]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      so the view that mobile games are not real games

      the issue is probably about low quality, gimmicks, and exploitation, I think the problem is reinforced when your counterargument is a bunch of ports (exceptions that prove the rule), you might as well start calling all steam deck compatible games and emulatable retrogames mobile games.

      • Roonerino
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        deleted by creator

        • AernaLingus [any]
          ·
          2 months ago

          In the early days it was actually pretty normal to buy premium games (most pre-smartphone games were paid and I remember buying multiple games when I had an iPhone 3G), but as soon as people realized you could continuously milk people for subscriptions and microtransactions on a device they carry with them everywhere, it was all over. I'm sure there are still passionate devs making good mobile games, but that's not where the money's at.

          Separately, premium apps are a lot more common on iOS to this day. I don't know if there's anything about the App Store that encourages this or it's just a quirk of history, but I figured it was worth noting.

          • Belly_Beanis [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            2 months ago

            I had Bejeweled on my phone back in 2007 ad free and it was glorious. Unfortunately it was the old way of doing things where it was purchased through your cell phone provider, rather than through Google Play or the Apple Store.

            The current version is a fucking mess of ads, microtransactions, and dumb multi-player gimmicks.

        • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          2 months ago

          High quality paid games with decent graphics were a thing for the very first smartphones and iPods. I remember buying Need For Speed Hot Pursuit on a cousin's iPod 14 years ago because we didn't have a PlayStation or Xbox 360 to buy the game on yet. It was actually a decent port. But then mobile developers realised that you could milk in app purchases and that killed the paid game genre.

    • Tabitha ☢️[she/her]
      ·
      2 months ago

      yeah after I bought my $800 cellphone and $800 laptop, I'm totally going to also buy $800/year worth of consoles (I just assume all 3 consoles + games + controllers + online subscriptions cost $800/year).

      but also mobile games do kind of suck, like wtf im not going to pay you for fake fish.