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In the last 5-7 years I've noticed that mobile games have devolved info always online p2w shit

What the fuck happened?

The only good games on phone are now emulators and a few Foss games

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[-] frog@beehaw.org 3 points 6 months ago

You get what you pay for. If you download a free game, then of course it's going to be full of pay-to-win microtransactions. Although there are issues with greed in some larger games run by big companies, the reality is that game devs deserve to earn a living too, and that means at some point a game needs to be paid for.

There are still plenty of good quality mobile games out there, they just don't tend to be free to download. Back when I had more free time, I actually got good usage out of the Play Pass on Android, which was £5 a month and gave me access to a catalogue of excellent mobile games with no microtransactions at all, the vast majority of which were single-player, offline games. Literally the only reason I'm not still subscribed is I just don't have time to play mobile games at the moment - the chances of me subscribing again over the summer when I'm not at uni is high.

[-] stardust@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 months ago

You also don't get what you pay for when it comes to mobile. Had some games get delisted so it's not even downloadable anymore and even though I kept it on my phone I can't run it because it fails the license check. Mobile game isn't worth spending money on.

[-] heygooberman@lemmy.today 3 points 6 months ago

Now that you mentioned this, I do recall in the early days of mobile games, back when the App Shops were first introduced, there were games that you would pay somewhere between $1 and $5, and you get the whole thing. No in-app purchases, no ads, and no lotteries for special characters or gear. I remember Square Enix had some really good JRPG games that were made specifically for the iPhone and iPad. Chaos Rings and DrakeRider were two games I recall playing, but they were much more expensive compared to the usual games I found. But, when you paid for it, you got the whole game and all.

I think mobile app developers have realized that they could get more engagement and cash from their users if they made games that had a gambling aspect to it. Kinda like the casinos in Vegas, the house always wins, but you keep putting in money on the hopes you get a jackpot.

That being said, there is one freemium game that I do find quite fun, and that is Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe. The thing that makes this freemium game a bit different is that Square Enix is quite generous in their in-game currency. You can actually do quite well without making any in-app purchases.

[-] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 months ago

I'm in the game industry. This is entirely person observation I have not studied this topic so can't source anything

The people I saw going to early mobile market were a lot of handheld console and flash game devs and companies. They were adapting the closest existing game designs and brought with them a "small game small cost" philosophy. It also wasn't really known yet how impulsive people are on phones. So it was an unproven market with smaller teams and people making yester era design choices. There also used to be a few bigger games with bigger price tags but people didn't buy into those because anyone willing to spend that on a game at the time would have had a console or PC and could buy a better experience there for the same price.

The only mobile game experience I have was back in like 2012, smart phones were really taking off, and the market for mobile games was proven. The company I worked for we built a release ready game but it never got released. We couldn't sell it to investors because the monetization was never aggressive enough for them (the investor money at that point was less about making the game and more to fund marketing and stabilizing the studio as a long term business). I quit when my job stopped being dev work and started being round tables about how to psychologically trick players into paying more. Anyway with so much focus on heavy monetization it stopped being economically worth it for a lot of startups to actually make good games when thinly veiled skinner boxes pleased the investors all the same

[-] blindsight@beehaw.org 1 points 6 months ago

I'm feeling the same way about Minion Masters. I just play it on my Steam Deck, but it got an Android release recently. They gave away a few of their "DLC" packs (which is how I found it about it), so maybe my experience is a bit atypical, but I've just been playing for a week or so and I already have more than half the available cards and enough currency that I can craft any cards I really want to finish a deck.

I haven't paid a cent. It's so generous with its freemium model that I'm probably going to buy an in-game currency pack if I'm still playing once my Google Rewards wallet ticks high enough to buy one.

[-] quenpwn@kbin.social 2 points 6 months ago

Gacha games

[-] stardust@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 months ago

Best mobile games are Nintendo DS games that are completely touch based, which end up feeling like native experiences such as Kirby Mass Attack.

[-] infinitevalence@discuss.online 2 points 6 months ago
[-] tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 months ago

There was someone in reddit awhile back that started a community review site because there were so many bad games to sort through. I've found some good ones through there

https://minireview.io/

[-] realitista@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago

Because everything sucks now.

[-] Sneptaur@pawb.social 1 points 6 months ago

The only good new mobile games are on Apple Arcade, which is behind a paywall. It sucks but what can ya do.

[-] Blxter@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Not gonna lie I'm still hitting clash of clans... Paid for maybe 5 months of gold pass but no longer been playing since I was in middle school. Took like 6 years off though

[-] goatbeard@lemm.ee 1 points 6 months ago

Super Auto Pets

[-] Turmbaumeister@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 6 months ago

Have they ever been good? The sad thing I can tell you as a mobile dev(not game though) is that people on Android don’t want to pay for apps or games, on iOS it’s a bit better but still way worse than PC or PlayStation. There’s also rampant piracy on Android, both from users but even more so from shady app clones Google ignores. As a result free to play, always online with microtransactions is basically the only way to make money

[-] redditReallySucks@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 months ago

The good ones are mostly pc ports (dead cells, stardew vally)

[-] kratoz29@lemm.ee 1 points 6 months ago

At least in Android you can install old games yet, I just installed Nimble Quest and had a blast as of recently.

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this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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