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A Case for Smartphone Games


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#1 Mercurius

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Posted 19 May 2016 - 01:49 AM

"Why not play a REAL game?"

 

This is mostly for Blue Leafeon, but I'm sure the other people who actually come here probably have similar sentiments.

 

First, watch this:

 

This is the final stage of Book 2 (the "second arc" of the storyline) in Chain Chronicle, a JRPG designed for iOS and Android devices. (There is also a version for the PSVita, though I'm not really sure why it's a separate game since mechanically there is no difference.) In other words, tablets and smartphones. Now by no means am I suggesting most of the game is this exciting or difficult, or implying that most smartphone games approach anywhere near such high quality, but the point is there.

 

Watching this, can you really say this game doesn't look like it was made for people that normally play games on dedicated consoles? (By the way, if you are screaming "HOLY SHIT!" at the realization of the wall of text below, you can just skip everything but the video itself. The video is the tl;dr, pictures being a thousand words and several in succession therefore counting for far more and all.)

 

"But, it doesn't have buttons!"

So I feel the need to point out that frankly, touchscreens pissed me off. They still do outside of this game actually and if it wasn't for how it would kind of defeat the point of convenience by purchasing a stylus to use on my phone I would do so to make the controls more precise.

 

However, this game is designed in a way that grants very little benefit to actually using buttons (without a touchscreen to assist anyway) because it was made for real-time gameplay and generally demands that you pay attention to all five (or seven in the case of a specific game mode) units in your team simultaneously. You need to be able to select and move different characters as quickly as you can, and buttons do not have as direct input as touchscreens do as a result of needing more translation of action and hence, further delay. (Like how I can think it's bullshit for me to have timed a block in a fighting game wrong, but know that in a duel done for sport I totally missed the mark.) The characters may attack automatically, but not including that as a function would make this game far more difficult for the wrong reason: the controls.

 

In other words, this game excels at making extremely good use of what it was designed for. There may not be that many inputs to choose from, but that does not mean the ones that are available to you hold the game back, because games do not need to have high complexity to provide a strategic experience. I believe most of you here have played Smash Bros. and at least one other fighting game to understand that SSB has significantly limited movesets but also know that it is taken seriously as a fighting game. Just like how the relevance of falling off the stage and having a unique damage system in Smash Bros. both gives it a new dimension that many fighting games lack, a game like Chain Chronicle (which is technically a tower defense game) can provide an interesting experience through fresh game design even if it may seem "dumbed down" to hardcore gamers at first glance.

 

"But, energy systems! This is all just an elaborate skinnerbox meant to ruin your life!"

I will be the first to say that there is nothing more detrimental to fun in this game than the existence of the energy system. You have no idea how much it pisses me off to lose in a quest that costs 30 AP to attempt, which equals four hours of waiting just to try again for gameplay that lasts a few minutes. It makes it much more difficult to build up skill and always makes you feel bitter over losing.

 

The energy system is also put in place to prevent players from being capable of infinitely farming currency to fight against chance with time and effort, and of course was meant to keep your attention on the game for longer than you should.

 

However, I will not say that this makes the game any less of a game rather than a chore, at least, relatively speaking in comparison to games on dedicated consoles. There are 1 AP (7 minutes of waiting time) quests in the game, and three of them are the hardest quests the game has to offer, so building up skill through challenges is still an option for hardcore players who want to show off. The one benefit this game gives me with its energy system is the opportunity to play something else without forgetting about this one, a serious problem many games on my backlog face. There is no other game I have played that keeps my attention on it even when I'm busy focusing on another one.

 

I mean sure, it ruins lives, but smartphone games are hardly the first of the games to be charged for the crime of attempted murder on time and/or relationship stability. Skyrim or any MMORPG ever, anyone? Any fighting game you are really into? Trading card game locals? Professional chess? Ace Attorney shakes its head in shame.

 

"So-called F2P games are really all just P2W cashgrabs!"

In Chain Chronicle, I currently possess over 50 characters (keep in mind only 6 characters can actually be put into one team) that can only be obtained using premium currency, that is, the currency you are supposed to convert from cash. Additionally, every month we can expect to receive a mediocre but serviceable unit that does not cost premium currency with stats that are on-par with maxed premium characters. With these characters I can clear the vast majority of the content in the game, and the hardest content that I can't rarely has anything that is relevant enough to clear it for besides bragging rights.

 

I have not paid for even the smallest possible microtransaction in this game and the community of Chain Chronicle (and presumably other smartphone games of its type) have a tendency to be massively entitled assholes about how much premium currency they can amass without ever having to pay a cent or even much effort. Which is to say, they have a reason to keep expecting more. It's a trend for these.

 

As someone who has played F2P games for half of my life, I think it's rather ridiculous what gamers expect out of a business. (That applies to games that aren't F2P and game consoles too. They are very inexpensive for their production and development costs.)

 

Yes, this game is clearly designed to exploit people who aren't stingy with their money. All characters you recruit with premium currency are done so through the virtual gachapon, in other words, it's gambling. So you can't even specifically pay for who you want. The game revolves around having events that give out limited time characters that they expect you to throw your virtual currency at until you are lucky enough to get the ones you want. The ones who use more money do in fact have a much greater advantage over everyone else. Some content is extremely difficult to clear without updating your power level by throwing more of your premium currency at the newest, hottest, strongest thing.

 

I don't mind.

 

I mean yes, I am not exactly pleased with the state of affairs and I would very much prefer that I did not have to leave it to chance, but even so, I don't mind. I've been lucky enough to get most of who I really wanted anyway and have an extremely large amount of stored premium currency because SEGA sucks at making new characters I actually care enough about.

 

The ones who will pay the most for the game are the power hungry. The ones who need to be stronger just because they can. The ones who want to show off how hard their team hits or how long it can survive rather than demonstrate how skilled they are at the game. The ones who feel the need to make the hardest content in the game as easy as they possibly can. The ones who keep saying meta this and meta that even in a game that doesn't even involve direct competition between players.

 

While it is certainly disappointing to see several F2P games become matters where you cannot clear content without paying for the game (the most prominent reason being time limits seeing as DPS is the classic factor in how OP something is), this is the most prominent reason it will occur. Companies would not resort to power creep if it wasn't for how they know just how power hungry most gamers are. If there is anyone I am pissed off at when it comes to microtransations, it's not the ones that exploit these kinds of customers, it's these kinds of customers themselves.

 

Fortunately, Chain Chronicle happens to be a fairly easy game most of the time that aims to be accessible to most people, one thing smartphone games have a trend in aiming to do to be successful. However, none of what it does makes it any less of a game outside of it not letting you play it as much as you want. All it takes is a company that wants to sell you a high quality product that just so happens to be a game.

 

Indie games tho, pfft why does anybody even care about those.


I believe in judgment of humans through their judgment of fiction, for nothing else tells better of their disposition freed from apprehension.


#2 ^Leo^

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Posted 19 May 2016 - 03:40 AM

My biggest "problem" with mobile gaming, which tbh is more of a personal preference than an actual issue, is that very few of these games on ios/android are designed to be played for extended periods of time. For the most part they are time wasters more than anything. Great, but that's not what I usually look for in a game. Also on the topic of energy I don't mind that in free games at all. It's how the companies make most of their money to continue developing. It's annoying, but I kinda see it as an extension of the mobile gaming scene being a way to waste time.

There are good games on smartphones it just takes a little bit of work to find them. And I think for the most part these games are targeted at average people. That is to say not even specifically towards casual gamers, they're supposed to be something that anyone in the world can just pick up and play without any real effort or instruction to learn more about how it works.

Edit: and dragon quest on Android needs landscape mode. Every single one is locked into portrait view, and it makes it annoying to play on my phone rather than on my ds/emulate on computer

#3 Mercurius

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Posted 19 May 2016 - 04:05 AM

A game that requires minimal instruction to learn about how it works doesn't make it less of a game.

 

Dark Souls III being a massive pain in the ass by having a whole bunch of stats I need to pay attention to that nobody can even provide me that much advice with doesn't make it more interesting in the slightest, for one...

 

I see your point about effort though. Not in that the game itself requires low effort but that the players can be mind-blowingly lazy. I think there is a certain kind of game "played" on computers that pretty much has no purpose but to give a sense of progress with minimal action from the player...those would be perfect for a lot of smartphone game players.

 

That said, I've heard that smartphone game players tend to like puzzle games, which I would not brush off as being low-effort or designed not to be played for extended periods of time. The energy system (which is not necessary for monetization purposes depending on the game...the one I'm playing hardly has anyone paying cash to play more, for one.) is the only real culprit when it comes to killing your drive to get passionate about the game.

 

There is one MMO I know of that is essentially a collection of puzzle games for one, and simply putting them in the context of an MMO completely changed the amount of investment you would be expected to have playing them. I played it for over 7 hours a day back when I was active. I believe there was also an RPG called Puzzle Quest which is presumably like what the title claims it is.


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#4 kirant

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Posted 19 May 2016 - 04:11 AM

Plague Inc.

 

That's enough of a case for mobile gaming.  


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#5 ^Leo^

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Posted 19 May 2016 - 09:15 AM

Puzzle quest is indeed a bejeweled style game with rpg elements, but after they moved it to the smartphones it became a bit of a cash cow, charging the players for levels past the first making the game cost nearly $20 iirc while the ds version could still be bought for $5 used. Also my point about the game requiring minimal instruction/effort wasn't a negative point. Just that the games themselves are targeted towards a different audience than a console game is(this is a generalization of course). Tetris is a perfect example of the kind of game that would show up on a smartphone. Just about anyone can pick up Tetris and figure out what to do with it. There are shapes, match them up. As soon as a line is destroyed, whether you knew it would happen or not, you'll see your points to up and want to do it again. You can stop playing whenever you want, and you don't need a lot of time to start playing either.

The second point I'd like to make is that the mobile gaming scene allows you to get a amazing number of games extremely quickly because the majority of them are free. People who get bored easily playing the same thing thrive here since they can just grab the next game without thinking about money, or the moral/legal problem that is piracy. Not that piracy has any place in this, but it's easier on Android phones than just about any other modern system, and yet isn't something you typically hear about because of all the freeware/people not knowing they can just sideload whatever the hell they want(there's even an option to allow it in the system settings).

#6 Blue Leafeon

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Posted 19 May 2016 - 11:01 AM

I'm just gonna quote Zac cuz he said my point better than I would have.

 

There are good games on smartphones it just takes a little bit of work to find them. And I think for the most part these games are targeted at average people. That is to say not even specifically towards casual gamers, they're supposed to be something that anyone in the world can just pick up and play without any real effort or instruction to learn more about how it works.

 

My point was that a majority of these games--and likely the ones specifically mentioned by Nintendo--aren't precisely aimed towards us, the dedicated gamers, as much as they are a general audience. I haven't seen the actual animal crossing or fire emblem games myself, but the fact that they're not on a Nintendo console kind of makes me think that they're trying to reach people who don't actually have said consoles. After all, the majority of people these days have smart phones. There's a much larger potential audience for said games.

 

That said, I've heard that smartphone game players tend to like puzzle games,

As a person who likes puzzle games, I can say that they are pretty good for booting up when you don't feel like actually putting effort into anything. I don't play games on my phone, but things like Mahjong, Tetris Attack-styled games, etc are pretty easy to pick up for brief periods to cure boredom.


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#7 Mercurius

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Posted 19 May 2016 - 04:54 PM

Puzzle quest is indeed a bejeweled style game with rpg elements, but after they moved it to the smartphones it became a bit of a cash cow, charging the players for levels past the first making the game cost nearly $20 iirc while the ds version could still be bought for $5 used. Also my point about the game requiring minimal instruction/effort wasn't a negative point.

The second point I'd like to make is that the mobile gaming scene allows you to get a amazing number of games extremely quickly because the majority of them are free. People who get bored easily playing the same thing thrive here since they can just grab the next game without thinking about money, or the moral/legal problem that is piracy. Not that piracy has any place in this, but it's easier on Android phones than just about any other modern system, and yet isn't something you typically hear about because of all the freeware/people not knowing they can just sideload whatever the hell they want(there's even an option to allow it in the system settings).

I think it's a bit much to compare the prices of a digital re-release of a game on a different, highly accessible platform and a used, physical version of a game meant for an outdated console...though Nintendo is nice enough to provide backwards compatibility. (Fuck you Sony.)

 

To be honest, it's very difficult for me to think of the quantity of free games on Android to be a boon. There's a part of me that wonders if the reason those particularly quick game hoppers exist is because a lack of understanding and advertising that reaches them got them to play a whole bunch of crappy games that mentally indicated to them that games aren't worth being invested in in the first place.

 

The other thing that concerns me is that high quality free to play games (from Japan at least) that are on smartphones are at significant risk of being shut down (compared to say MMORPGs which tend to take forever to die) because modern gaming audiences (in general, not even specifically the ones who play little outside of smartphones) are impatient about what they play. I can't remember all the details but basically because the market tends to expect customers to move on is part of why there are so many free, exploitative games out there and whenever a hit is tanking in sales everybody that's part of the semi-hardcore smartphone gaming crowd starts getting paranoid over what they like having impending doom coming. (This is also why I am not playing any other Japanese smartphone games. The other hits don't interest me and the ones that aren't have great risk in being taken away.)

 

My point was that a majority of these games--and likely the ones specifically mentioned by Nintendo--aren't precisely aimed towards us, the dedicated gamers, as much as they are a general audience. I haven't seen the actual animal crossing or fire emblem games myself, but the fact that they're not on a Nintendo console kind of makes me think that they're trying to reach people who don't actually have said consoles. After all, the majority of people these days have smart phones. There's a much larger potential audience for said games. 

I will not contest the statement about the majority of smartphone games, and I do remember Nintendo mentioning that because smartphones are a thing they would try to provide less casual experiences for the kinds of people that actually use dedicated consoles. However, the main reason why I made this topic is more because of Phantom of the Kill than anything.

 

Now I'm not trying to vouch for Phantom of the Kill itself given that I have never played it and it has been in softlaunch for ages by a company who screwed over the English version of Chain Chronicle(the same game shown in the first post) but I do want to point out that there could be and are a signficant number of games on smartphones that were designed to appeal to even longtime gamers, even if many may unfortunately either have no localization/translation or be localized in a particularly shitty way that dooms it to lack of success. Smartphones do have their advantages over dedicated handheld consoles (that we currently have) and they can overcome perceived weaknesses as a gaming platform by designing their game to make good use of its strengths.

 

It is true that games designed for the smartphone and ones designed for dedicated consoles tend to have different business models in mind, but a different experience does not necessarily make them underwhelming. It is very unlikely for an F2P CCG game to be very popular on anywhere but a smartphone for instance. There is a part of me that finds the evolving game that allows for an extremely high number of recruitable characters not necessarily bound to early or late game highly appealing, and online games have a tendency to be more thoughtfully balanced than anything offline when it comes to currencies and power by virtue of how its business model works. However, it is difficult to access or be aware of such games on anything but a computer or an Android/iOS device.

 

Phantom of the Kill is one of those F2P CCG games (from what I've heard) and going by trends I presume this means that it provides a version of "Fire Emblem" (since it is a knockoff and all) that you are quite unlikely to have the opportunity to play on a dedicated console. It probably has a lot more team-building options, things to do with it even if you beat the storyline, and by design is supposed to add more content indefinitely. It also is likely designed to be more comfortable to play without buttons than any port of a console game to smartphone would be. So the answer to "why play this game on a smartphone when its counterpart on a dedicated console sounds so much more appealing?" would be that there are qualities it has you will not be able to come to appreciate without seeing the context as different instead of inferior, and when I say that I don't mean to look at it from the point of view of a different type of customer, but as the same type you currently are.


I believe in judgment of humans through their judgment of fiction, for nothing else tells better of their disposition freed from apprehension.


#8 Cero

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Posted 19 May 2016 - 06:40 PM

Smartphone touchscreens suck majorly and that's why I hate smartphone gaming. You lose so much precision and speed on the phone screen and even when the game isn't fast they always have some thing with the touchscreen that's just fucked. Maybe I just had too many bad experiences and I'm for sure biased to hell. I hate smartphone gaming though lol. 


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