Smartphone gaming has seriously and perhaps irreparably damaged the gaming industry. The issue here is the greed of people who are now actively trying to sell games to a base of consumers who are clearly not gamers. And now they are courting these people and actively paying more heed to non-gamers then gamers. Perhaps we should've saw this coming, putting gaming devices into the hands of people who, ordinarily, have zero interest in playing video games. A significant portion of people who own smartphones, be it iPhones or some sort of Android phone, own that device primarily as a phone and/or a social media hub. They don't give a damn about video games. If you sell them a semi-amusing distraction-type game for 0.99c, perhaps they'll bite, or if you offer them the framework of a game for free, perhaps you will pique their interest, but that's about it. And now the whole thing has gone straight to hell. Not even I could have predicted that developers would be so thoroughly influenced by this non-gamer consumer base.
My opinion is quite the opposite, smartphones have finally brought gaming to the masses. My parents are a perfect example as they haven't owned a piece of gaming specific hardware since the Atari 2600 and now both regularly play games on their iPhones. Just because you consider people that play freemium games and facebook games "non-gamers" doesn't mean that's the least bit accurate. People that play Farmville and Angry Birds are "gamers" in the same sense that people that play Starcraft and Call of Duty are "gamers". The freemium games on iOS are extremely easy to ignore and still make up a tiny percentage of the market. The reason they keep making them is because they are extremely popular and make a ton of money. How on Earth could that be the case if the people playing them aren't gamers?
How Vita Restores the Gaming Industrty Seriously though, the industry isn't ruined.. Where have you been? On TouchArcade? Gaming IS moving forward constantly. The fact is, not enough Smartphone players are willing to pay for quality games. Mini games built for the touchscreen may always dominate the app market, like IB, Temple Run and Angry Birds for example. If you want true gaming then I'd say it's safe to recommend you look elsewhere. If you find the prices are too steep elsewhere, then I guess that's why you're in the crowd of smartphone gamers. I like these games. I've long supported Gameloft because they pushed the limit of mobile gaming. But even they have no room to push further and sell at comfortable prices, thus bringing about the move toward the ever dominant freemium model. I'll still have my iPod and look forward to some cheap, easily portable games but I don't expect much for the "premium" price of six dollars.
This is a good topic. As a console gamer, I recently got into the smartphone gaming. I personally don't think it will ruin gaming as the 2 are very different. I believe this has the potential of helping developers increase the gaming market and possible integrating the console with the smartphone. Only time will tell. Although I do see a lot of useless games for smartphone, but no matter what it really about the money. ( just my opinion)
If people want to debate this, there is a debate to be had. Mostly, we are talking about the over saturation of casual gaming and how it has damaged the overall profitability of so-called hardcore/dedicated games within the gaming industry. Mainstream game sales are way down, percentage-wise, from where they have been in the past. People are expecting so much value for so little price that it has now become difficult to compete. You can called this the "Angry Birds effect." We are talking about countless hours of content for 0.99c. How is the average developer supposed to compete with that? Expectations have become somewhat unrealistic and understandably difficult to fulfill. With that said, let it be known that I did not create this thread.
I guess the easiest way to put this is that smartphones have fractured the video game marketplace, and now everyone is scrambling to pick up the pieces. In some sense, I predicted this was going to happen years ago, a gamer class warfare of sorts (casual gamers vs hardcore gamers.) And I was scorned and ridiculed for it too. But this goes beyond whatever predictions I might have made. It has move beyond the AppStore and has trickled into the whole of the industry. Hopeful this will result in adjustments, and not some sort of a collapse.
This is, quite literally, the exact same way I feel. To it's entirity. Sure, some of the games that have been released, particularly on iOS, have been extremely impressive, by many stretches. For me, one's that particularly shine for me, are games that not necessarily look technically and overly impressive, like the Infinity Blades, Dead Space, or even Modern Combat 3 for instance. Games that have really shine for me are the ones with curious twists on certain already popular mechanics, like Battle Heart for example, or Epoch and even Infinity Blade. Games that, while would be cool to see on, say, a gaming console like the 360, are much more easier to control with a touch screen vs. a physical controller. I like games like that on iOS cause, well, we don't have a physical controller for all games. While it's cool to see these new controller types coming out for the devices, like the iCade or the 60beat, let's face it, Not every game is going to universally accept it. While I love having games like Modern Combat 3, Order & Chaos, Street Fighter, Resident Evil and so on, which are mobile versions of already popular console titles or games in the genre, I don't play them for a hardcore factor or anything. I will play the console/PC iterations and get much more enjoyment out of those versions more. The thing of the matter is, while the gaming market has evolved a ton in terms of distribution, marketing models, and so on, it has, at least in my eyes, progressed as a whole. There seems to be these new factions that mobile gaming has created though. There are, Casual Mobile Gamers, playing shit like Angry Birds, Words with Friends and Fruit Ninja, and there are Hardcore Mobile Gamers, playing things like Dead Space, Modern Combat 3, Infinity Blade II, you get the idea. Then, there are the preexisting factions, of casual gamers, who play games on Consoles or PCs, playing things like Super Mario Bros, The Sims, or the Dance and Rhytm Music Games. Then there are the Hardcore console gamer, who will argue with a Hardcore PC gamer, that the games they play, like Call of Duty have the best communities, thus picking them over their PC counterparts. Something to note about these guys as well, is that most will complain about this, and say the game is better anyways, but it's generally cause they cannot afford a good PC. Then there is the Hardcore PC gamer, who deep in their heart knows that a Mouse and Keyboard will trump a controller any day, not to mention their graphics and computing powers would devour any gaming console. So, righteously, they only play hardcore PC games, like World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, Battlefield, etc. Then there is the "Gamer". A wide varietied type of gamer who doesn't give a F*CK about any of the for-mentioned crap, and just plays games that they like, liking quite a few genres, on any given platform they like. One minute we'll be playing Skyrim or Battlefield 3 on the PS3, then we'll hop on our dusty ol' WoW account for the newest content patch, and while were waiting for the patch to download and install, were playing Zombieville USA 2 or Chuzzle on our iPhones. We prefer taking our 3DS's for Starfoxing on car rides, or playing some Ocarina of Time when your room-mate is playing something on the living room TV, but sometimes you'll want to play a quick few rounds of Bejeweled, or rack up a bit more distance in Canabalt. We'll play anything we deem fun. There are several different markets for several different target consumers with even more varieties of attitudes. To me, the Mobile Game market ruined itself, well, more the community than the Developers and Publishers themselves anyway. I am not going into a heated discussion about games and their AppStore pricings, but when you have a decent amount of vocal individuals with the mentality that "Final Fantasy III for 12.99? Outrageous! It should be $.99 at most!", and the developers see these remarks, it scares them away it seems. That's why I don't honestly think that the AppStore Market is going to evolve much further than that. We've seen some huge change in the way games have been developed, sold, and how much graphically they have improved over the course of it's short life. It's hard to predict, especially in the wake of the almighty Freemium model proving to be more successful than the average Hardcore Mobile gamer would like to see.
Im confused, what exactly is the point youre making?? games are too casual..... games are too cheap..... people who used not play games now are....... I suppose a few things have to be cleared up. Who are casual gamers and who are hardcore gamers?? What are the "casual" games and what are "hardcore" games?? If you could answer those and make a clear point I may be able to give you a proper reply.
Are you replying to the OP or the guy above you? For the record, "casual gamers" usually refers to those who just play games like Angry Birds or FarmVille or any other quick pick up and play stuff. "Hardcore" refers to players who enjoy more 'hardcore' games like MC3, Deadspace, Street Fighter, Order and Chaos, Shadowgun, etc. In Booch138's examples, I'd put myself into the plain ol' "gamer" category as an AppStore customer, as I tend to play anything that holds my attention.
Alright, so I started this particular thread by taking dumaz's seriously off-topic comment from another upcoming games thread. I did so for three reasons 1) it was seriously off topic; 2) it addresed an interesting topic; 3) it centered around a particular argument that sounds good, but it's actually a bit of nonsense. To be clear, "casual" gaming was neither created nor popularized on the iPhone. There is, of course, another gaming device that was put in the hands of people who have no serious interest in gaming: it's called a PC. In fact, every single popular smartphone casual gaming genre -- match 3, tower defense, physics puzzlers, time-management, hidden object, you name it -- was introduced and gained popularity on the PC. Even the trend of making smaller/simpler versions of console games got it's start on the PC -- Flash gaming, anyone? And as well all know, the whole microtransaction thing became a phenomenon on Facebook. The iPhone simply made these genres available in a portable format. But the true triumph of casual gaming came not from the PC, but, ironically, from Nintendo. It is difficult to underestimate the effect that the Wii's (and to a large extent, the DS's) skyrocketing sales had on the video game industry. During it's heyday, the Wii destroyed its PS3 and XBox360 competitors -- it wasn't even closed. Back in 2008, when there was no such thing as iPhone gaming, folks were making the same kind of doom-filled predictions about the rise of casual gaming, but using Wii Sports and Wii Fit as their "case in point". There's no question that the gaming industry's changing. And few would argue that the iPhone (and smartphones in general) have had a role in the transformation, particular in the portable gaming end of it. But the forces that are rocking console gamings extend much further than smartphones.
I can see the truth in the initial post (Kinect anyone?), but smartphones are not the only guilty party. Pretty much every major player in the gaming industry has been looking for a way to broaden the market, and now the trick has been found they're all jumping on at once. It means a ton of shit games and a ton of annoying people who know f*** all about the games some of us are used to, but until we actually see a notable decline in so-called "hardcore" games, I'm not going to worry. Let the kids have their fun; I managed to ignore the stupid rubber bands shaped like ponies, I can ignore FarmVille and Nintendogs as well.
Second that. Playing games on the iPod, iPad, Mac, 360, Wii, and 3DS. As long as it's a good game, everything is fine. A fan of Angry Birds and Skyrim and all the quality games in between.
I bought my original Touch a few years back and liked the casual gaming aspect of it so much that I decided to purchase a PS3 and now have a growing collection of both casual and hardcore games.
Namco Bandai: Cheap free-to-play games are harming high-quality releases 'Free-to-play games can't be high quality' Its from an article currently posted on Pocket Gamer UK
Well that's just not true. You could generalise cheap, free to play games and come to the conclusion that they're all most all low quality, but to say they can't be high quality would be ignorant. If they're not being funded by the players they're probably being funded by something else. Either that or they're indie games and the definition of "high quality" differs entirely.
