Older Mobile Gamers?

Discussion in 'General Game Discussion and Questions' started by wonderspark, Jul 29, 2015.

  1. wonderspark

    wonderspark Well-Known Member

    Jul 29, 2015
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    Hey, TA folks! This is my first time posting under this account, but I used to post here a while back as selfawaregames.

    I had a quick question: How many of you are older folks - say, 30+, who grew up with console games but now primarily play mobile games?

    If so, do you miss some of the things that you used to love about console games? If so, what?

    For me, I grew up playing basically everything - PC games like Mechwarrior & the Bard's Tale to the original Metroid/Mario/Sonic/whatever. I kept playing stuff - SNES, Dreamcast, and everything that came after right up until I had a kid. Then my time to play games basically ground to a halt. Now when I see something like Witcher 3 or Dragon Age, I think, "Geez, I'm just never gonna be able to make any headway on that."

    But if I look at the current crop of mobile games, I find them generally unsatisfying. Sure, there are standouts (YMBAB, Hearthstone, Spellwood, Card Crawl, Vainglory, etc.) - but for the most part, most games just feel like "time killers". And I don't want to *kill* time. I want to do something meaningful with it - something that feels like *gaming*, and not like "How do I get from now to five minutes in the future as quickly and mindlessly as possible?"

    Is this something you feel, too? Something different? If you're finding things that scratch that "real gamer" itch, what? I'm sure I've gotta be missing a bunch of stuff. If you do feel it, what kind of old school games do you miss the most?

    Thanks!
    seppo
     
  2. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
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    Prepare for a long post ;)

    I'm a veteran gamer, brought up in the 80's on the ZX Spectrum, then Amiga, Megadrive then PC.

    Love handheld devices, had a Gameboy, GBA, Pocket PC and then a GP2X.

    I was stunned when i first saw an ipod touch and realised how many new and classic games i could have on this one device. At first the lack of physical buttons put me off but after practising and completing a few games with virtual controls i'm a convert.

    When i was jailbroken i had a lot of emulators. Now i've got some on my non-jailbroken device thanks to some emulators slipping through the app store (MAME/SNES/NES etc). Plus with builds.io you can pay $10 a year and get emulators for your non-jailbroken device.

    So yeah i LOVE the fact i have say 100 gameboy games, 50 NES games and SNES/Megadrive and tons of MAME games on one device, incredible.

    Plus theres all the new games out on iOS, many of which are a very high quality. Plus retro remakes, retro games officially coming out. Love it. Have about 500 games on my device and 100's of retro games for emulators.

    So one day i can play Mario Land on the gameboy, the next Manic Miner on the Speccy, another day an old Vectrex classic and then over to an old Atari 2600 game. Love it !!

    I do dip in and out of apps a lot, i'm not one of these young kids who buys a game and 8 hours later you see they post they've completed. I like to take my time and play a bit here and there (cant play non stop sadly due to family and job !)

    I've got a lot of new iOS games i love, Walking Dead/Bastion/Space Marshals/Nubs Adventure/Drylands/Transistor and many others. Yeah i'm sure theres some duds but a lot of these games i've mentioned are similar to lots of retro games but obviously with a new skin.

    Again i love retro classics like KOTOR or Baldurs Gate which i can go in and out of at any time.

    iOS gaming is incredible, been gaming since the early 80's and this is one of the best devices i've ever got. Such variety !

    As for old skool games i miss, still love Metroidvania style games, Traps n Gemstones on iOS is a brilliant metroid vania type of game. I've got a folder full of about 50 platform games, they do very well on iOS. Plus shooters are great.

    Then you have the old adventure games or Walking Dead style interactive adventures. Again such huge variety. Having Bards Tale on my device to play is great, who would have thought Vice City or San Andreas would be in the palm of my hand.

    PLUS the games are SO cheap. As as a kid on low pocket money games were often £7.95 or you took a gamble with some of the £1.99 cheap games, many of which were poor. Now years later i'm working, have a wage and games on iOS are a dolllar or a few dollars. Amazing amazing value.

    So yeah as a retro gamer i'm loving iOS, theres retro games to buy, theres retro games to play via emulators. I can play Vectrex/MAME/ZX Spectrum games on my iCade, love it.
     
  3. RHess00

    RHess00 Well-Known Member
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    Apr 28, 2012
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    I grew up on video games too. Pretty much every console from Atari 2600 to Playstation 3. I only use my PS3 for movies now. I switched to mobile because I felt like gaming was taking too much time from my kids. I can play on mobile while the kids watch tv and still be involved in conversations because it's so easy to pause and put the phone down and give my full attention.

    However, I do miss console games. The last one I played was Elder Scrolls Oblivion and nothing on mobile has come close to that game in my opinion. I also miss the Ratchet and Clank games. I just haven't found a mobile game that has given me the same level of enjoyment. I think we will get there eventually though. My only fear is that the price point of the App Store will prevent bigger and better games. If Oblivion were possible, I doubt that even $10 would make it profitable given the amount of resources it would take to make a game of that scope. Coming from console gaming I would gladly pay $40 to $50 for a console like game but I think I'm in the minority.

    For now I'll just stick to my emulators for all the classics and the amazing variety of original iOS games that might not be as good as console but for the price are still great.
     
  4. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
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    Ha ha i'm exactly the same, what with young kids it would be near impossible to play some console game for 3 hours one evening. With my iphone i can get gaming in here and there

    Saying that my daughters nearly 5 so at some point in the next few years she may want a console then i can get going again !
     
  5. RHess00

    RHess00 Well-Known Member
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    Apr 28, 2012
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    Yeah my daughters are 14 and 17 and since they grew up with iPods and iPhones, they don't really get consoles. It's sad.
     
  6. Jorlen

    Jorlen Well-Known Member

    Jan 7, 2009
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    I'm mostly a mobile gamer and play the PS4 console some of the time as well.

    Was brought up in the 80s so Atari, Commodore 64 and every console / handheld you can imagine.

    Being now a mobile gamer, what I miss most is support. Apple updates their OS so often that it often breaks older (and some of my favorite) games and then the developers aren't around to support it anymore so it just stops working.

    Back in my day, when you had a game you could play it forever. I still have some of my gameboy carts and they still work! Now, it feels like we are renting games, not really buying them. The upside to this - is cost. Mobile games (due to the competitive industry) now cost a fraction of what we used to pay (or still pay) for consoles or handhelds.
     
  7. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
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    Yeah that is frustrating, i tend to save all my ipa's on Dropbox as i know in the future if i want to play some of them they may not be on the app store

    A few break with the latest os which is annoying though.

    But the price of the games is amazing. I'm sure at some point in the future there'll be an emulator for IPA files. No one ever thought that arcade games of the 70's and 80's would be playable on a computer, then we had emulators where people were amazed they could play old tape or cartridge games

    At some point in the future there'll be an iOS emulator for older apps i'm sure
     
  8. Jorlen

    Jorlen Well-Known Member

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    The other downside to games being so cheap (and going on sale often) is that I now have way more games than I have time to play. When I was younger, we'd milk each and every game until we saw all the content, mainly because we had more time than money. Now it's the other way around and my backlog continues to grow!

    Note that this is only a downside because I lack the control to NOT buy more new games until I finish old ones. I am guessing I'm not alone in this!
     
  9. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
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    Yeah its a bit like emulators. With MAME for example you load a game and if you get fed up with it you can load another one of 5000 games in a split second

    In the old days with a game on tape (or if you spent £25 on a game) you would play it for a while even if you werent keen on it at first.

    With an emulator or a cheap 99c game if you dont like it early on its so easy and quick to just delete or try another one.

    And yeah i've got a huge backlog of games to go through !
     
  10. jsrco

    jsrco Well-Known Member
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    Oct 15, 2009
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    I am going to be 34 soon. I have been gaming 29 years. I play more games on mobile now because of taste. I love rogue-likes and having access to a large amount of them on mobile just makes it a no brainer for me. I have a PS4 and a PC to game on. I work in IT so I do not want spend more time on my computer than I have too. The PS4 is usually streaming Hulu or Netflix for background noise while I am at home.

    I am dating a woman who is in her early 20s and her and I both prefer the console experience. We watch each other play the Witcher 3 or play Borderlands together. I don’t have to deal with hardware requirements, settings, and it’s just easier to get into to start playing. Plus, that is the only way to play couch co-op Borderlands.
     
  11. wonderspark

    wonderspark Well-Known Member

    Jul 29, 2015
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    Thanks for the thoughtful responses! So just to clarify my original question a bit, what things do you love/miss about non-mobile games that you *don't* get from mobile games these days?

    Couch co-op Borderlands, for instance, scratches a few itches. There's loot, there's actual FPS gameplay (which still is a disaster, IMO, on mobile), but more than that, there's interpersonal interaction & socialization with someone you're playing with.

    So in that vein, what kinds of stuff did you enjoy from non-mobile games that you're *missing* now?

    Thanks!
    seppo
     
  12. TheOutlander

    TheOutlander Well-Known Member

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    Well, I recently turned 26 so I'm not necessarily a veteran of gaming but I still miss the split screen and the LAN parties (I still remember playing Battlefront 2 with a ton of friends at the school computer lab, I actually got a 2 months ban once) and also, the FPS games that don't relay on covers and aiming down sights, RTCW, UT, I really miss them.
    And something that I specially think is lacking on mobile gaming is local multiplayer using Bluetooth (some games did supported that a few years ago) or maybe games that do have player voice chat (something present on the Vita that I absolutely love), I don't really know, I just kinda miss the LAN parties with all the guys yelling at each other without using a microphone and hiding behind an online alias.
     
  13. jsrco

    jsrco Well-Known Member
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    Oct 15, 2009
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    Payment structure. IAP, premium currencies, and F2p kill me.

    The biggest thing for me that I miss is being on the same playing field as everyone else and ease of access. I pick up a console and it's the same experience no matter what, phones are not. The escape and immersion a console can provide. It's hard to get that from gaming on a mobile device for me.

    Controls is also an issue. I have to play with a matte screen on touch screens or my fingers get stuck to easy.
     
  14. klink

    klink 👮 Spam Police 🚓

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    #14 klink, Jul 29, 2015
    Last edited: Jul 29, 2015
    I've been playing games since the original Atari was released. You could say that gaming and me grew up together. If you're selective you'll find a wealth of satisfying games to play. I do almost all my gaming on my iPad. I have an iPhone 6 but it's hard on my eyes and fingers to play games on it.

    Here's a list of games to get you started (in no particular order):
    Waking Mars
    Crown Takers,
    Wayward Souls
    Ticket to Ride
    FTL
    Space Marshals
    Battleheart Legacy
    Sproggiwood
    Carcassonne
    Galaxy Trucker
    Blek
    Threes
    XCOM:EW
    Leo's Fortune
    Oceanhorn
    Star Wars Pinball
    BlastBall: Max
    VVVVV
     
  15. Exact-Psience

    Exact-Psience Well-Known Member

    Jan 12, 2012
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    I'll be very specific...

    Vagrant Story.

    Also, hours and hours of coop Contra, head-to-head Tetris, and exploring each stage of Solomon's Key.

    I will also never forget Harvest Moon, the very first farm simulator that doesnt have 49 currencies and 655 facebook invites.
     
  16. orangepascal

    orangepascal Well-Known Member

    I feel your pain, the very few times I do play a console game I play it on easy setting, so I know I'll experience the full story.
    Also I can't get into "sandbox" games.. I don't want complete freedom, I want to be entertained, and guided through the experience.

    Today's "sandbox" games are just so big, I get lost in there, and I have so little time to actually play games that I don't want that. I want a beginning and an ending, and have it completable.

    I love games like Uncharted tho, it just takes me a lot of weeks to complete since I only get maybe 1 hour every few weeks that I turn on the consoles (and then it needs 30-45 minutes of updating, which is much like loading a game from tape I guess).


    As for some cool mobile games, I'm a bit biased here, so I *hope* somebody else will mention my games ;)
     
  17. icepulse

    icepulse Well-Known Member

    Aug 7, 2008
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    I'm a big TBS fan, but more along the lines of Jagged Alliance & the orig. X-Com; LOS, cover, posture & elevation. Not the FFT type, where there isn't a safe bit of cover on the map.

    iOS has been a real renaissance platform for that type of thing. I just hope for a port of JA2, Silent Storm and H&D2 one day.

    For now, Battlelore, Enemy Within & Last Warlock keep me happy.
     
  18. DvDarkman

    DvDarkman New Member

    Jul 28, 2015
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    Ravensword. That's as close to elder scrolls as you can get.

     
  19. Zwilnik

    Zwilnik Well-Known Member

    One big factor that's different from old school console games and mobile is price. Even a mildly successful release at $30 or so (i.e. 100,000 sales or so) can fund a reasonable sized team of professionals long enough to put the required time and focus in to develop a good game with the sort of detail required to make it great.

    With mobile prices, the risk factors are much higher for a big project so it's harder to justify developer time for those details.
     
  20. Oldgamer

    Oldgamer Well-Known Member

    May 22, 2015
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    I'm an oldie, I'm 53 and my first introduction to gaming was getting an Atari 2600 from my mum for Xmas 1977. Little did she know that she'd start a lifelong obsession. My first actual computer was a ZX81, 1kb of ram (kb.. not mb or gb) black and white only, no sound and pixels the size of housebricks but oh it was such immense joy. I feel gaming has totally lost the sense of fun and joy that was the case in the early 80's.

    I remember buying magazines and typing games in line by line of code and then you'd have to debug it as there would usually be a typo that means the entire thing wouldn't work :)

    I do enjoy playing games on my iPad but I have to admit that I will never play free games as I quite despise the whole freemium thing but if others like it, good for them.

    I've tried emulators on my iPad but sadly it was a dead loss. I bought a Speccy one as the Spectrum holds a precious spot in my heart but I couldn't get to grips with the controls. I think for some games you need physical buttons and not touch screen ones. Trying to play Jetpac, Manic Miner and TLL on touch screen was impossible.
     

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