I suggest the Deconstructor of Fun blog if you're really interested in the subject, and yes, it is fascinating.
Thanks for this, incredible in-depth articles! Wow! This is actually the type of content Touch Arcade needs. Their prediction on why Supercell will not launch Brawl Stars: https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/blog/2017/6/22/brawl-stars-can-supercell-do-it-again How a player spent half a million dollars on Game of War and its design choices: https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/blog/2017/7/21/4x-games-the-secrets-of-machine-zones-success-zpm56 https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/blog/2017/7/21/4x-games-the-secrets-of-machine-zones-success-syhyh-r2wf8 Clash Royale Greatness - What everyone outside of Touch Arcade sees: The first step is creating a game that is familiar yet new. In the case of Royale, it is a mix between Clash of Clans and Hearthstone. The lanes in my mind have nothing to do with MOBAs but function as a simplification of battle AI. The second step is to keep the feature set simple. A lot of companies go for “feature parity” when launching their games. I believe this is a mistake since you can build good end-game features only once you have player behavior data. The third and final step is the focus on polish. Well-balanced economy, beautiful graphics and lack of bugs create a feeling of quality. https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/blog//2016/02/clash-royale-next-billion-dollar-game.html https://www.deconstructoroffun.com/blog/2017/3/30/x-reasons-why-you-cant-stop-playing-clash-royale Wow, premium quality articles on extremely popular games!!
I don't think the anti-f2p complaints would matter. f2p seems to be a universally disliked model, that really, what site WOULDN'T have such posts? Interesting site. Thanks for the link!
Reddits/Official forums of people who actually play and love these games? You know, the VAST MAJORITY of mobile gamers?
I love how a vocal few love to surmise, over and over again, that FTP is universally disliked; in their small universe it is. That’s fair, but it is inaccurate and it’s getting really old and it’s actually becoming a bit offensive at this point.. From now on, consider me a vocal opponent of this archaic mindset.
This is tricky. Certainly with the amount of money generated by mobile gaming, and the complete ubiquity of the platform, and its increasing adoption for gaming, you would think there would be a way for media covering mobile gaming to thrive. How many mobile-focused gaming sites/publications can you think of? Now compare that to PC and console gaming media. Huge disparity. Especially, as has been pointed out, since profits for mobile are now surpassing the traditional game platforms. Maybe it has to do with a lot of mobile gaming being generally more “casual,” and therefore the audience views it more casually, and consumption of media related to mobile gaming is more casual. Mobile gaming started as very niche (and TA with it) and generally drew indie developers long before the major publishers were involved. So to a significant degree, the TA community’s indie and premium preferences reflect those roots. I don’t think the answer is for TA to radically transform. That would alienate the existing audience without any reasonable expectation of a new, dedicated audience suddenly emerging. But the site could certainly grow. Really, I think you just have to look at other entertainment media. Movie-focused sites, for example. The writers/reviewers at a movie site might prefer a deep, quiet drama by an indie studio. So they will cover it, and review it highly. But they will also cover the latest Michael Bay cgi action spectacle. They may hate it, and review it poorly, but its part of the same industry. So the idea for TA would be to expand to encompass the wider picture without surrendering their identity. And it’s not a simple transition or a quick fix when the staff is small and belts are tight. Eli and crew are not fools. They know their situation well. It’s just that there are a lot of factors to consider, but limited time and resources to work with. The changes in the market have happened fast enough to spin the heads of anyone tracking it, let alone attempting to cover it in any depth. It’s no surprise that they’re having to pedal awfully fast to keep up. But I’ll stick with the site, and I don’t see its extinction coming so soon.
Well i dont think Touch Arcade did a review, had a quick google and they had an news item about going VR but i dont think a review. Sadly TA cant review every single game, i love their reviews but i know they cant do it all. Same for Pocket Gamer, they wont be able to review every single release every week either. Seen plenty of apps on the store where in the info it mentions a touch arcade review.
It's funny that the TA staff get awfully exasperated at the anti-FTP purists, and yet when it comes down to their reviews they seem to exclude almost everything FTP, save for the odd Eli 5-starrer for a biggie. There've been a few cool online multiplayer battlers that may have been worth a review, like recently Mayhem or one of the PUBG clones, or older ones like Counter Ops and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, all staples of any online IOS collection. Not whining, though; I guess those games can require a fair bit of time to get a bead on, and they don't go in for Pocket Gamer-esque "I'm still only on the second level, but from what I can tell..." reviews. Seems like focusing on those sort of games, which, as long as the servers stay up, will have a much longer lifespan than most flash in the pan IOS games, may be a good start. I mean, they write articles about them, but very rarely review them. That said, I suspect hitman may be my polar opposite in every conceivable way- I don't painstakingly pore over a product's margins before I allow myself to enjoy something- so this isn't me agreeing with him here. I hope.
The problem is when you come here first expecting this to be the definitive source of all good games. That's a bit of a let down for me that it isn't that. Not to knock TA, but that just says 'must look elsewhere as well as this site', it's a bit like films and a film has come out your favourite film site hasn't covered it and you are going to be a bit disappointed. (Admittedly a ridiculous number of releases come out for the iPhone /iPad)
We don't put a lot of emphasis on reviewing free to play games because it takes you less time to download and try than it does to read one of our reviews. Also, with absolutely no purchase decision to be made, there's very (very) few people out there who are waiting to hear whether or not a free to play game is good before downloading it. Instead, we focus on articles that are more along the lines of "Hey this is neat you should check this out if it sounds cool. In the case of Guns of Boom, that's what we did- http://toucharcade.com/2017/08/18/augmented-reality-turns-fps-guns-of-boom-into-a-spectator-sport-with-the-help-of-arkit/ http://toucharcade.com/2017/10/10/guns-of-boom-goes-ar-with-new-spectator-mode/ Before it gots its AR mode Guns of Boom was just an ultra-derivative shooter which honestly didn't really seem to stand out in any meaningful way. The big F2P games we do review I mostly just pick up myself and write about them because I like them a lot and want to tell people. They typically generate very little traffic, because, again, no one is sitting around going "Boy I hope someone reviews Candy Crush so I know whether or not I should download it." If it interests them, they already have it, because it's free.
Fair enough TA did have a couple of articles on it then, I had just searched via the TA app and it didn't say article. You say about CandyCrush but then you have featured Clash Royale which was free, and got many of us into it. I guess I just wonder if it's a different opt than when TA was starting out. Emphasis on premium games over free games.
In the last 24 hours we posted reviews for six premium games. We really just cover the App Store. Some weeks things are all free to play, other weeks there's loads of premium stuff.
The purchase decision in F2P is MUCH BIGGER than premium games. What are the must buy's if you do choose to spend money, how to spend money at each budget level, whether you should spend money in the first place because of the developer/IP/franchise, all big decisions to make. The majority of us are not whales and need to spend wisely on F2P, I have spent $25 total on Hearthstone last 3 years, my main mobile game. If I am covering Hearthstone, I will immediately mention the $4.99 welcome bundle as must buy just to support Blizzard, and how good of a deal it is compared to anything else. If I am covering Fate Grand Order I will recommend waiting for the guaranteed SSR and so on. I will also mention Fate, while not hugely dominant on US/European app stores outside of events, is a top 5 mobile game worldwide, and it is not going anywhere any time soon and you are guaranteed with content updates for a very long time. I will explain its non-PVP, casual (no need for hours of grind) playing style is very unique. I will also recommend watching Fate Stay Night which makes the characters even more appealing. Even in a game like Rules of Survival with nothing to buy (yet), I will mention how it is easily the technically most impressive mobile game since the start of the platform. You can write a lot about F2P games, I have downloaded Fate Grand Order at least 3 times and uninstalled it 3 times, before finally getting into it. I even quite Hearthstone for half a year before picking it back up again. A lot of us dismiss a F2P game and uninstall it within a hour, because you didn't spend any money and didn't give the game full attention. This is where review comes in and tell us about things that make a great F2P game special. Things you can easily miss first hour playing. Every top grossing performer is special in their own ways and have very unique qualities. It is the major league of gaming and attract the most elite talents. If you don't identify these unique qualities, it is like saying Mario Odyssey is just another platformer.
Aaand this is the reason the only two mobioe gaming sites I look up are TA and pocket tactics. This thread has a good point though I hate freemium games. Even though i cannot touch a freemium game with a 10ft pole, I admit lots and lots of people play them and they represent a very big slice of the market. It baffles me how freemium games can make money because i would never spend money on them (I would consider 5euros at most, but very improbable). But the fact is they do according to statistics. So I truly believe a middle ground has to be reached here, maybe something along the lines of Monday, Wednesday and Friday for freemium games and Tuesday and Thursday for premium (update and new game columns and exceptions notwithstanding and I say that in terms of workload output). I don't know if people who play candy crush go online and search for articles and thus if that would make that huge a difference for TA. And I keep saying people that play freemiums because to me casual gamers are not "gamers" in the sense that "gamers" are not people that unlock their phone and play 5-10mins of a freemium game. "Gamers" invest a bit more in searching for news, strategies, guides, etc. In a wai I doubt TA could cater to the needs of casual gamers because their need is a 5min play. But heck i'm not a casual gamers so maybe I don't know what i'm talking about.
I don't support and will NEVER support freemium pay2win games, Gameloft and co. TA can go that way if they wish, but these kind of games are very short lived. "TA: The place for freemium pay2win games." Please no.
