Why do mobile games suck nowadays?

They always sucked.

21

I don't know man, I had my fair share of fun with a pair of Nyan Cat games, the original Plants Vs Zombies, Nimble Quest (I just got this again on Android and cracked the heck out of it with Lucky patcher, and still suck lol), Tiny Wings, Angry Birds and I could be missing some others.

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- Infinity blade
  
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- These were originally the exception, but all eventually followed the rule.
  
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No they didn’t. I have a 1st gen iPad loaded with old versions of popular games (e.g. Jetpack Joyride, Angry Birds) and there are literally zero ads and in-app purchases.

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- I'm fairly sure those were paid tho
  
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Nowadays? Mobile games have always sucked. All the way back to snake on your old Nokia. That game sucked too. It's just now the games suck and they're packed full of microtransactions.

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you take that back >:( I remember all the boys in my class crowding around the one guy with snake on his Nokia 1100

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"Nowadays" ? They're just getting good! Did you mean to say, "why are mobile games that suck, so popular" ? It's because they're accessible and usually F2P .

13

Take angry birds for an example,

It used to be a good game, you had your level, Maine an optional micro transaction.

Now the modern angry birds is an ad riddled mess

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- Oh yeah. I get it. I guess that's why I stopped playing those long ago 🙂
  
  I'm a huge mobile gamer though. It's amazing what we can play on our phones with an xbox controller. It's better than the pc experience for me because I can map the controller how I want to and am not stuck with the defaults.
  
  Tons of amazing games coming this year. ZZZ wuthering waves Azur Promelia Etc.
  
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They always sucked

12

The Pathless is pretty awesome

Sky: Children of the Light is splendid

Horn is pretty neat but I guess its 12 years old now

Baba is You isn't originally a mobile game but it has a native version which is pretty excellent

To answer your question, its as others have mentioned: catching a whale is more lucrative than appealing to the average consumer. The entire micro transactions industry (which mobile gaming is built upon and makes it the most profitable portion of the gaming industry by a mile) is all about milking your customers for everything they have without them realising it. Why did we reach this point? Unregulated capitalism, probably.

11

Nowadays? I've never enjoyed mobile gaming. Every time I try, there's been an absurd paywall or monetization. Once that strikes, I'm out.

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For me they have always sucked. The only one I liked a bit was "1112" (also known as Fade), BUT the developer actually cancelled the last episode because they didn't feel like making it anymore 🤬 So yeah it also sucked big time.

More details: https://www.reddit.com/r/adventuregames/comments/k3wc7b/the_history_of_1112_an_ambitious_adventure_game/

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Adventure games don't sell too much, and four episodes are a lot if you make them separate purchases. Episode 2 would be purchased only by a fraction of episode 1 users, then episode 3 from a fraction of episode 2 and so on. And the longer the time between episodes, the smaller the chance it would generate new sales because existing users lost interest.

It's instead much more remunerative to think a fun gameplay mechanic, then create a fake ad around it, buy some assets and create an idle game that plays by itself with the possibility to pay to get it faster. Use the fake ad with the fun gameplay to promote the completely different game and users are dumb won't complain. Don't worry if the assets you purchased for your asset flip are unrelated, it's also allowed to be a completely different genre, for example evony (medieval and swords theme) is using zombies, tanks and machineguns in ads

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- And the longer the time between episodes, the smaller the chance it would generate new sales because existing users lost interest.
  
  True, but with that particular game what didn't help either was that there were many years between episodes, it was pretty awful. It's one thing I really hate about episodic gaming. But Valve already proved it to be a failure, only Telltale And Dontnod still do it (and they do it consistently right, to be fair).
  
  The rest of the gaming industry has gone on to "Early access" which is even more awful. Rather than buying the first part of the story for a lower fee, you now pay top dollar for a game which isn't even finished and never might be because once you pay them there is no real incentive to actually finish it :)
  
  But really, most categories of mobile games don't interest me. Arcade and other simple crap like angry birds never interested me even in the 80s. Adventures yes but they're few and far between on mobile and if they are they're almost always desktop ports anyway. FPS really really sucks on mobile for me, the input is just too crappy and the screens too small.
  
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Touch screens don't lend themselves to Snake the way buttons did, so the only good mobile game is now functionally unplayable.

8

Whales spend tens of thousands of dollars on p2w bullshit. It's all unregulated gambling.

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I think it's because most people play mobile games as a way to pass time, rather than to do something actually engaging. So, people don't typically want to buy mobile games upfront, meaning devs gotta monetize in some other way, like p2w microtransactions.

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99% of people think all mobile games should be free to use. So they go for P2W to make money.

They wouldnt make anywhere close to the amount they do via P2W if they did an upfront cost.

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Probably the only good mobile games are ports of console/pc games. There are some surprising ports, like the KOTOR games, medieval 2 total war, and lots of square enix's older catalogue. Fortnite, genshin impact, and pubg are probably the biggest games on mobile right now. But yeah nothing really worth going out of your way for, or even bother with at all, if you already have a gaming pc or steam deck.

Maayybee the only real usecase is if you are going backpacking and want to bring some games into the backcountry with you without lugging a steam deck along lol. Digital board games like Root and Wingspan would work well there and have pass around modes if you are with friends. Just remember to bring a battery bank with you, or a portable solar cell.

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I truly don't understand how people are playing games like Fortnite or Genshin on a phone and enjoying themselves. That's probably the single worst possible interface to play the game on, that's like showing up to a counterstrike tournament with a racing wheel. I can't even play Minecraft on my phone without getting extremely quickly frustrated and Minecraft doesn't give half a shit about your reaction time or accuracy most of the time. If you want me to play an FPS on a touch screen I'm just gonna take the L and save myself the trouble, it's not happening.

4

Weird take, imo. Mobile games are probably the best they've ever been. They were traditionally a place for rampant p2w garbage gacha machines, and while those are still there, the platform has actual decent games nowadays. Real PC games are being ported to mobile and the platform is being taken seriously. Even in the world of micro transactions and gacha games, there are far more that are actually decent as games then there ever has been.

I've been playing Monster Hunter Now and I've been really impressed with it. The entirety of the Riot games are good games with reasonable microtransactions. Vampire Survivors, my go-to "I am offline" game, is the exact same game on mobile as PC, save the fact that it's free and you have a choice to watch ads for marginal farming speedups (which can be disabled if you buy literally any of their ~$1.50 DLC expansions, which are hilariously large considering their price). Fucking Warframe is coming to/already on (?) mobile.

I genuinely can't say mobile games have ever been in a better place than today, despite the existence of the shovelware P2W games that continue to roll out.

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I'll side with OP from a slightly different perspective here, because you're not wrong but neither is OP. First and foremost I think the word missing here is innovation -- mobile games in their very initial start were exactly what you are describing, but mobile games that OP are talking about took some time to find freedom to innovate. The very first mobile games, almost all of them, were PC ports. Solitare, poker, mahjong, snake, tetris... These were all games that had existed for years and were just now put into a 160x128 res screen and played with a circular slider (first iPod), or whatever the specs of the Blackberry was back then. Few unique games were created for these devices.

By late 2009 the iPod Touch 3g had released. It was this and the following few years where OP is talking about, where not only were old games like Spy Hunter being remade, and funnily enough, I'm pretty sure Rockstar also released a few GTA's on this device. But there were also entirely new games like Doodle Jump, Canabalt, and to a lesser extent Pocket God. (Well, relatively new and unique, at least.) These of course paved the way for Temple Run and honestly I had so many amazing mobile games back then that remembering them all would be a trip down memory lane far too long for today.

Anyway, my point and I'm assuming OP's point is that it's harder to find truly unique and "new" experiences in the mobile game world. The idea of Talking Tom when he first came out was something truly unlike anything else available. Not that it was particularly good, or that being unique makes it good, but rather there were more games willing to take a risk on being different.

And yes, of course back then there were plenty of shovelware games trying to pine off another apps success. I think it's simply a difference of mindset, for the good games that are available today generally seem to follow the same principles -- a good game comes first, and if you accomplish that the expenses pay themselves. For your examples, the only games that didn't already exist were semi-MH Now (Pokemon Go/Ingress, but I agree they are unique and fun) and the Riot mobile games. I agree that the other games you mentioned are good as well, I'd even include the fact that there are other full PC/console games like Monster Hunter Stories 1 and 2, Final Fantasy, and plenty of others.

But none of these were made specifically with the attributes of mobile gaming in mind. Where are the disjointed IRL vs. on screen games like Panoptic! There's so much potential for mobile phone games of really wild and unique stuff, but it's easier to make money by iterating and porting existing things to the platform.

I found a little list that was fun:

Jetpack Joyride,

Plants vs Zombies

Real Steel World Robot Boxing,

Real Steel HD,

Pacific Rim,

Ultimate Robot Fighting,

Cut the Rope

Fruit Ninja

Flappy Bird,

Where's My Water?,

Crossy Road,

Asphalt 8,

Call of Mini Zombies, Call of Mini Infinity,

Clash of Clans Real Steel Champions,

Transformers Battle Masters,

Geometry Dash,

Minecraft Pocket Edition,

Hungry Shark Evolution,

LEGO Hero Factory Invasion from Below, LEGO Hero Factory Brain Attack,

Beach Buggy Racing.

Hovercraft Takedown,

Table Top Racing,

Smash Hit,

Riptide GP, Riptide GP Renegade,

Mechanic Escape,

Robo5,

BombSquad.

Draw a Stickman Epic Free,

Zombie Tsunami,

Badland,

Hill Climb Racing 1,

My Singing Monsters,

Despicable Me Minion Rush,

Bad Piggies HD,

Star Warfare Alien Invasion. Star Warfare Payback,

Pixel Gun 3D,

Block City Wars,

Pac-Man 256,

The Impossible Game,

Gravity Guy.

Laser Air Hockey

That one game where you're a 2D spider-man swinging
2

I was wondering this recently, too. The two mobile games I miss most are tiny wings and the original fruit Ninja. But I remember playing Infinity Blade and other random games on my iPad touch that were really good back in 2010

I came across buried bornes 2, and it's been ok so far. I have no idea if it has microtransactions or ads yet. It claims it does, but I've yet to see them. It's not the best game I've played, but the concept is kinda interesting if you use your imagination a bit.

4

I just installed Tiny Wings this week. It's available on iOS. On Android there's a clone named Dragon, fly!

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- Yeahhh that's the main issue for me. I've stuck with android for the past decade. I didn't know about dragon fly! It's not as cute but it's going to do the trick. Thank you!
  
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It's a two part story:

The mobile market mostly targets kids and boomers and their resistance to microtransactions has been basically non-existent, making the market quickly become predatory and full of spam
Modern app stores have become abysmal, making it impossible for smaller games to see the light of day. 99% of google play is a dumpster fire, and the 1% that is decent isn't published by a multi-billion dollar company so you're unlikely to ever see it. There are good games out there, but the way the algorithms and ads work makes them constantly pushed down in the list. This isn't "a problem" to a company like Google because they're making bank off of all these ad spaces.

Anyways, most good games are paid, but here's a list of stuff I've enjoyed playing on mobile:

Fancy Pants Adventures
Bloons TD 6
Dicey Dungeons
Dead Cells
Slay the Spire (but the mobile port is rough on small screens)
Knights of Pen and Paper +1
The Enchanted Cave 2
Let's Create! Pottery
BAIKOH
Data Wing

Probably a lot more I forgot. Have at it.

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Add slice & dice. But on itch to get it both on pc and android. It is great.

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greed

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What do you mean, "nowadays"? Mobile games always sucked.

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I beg to differ. Angry Bird, cut the rope, where's my water, Space RPG, FRUIT Ninja, and a whole lot more, are classic mobile games in the beginning. They're sometimes simple, yes, but at least there's efforts in it to try to be original.

Nowadays, it's all Freemium p2w cash grab.

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That you didn't like them doesn't mean they sucked, look along this thread and you'll find ppl sharing titles worthwhile back then (me included), ofc, this is not GOTY material, but a game must not be a masterpiece in order to be enjoyable, which ultimately is what all games are for, to be an enjoyable hobby.

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They realized that they don't have to make good a game, they can make a bad game and just advertise the shit out of it.

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Because everything sucks now.

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Enshittification, the rise of micro transactions in mobile games over actual in-game mechanics that make the game interesting etc

2

Trust capitalism to ruin everything

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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

1

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

Always has been.

bang

1

Nah, angry birds used to be good and supercell stuff was OK before it went down the shitter

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- I was ok with the Angry Birds franchise right up until the shitty kart racing game they pumped out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more wretched collection of bare-faced advertising and micro transactions as that fucking piece of shit.
  
  The game was crammed full of new pop songs, and when one would play the game would display a link to buy it from iTunes. I couldn’t let my kid play it, it was just too egregious.
  
  Haven’t touched any of those games since. Which is a shame, because I really enjoyed the original.
  
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Nowadays

Lol they've always sucked.

1

Nostalgia ain't what it meant to be

I'm not even 16, why do I feel ancient

1
- I'm not even 16, why do I feel ancient
  
  I don't know if this will help you, but I think that's pretty normal. I felt similarly at your age in some ways and in other ways I felt like a baby, depending on how I looked at things. I still feel that way and I'm twice your age! It's weird. Growing up is weird. I feel for you. 💖
  
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- Take this as a life lesson, and understand that while your view of things changes as you get older, most things generally stay the same.
  
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Fdroid app store has a lot of frankly amazing indie games.

Pirate _freecell Solitaire. is fantastic.

Also, Warframe has an iOS version(not a port), is working on an android version, and its now fully crossplay compatible.

1

Pirate freecell is fantastic.

There doesn't seem to be a Pirate freecell. Do you mean Pirate Solitaire?

Custom variant of the Free-Cell solitaire with pirate themed cards in pixel art.

1
- Yeah that's what i meant.
  
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If you're a gamedev trying to make a decent mobile game, you're competing on all the usual fronts like price and perceived quality, but competing for attention has gotten a whole lot harder when [arbitrary card game] has a hour of dailies, [arbitrary gacha game] always has a special campaign going and [arbitrary fake gambling game] is about to have its battle pass end and they're only halfway through. And that has gone up by so, so much over the past decade. It was never good but it's gotten absolutely egregious. At this point, even any generic snake clone will have a battle pass.

Every person that ends up committed to a couple of those long-term-commitment games ends up having much less time for other games. And they make a lot of money, which means they also end up having a hell of a marketing budget.

1

Sadly because it works, mobile gaming is bigger money-wise than PC and consoles combined, all because people are susceptible to short term dopamine hit your can buy any time, it's a part of what we call enshittification, making the product less user friendly and make more money, shareholders are happy, your don't have to

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Capitalism ruins everything

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The short answer is, because they make money.

1

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.

1

What you call rigamarole is the standard way to map button presses to tge screen. It only looks like rigamarole to a PC user who is coming to gripa with how a controller interfaces with a screen. A third party mapping utility is STANDARD use case because you're mapping button presses to the screen. That's litterally how it works and it works well. When we mobile game players play games THIS is how we play and this IS THE reason why what you call "mobile games" TsumTsum candy crush etc are losing popularity because people be playing more intense games on mobile these days. Because of controller support.

1

If you game on controller on android I think you'd love an android gaming handheld. Tho I don't get the whole clip on controller thing

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- That's what we do. Xbox controller comes with a clip on. This is mobile gaming. Been this way for about 5 years now. Popularized by pubg at first but then more of this controller style games came along and the button mapper apps got a lot better. Right now the best are Octopus and Mantis. I prefer mantis.
  
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