4 ms·

Seems like the problem is mobile games discovery. I play 10-20 hours of games a week, all of them on consoles or handhelds that are >10 yrs old. Do I want to

Seems like the problem is mobile games discovery. I play 10-20 hours of games a week, all of them on consoles or handhelds that are >10 yrs old. Do I want to be playing only old games? No, but it's easier to find a Game Boy game that I love than having to poke through a hundred awful mobile games on the various app stores first. It seems to me that there's a good market for an App that simply curates excellent games and sells them to you. Anyone know of anything like that? I'd be all over it.

rhizome 11y ago
I imagine the kind of market data needed to curate effectively is held closely (private) by the companies and devs involved. See also: music services and their recommendation engines being universally lame.
lewisl9029 11y ago
I came across this one on HN a while ago, and have found the recommendations to be quite good: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.curated.android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.curated.an... I wish Valve would expand Steam into the mobile gaming market. That would certainly help with the discovery problem, with frequent sales, user reviews, custom tags, and whatnot. Also in my experience, their recommendation engine actually works pretty well. Obviously they'd have an uphill battle on their hands, as they can't distribute their store app on the Play Store, but the Amazon App Store seems to be doing decent so far despite that handicap.
xzi 11y ago
pockettactics.com is probably what you want. They concentrate on the more interesting stuff: RPGs & roguelikes, strategy / tactical wargames, 4x's, boardgame conversions. Very little of what they feature is the "free-to-play" ilk.
maraloiu 11y ago
I just came across your post while I'm working on a possible solution for your problem. A friend & I are trying to build a Netflix for mobile games. The app is called GameGif and we believe that mobile game discovery should be about video content. That's why the unique part on GameGif is that you swipe though short game videos rather than looking at screenshots or reading boring descriptions. If you have an Android phone, you can check out our Beta here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.betterworld.gamegif https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.betterworl... If you have an iPhone, you can check out our trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGX8CzbgvbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGX8CzbgvbA Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

rhizome 11y ago

I imagine the kind of market data needed to curate effectively is held closely (private) by the companies and devs involved. See also: music services and their recommendation engines being universally lame.

lewisl9029 11y ago

I came across this one on HN a while ago, and have found the recommendations to be quite good: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.curated.android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.curated.an... I wish Valve would expand Steam into the mobile gaming market. That would certainly help with the discovery problem, with frequent sales, user reviews, custom tags, and whatnot. Also in my experience, their recommendation engine actually works pretty well. Obviously they'd have an uphill battle on their hands, as they can't distribute their store app on the Play Store, but the Amazon App Store seems to be doing decent so far despite that handicap.

xzi 11y ago

pockettactics.com is probably what you want. They concentrate on the more interesting stuff: RPGs & roguelikes, strategy / tactical wargames, 4x's, boardgame conversions. Very little of what they feature is the "free-to-play" ilk.

maraloiu 11y ago

I just came across your post while I'm working on a possible solution for your problem. A friend & I are trying to build a Netflix for mobile games. The app is called GameGif and we believe that mobile game discovery should be about video content. That's why the unique part on GameGif is that you swipe though short game videos rather than looking at screenshots or reading boring descriptions. If you have an Android phone, you can check out our Beta here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.betterworld.gamegif https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.betterworl... If you have an iPhone, you can check out our trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGX8CzbgvbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGX8CzbgvbA Would love to hear your thoughts on this.