4 ms·

I don't necessarily think that there is a solution. In almost all cases, the game itself is the problem. Most people won't pay full price, because most mobile g

by phaus 13y ago

I don't necessarily think that there is a solution. In almost all cases, the game itself is the problem. Most people won't pay full price, because most mobile games lack depth. When you develop for mobile, you can either make a game with simple mechanics, or you can make a game with terrible controls. Those are the options. While it is possible to make a great game with simple mechanics, it takes an extraordinary level of talent that most game development shops simply don't possess. On the PC/console side, you of course have ports of popular mobile games. In addition, however, you have AAA games like Diablo 3 that are reasonably complex, yet seem to have been intentionally ruined by IAP and the real money sale of items that affect performance.

chasing 13y ago
> Most people won't pay full price, because most mobile games lack depth. I think you might have this backwards: Mobile games lack depth because their developers know most people won't pay full price. Mobile games can have great depth. Just like PC/console games can be extremely simple and trivial. (Depth doesn't come from complex mechanics or controls, btw. In fact, those things are often used to mask how shallow a game really is.)
- phaus 13y ago
  I agree that the ability to use complex control system isn't necessarily an indicator of depth, but it certainly opens up a lot of possibilities. There are entire genres that have always been and will always be terrible on touchscreen devices. Perhaps you are also right that most developers won't even try to make a real game, due to the difficulty in getting customers to pay for them. Now that its more profitable to milk small amounts of money out of non-gamers, I think the rest of us are going to eventually get stuck playing the kick starter lottery in order to see real games hit the market.
- saraid216 13y ago
  > > Most people won't pay full price, because most mobile games lack depth. > I think you might have this backwards: Mobile games lack depth because their developers know most people won't pay full price. Chicken, meet egg. :( This is why I hate the mobile space for gaming.
  - mabhatter 13y ago
    to be fair, you have to make the game for the market. If the market will only bear $2 then you need to make a simpler game... not "play the horses" that you can beat them into spending more money. That's why the App Store and Mac market in general was full of much smaller game companies for so long. People were putting "more love than money" into games. But along come the big companies that want to sink half a million dollars and then complain that they won't get it back. that's not reasonable expectations... but they're too rich to be told that.
- Sssnake 13y ago
  Depth doesn't come from complex controls, but complex controls are almost always needed to be able to play a game with any depth.
  - tedsanders 13y ago
    It's hard for me to gauge whether this is true or not. There are some amazing deep games like chess and bridge that have extremely simple controls. Do these counterexamples disprove the rule, or are they rare outliers?
    - jamiek88 13y ago
      Mario. Sonic. Doom. Complex controls?
      - ChrisClark 13y ago
        On a phone, yes, they can be harder to control.
      - orangecat 13y ago
        In this context, yes. Precision jumping and strafing-while-turning-while-firing are basically impossible with touchscreen controls; at least I've yet to see them done well.
      - mpyne 13y ago
        The missing element for all three of those (which are action games) is latency. With mobile touch-screen controls the game has to somehow register a button-press as soon as a button-press is made. But it must also never (to a first approximation) register a button-press when a button-press was not requested (e.g. an accidental brush of a finger against the screen). It's hard enough to do this anyways, but the "input device" does no favors for the game developer either. There's a reason that input devices on consoles and computers have evolved over the years into the shapes they have, they are meant to be easy to hold in a certain position (so that you always know where the buttons are) and perhaps more important, they have tactile features that allow your finger to quickly find and stay near the buttons. It's the reason that buttons and the D-pad are not fully-flush with the shell, even though that might have been more stylish. Imagine trying to play Super Mario World with a NES-shaped rectangular controller where there are no tactile buttons. This might have worked if you only needed Left, Right, Jump, but even that game required all of the following for the best gameplay: Left/Right, Up/Down (for pipes and to literally scroll the screen up), Jump, Run/Hold/Fireball, Spin Jump, Pause, Drop Stored Item and Shoulder Left/Right (to scroll the screen). And if the input wasn't right you'd either jump into a spike you had meant to run under or accidentally run off a cliff you'd meant to jump past. The controls on Mario seem complex only because they were so completely intuitive when you were actually playing them but I assure you they were far more difficult to implement than you think. It's not until you start playing platformer games with horrible controls that you can realize the great job done by the development teams at Sega (for Sonic) and Nintendo.
T-hawk 13y ago
Diablo 3 was something of a different story. Blizzard knew players would create their own functionally-IAP black market anyway, because it happened in Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft. So Blizzard figured they may as well bring auctions in house to make the market honest and usable for players without worrying about scammers. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. What wrecked Diablo 3 was the enormous power discrepancy between what a player could reasonably find on their own and what was readily available on the auction market. The game had to be balanced around the latter to avoid auction buyers god-moding over everything, which left solo players completely screwed. With a tighter power balance between common and rare items, Diablo 3 would have continued to be playable just fine.
- phaus 13y ago
  >There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Yes there is. Diablo 3 would have been much better if buying gear was the exception to the rule. By legitimizing it and as you mentioned, failing to provide balance, Blizzard unintentionally made the purchase of gear the only viable method of progression for most players. With World of Warcraft, Blizzard made tons of money off of cosmetic items. If they wanted to increase revenue, they should have gone this route instead of ruining the best action-rpg franchise in the world.
  - fat0wl 13y ago
    Yeah to those who see it as some catch-22 that was forged at the dawn of man, sure might as well "legitimize" IAP... For others, like myself & Phaus, apparently, we'll just play a different damn game. I think the disconnect here is that people are like "well look its still working, isnt it?" but the idea of "ruining" a game isnt that the thing is broken now, its that casual players dont wanna get involved cuz its an all-or-nothing shitshow where youre not sure exactly when the menu is gonna pop up saying "give us more money or your time invested is now a complete waste". i only play single-player story titles now for the most part because i know that pretty much anything else is gonna try to mess with my mind & prey on the consumer. COD & Battlefield are the best examples i can think of. They keep game prices high, get players addicted to repetitive mindless multiplayer, then charge $15 for a change of scenery (should 3 or 4 maps cost 1/4 the price of the game itself?) If you buy, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you're being ripped off & it makes you resent the gamemakers. If you don't buy, you're left with a limited set of maps that is getting duller by the second, lol I'm avoiding by just buying downloadable PC games for between $1 - $10 each & then when its over its over. its the skinner box games that overprice DLC and this alone should be a trigger that makes people see them for what they are & have the willpower to opt out
fragsworth 13y ago
There could possibly be a solution that has to do with legislation forcing game developers to be upfront and transparent about the kinds of purchases in their games. Lots of games, for instance, might have a very reasonable limit on in-app purchases analogous to paying for "the full game". Other games have no limit on what they'll let you buy. It could be done by an independent ratings board (much like how movies are rated for age limits).
JabavuAdams 13y ago
Look at games like XCom, or Jagged Alliance. These games had better depth and AI than even current console games. They work well with a touchscreen interface. The problem is that good game design is hard, and not particularly repeatable. Having a single simple mechanic, surrounded by a reusable monetization platform is much more formulaic and repeatable. Formulaic is bad for players, but good for businesses.
- comex 13y ago
  As another example, any traditional turn-based RPG can probably be controlled better on a touchscreen than a controller (navigating menus on a controller sucks) and have at least the potential to be deep. Or roguelikes... really, most turn based games can be done okay on a touchscreen.

by phaus 13y ago

chasing 13y ago

> Most people won't pay full price, because most mobile games lack depth. I think you might have this backwards: Mobile games lack depth because their developers know most people won't pay full price. Mobile games can have great depth. Just like PC/console games can be extremely simple and trivial. (Depth doesn't come from complex mechanics or controls, btw. In fact, those things are often used to mask how shallow a game really is.)

phaus 13y ago
I agree that the ability to use complex control system isn't necessarily an indicator of depth, but it certainly opens up a lot of possibilities. There are entire genres that have always been and will always be terrible on touchscreen devices. Perhaps you are also right that most developers won't even try to make a real game, due to the difficulty in getting customers to pay for them. Now that its more profitable to milk small amounts of money out of non-gamers, I think the rest of us are going to eventually get stuck playing the kick starter lottery in order to see real games hit the market.
saraid216 13y ago
> > Most people won't pay full price, because most mobile games lack depth. > I think you might have this backwards: Mobile games lack depth because their developers know most people won't pay full price. Chicken, meet egg. :( This is why I hate the mobile space for gaming.
- mabhatter 13y ago
  to be fair, you have to make the game for the market. If the market will only bear $2 then you need to make a simpler game... not "play the horses" that you can beat them into spending more money. That's why the App Store and Mac market in general was full of much smaller game companies for so long. People were putting "more love than money" into games. But along come the big companies that want to sink half a million dollars and then complain that they won't get it back. that's not reasonable expectations... but they're too rich to be told that.
Sssnake 13y ago
Depth doesn't come from complex controls, but complex controls are almost always needed to be able to play a game with any depth.
- tedsanders 13y ago
  It's hard for me to gauge whether this is true or not. There are some amazing deep games like chess and bridge that have extremely simple controls. Do these counterexamples disprove the rule, or are they rare outliers?
  - jamiek88 13y ago
    Mario. Sonic. Doom. Complex controls?
    - ChrisClark 13y ago
      On a phone, yes, they can be harder to control.
    - orangecat 13y ago
      In this context, yes. Precision jumping and strafing-while-turning-while-firing are basically impossible with touchscreen controls; at least I've yet to see them done well.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      The missing element for all three of those (which are action games) is latency. With mobile touch-screen controls the game has to somehow register a button-press as soon as a button-press is made. But it must also never (to a first approximation) register a button-press when a button-press was not requested (e.g. an accidental brush of a finger against the screen). It's hard enough to do this anyways, but the "input device" does no favors for the game developer either. There's a reason that input devices on consoles and computers have evolved over the years into the shapes they have, they are meant to be easy to hold in a certain position (so that you always know where the buttons are) and perhaps more important, they have tactile features that allow your finger to quickly find and stay near the buttons. It's the reason that buttons and the D-pad are not fully-flush with the shell, even though that might have been more stylish. Imagine trying to play Super Mario World with a NES-shaped rectangular controller where there are no tactile buttons. This might have worked if you only needed Left, Right, Jump, but even that game required all of the following for the best gameplay: Left/Right, Up/Down (for pipes and to literally scroll the screen up), Jump, Run/Hold/Fireball, Spin Jump, Pause, Drop Stored Item and Shoulder Left/Right (to scroll the screen). And if the input wasn't right you'd either jump into a spike you had meant to run under or accidentally run off a cliff you'd meant to jump past. The controls on Mario seem complex only because they were so completely intuitive when you were actually playing them but I assure you they were far more difficult to implement than you think. It's not until you start playing platformer games with horrible controls that you can realize the great job done by the development teams at Sega (for Sonic) and Nintendo.

T-hawk 13y ago

Diablo 3 was something of a different story. Blizzard knew players would create their own functionally-IAP black market anyway, because it happened in Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft. So Blizzard figured they may as well bring auctions in house to make the market honest and usable for players without worrying about scammers. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. What wrecked Diablo 3 was the enormous power discrepancy between what a player could reasonably find on their own and what was readily available on the auction market. The game had to be balanced around the latter to avoid auction buyers god-moding over everything, which left solo players completely screwed. With a tighter power balance between common and rare items, Diablo 3 would have continued to be playable just fine.

phaus 13y ago
>There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Yes there is. Diablo 3 would have been much better if buying gear was the exception to the rule. By legitimizing it and as you mentioned, failing to provide balance, Blizzard unintentionally made the purchase of gear the only viable method of progression for most players. With World of Warcraft, Blizzard made tons of money off of cosmetic items. If they wanted to increase revenue, they should have gone this route instead of ruining the best action-rpg franchise in the world.
- fat0wl 13y ago
  Yeah to those who see it as some catch-22 that was forged at the dawn of man, sure might as well "legitimize" IAP... For others, like myself & Phaus, apparently, we'll just play a different damn game. I think the disconnect here is that people are like "well look its still working, isnt it?" but the idea of "ruining" a game isnt that the thing is broken now, its that casual players dont wanna get involved cuz its an all-or-nothing shitshow where youre not sure exactly when the menu is gonna pop up saying "give us more money or your time invested is now a complete waste". i only play single-player story titles now for the most part because i know that pretty much anything else is gonna try to mess with my mind & prey on the consumer. COD & Battlefield are the best examples i can think of. They keep game prices high, get players addicted to repetitive mindless multiplayer, then charge $15 for a change of scenery (should 3 or 4 maps cost 1/4 the price of the game itself?) If you buy, you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you're being ripped off & it makes you resent the gamemakers. If you don't buy, you're left with a limited set of maps that is getting duller by the second, lol I'm avoiding by just buying downloadable PC games for between $1 - $10 each & then when its over its over. its the skinner box games that overprice DLC and this alone should be a trigger that makes people see them for what they are & have the willpower to opt out

fragsworth 13y ago

There could possibly be a solution that has to do with legislation forcing game developers to be upfront and transparent about the kinds of purchases in their games. Lots of games, for instance, might have a very reasonable limit on in-app purchases analogous to paying for "the full game". Other games have no limit on what they'll let you buy. It could be done by an independent ratings board (much like how movies are rated for age limits).

JabavuAdams 13y ago

Look at games like XCom, or Jagged Alliance. These games had better depth and AI than even current console games. They work well with a touchscreen interface. The problem is that good game design is hard, and not particularly repeatable. Having a single simple mechanic, surrounded by a reusable monetization platform is much more formulaic and repeatable. Formulaic is bad for players, but good for businesses.

comex 13y ago
As another example, any traditional turn-based RPG can probably be controlled better on a touchscreen than a controller (navigating menus on a controller sucks) and have at least the potential to be deep. Or roguelikes... really, most turn based games can be done okay on a touchscreen.