Mobile Games Suck
I was going to write an article musing about why so little attention is given to developers who make games for mobile devices. We get endlessly barraged with news story after news story about developers for high end console systems, and what the newest PC game of the week is, but the mobiles don’t get such lovin’. That article is never to be though, because the answer is too simple.
Mobile games suck.
I’m sure there are those who disagree with me on this point, and that’s fine, you’re wrong. Yes there’s the Nintendo DS, and the PSP, and even the now long-toothed Gameboy Advance. I’m not talking about those systems, although it is a useful exersize to ask yourself “If I were sitting at home and had the choice between playing something for console system X, or playing on my handheld, is there a scenario where I would choose the handheld?”. The systems I’m talking about are the true cesspools of mobile gaming in the form of the cell-phone.
Think about some of the best Super NES games you ever played. Chronotrigger, Final Fantasy, Super Mario World. Mobile systems these days easily eclipse the raw power of the super nintendo, and yet it’s impossible to find a game as memorable as these classics on any of them.
At the University of Waterloo’s 50th Anniversary Dinner, Mike Lazaridis remeniced about the “Red Room”, a room once present on campus which held what was at the time some of the most powerful computing equipment on the planet. He then proceded to pull out his Blackberry and stated that these devices now have many times the computing power of that entire room. I don’t think processing power is the issue here.
If you really want to hate yourself, spend some time looking through the pathetic offerings available to cell-phone customers. What you will find is a large number of puzzle games, card games, and some form of billiards. There are companies about who are spending relatively tidy sums of money to convert the code from 70s classic arcade games like Pac-man and Spade Invader into Java to run on cell-phones. These games are thirty years old, and while there may be some nostolgia from those of us old enough to have cut our teeth in video arcades, very few such people have the time or inclination to play them on the way to work.
In an interview with Guardian’s Games Blog, Jon Hare of sensible soccer described the mobile games industry as follows:
“Mobile games are the most licence driven pile of shit you’ve ever seen. You can’t sell a mobile game unless it has a license attached. Mobile is the worst format for gaming. The DS and PSP have far more potential. The PC, certainly in online gaming. already offers original games. Live Arcade? It’s all about getting money out of them.”
So this is a call to the mobile games industry. Stop making Pool simulators. Stop making variations on Bejewelled and Hold em’ poker. Stop porting games that, while good at the time, have no particular lasting appeal over the generations. Stop making games that have no gameplay value whatsoever, but cost thousands in licensing costs from some brand (as a matter of fact, that goes for all game producers). Start making new content, it doesn’t have to be on par with the best of the best in the PC and console world, but make something compelling that might actually interest me in buying your product. The same principals of game design apply on mobiles just like everywhere else, and it’s a shame the world seems to have forgotten that.
