I recently moved
myself into the twenty-first century by finally upgrading from my
old-school cell phone to a smartphone. For me, the choice between
iphone and android was not a difficult one for one simple reason:
I've wanted to play Doom Resurrection ever since it was released and
the game is only available on ios. This now gives me the dubious
distinction of having played every Doom game that id software ever
released. (Doom, Doom II, Doom 3, Doom 3 Lost Mission, Final Doom,
Doom RPG, Doom II RPG and Doom Resurrection).
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| Is it as fun as the original? No. Is it still fun? Absolutely. |
I may do a full
review of Doom Resurrection sometime, but for now lets just go with a
summary. For the uninitiated, its a rails-on first person shooter.
What that means is that you the player don't actually control where
you go but instead must just kill enemies as they approach. Its like
those light gun games at the arcade. This game games advantage of
the iphone's motion sensors to allow you to move the phone around to
aim, while the touchscreen is used for reloading, ducking under cover
and picking up items such as ammunition and health packs. Overall, I
really enjoyed it. While some might find this type of gameplay
restrictive, I can appreciate a game that's specifically tailored to
the strengths and weaknesses of its platform. It was fun, easy to
play and not at all crowded on the small screen.
Having now beaten
Doom Resurrection, I've been out looking for new mobile games to
play, but have so far had pretty limited success. The mobile game
market today is booming with business, but unfortunately not really
the sort of business that I want to get into. Today's mobile
releases are all riddled with two things that I have never wanted to
be a part of: Microtransactions and a focus on online multiplayer.
These two concepts
go hand-in-hand, but we'll start with microtransactions. Anyone who
pays attention to video game news will be familiar with this phrase.
Also known as in-app purchases, this is where a game allows you to
purchase additional features or content once you're already playing
it. The use of microtransactions is controversial in the console and
PC gaming industry, but in mobile games it seems to be pretty common
practice. In fact, the most successful mobile games today are
usually free to download but then make their money off of these in
app purchases.
Its definitely a
successful business model, and in a way its pretty easy to see why.
Gamers can download the game for free and then decide later on
whether or not it is fun enough to be worth spending money on. It
makes perfect sense, although unfortunately the trend seems to be
less and less on giving players content for their money and more on
just selling these microtransactions.
For example, I was
recently looking at the new Mortal Kombat X game on the app store.
Its a card-based fighting game based around characters from the game
universe. I was interested, primarily because I am a huge fan of
Mortal Kombat. A mobile game using the characters with some gameplay
elements tailored to the platform. Then I looked at the list of
in-app purchases offered by the game.
Every purchase
available is in the form of some in-game currency. The smallest is
called a Heavy Pouch of Koins, which can be purchased for $1.99.
These kinds of offers continue up in price, each with a more exciting
sounding name, all the way up to the Ancient Elixer of Dragon Souls,
which costs a whopping $99.99.
I am assuming that
this currency is earned by achieving accomplishments in the game, but
that spending real money will obviously allow the player to move
ahead much more quickly. Since it allows for challenging opponents
around the world (more on this in a bit), I suspect that these
purchases also provide an edge in that department as well.
So what's the
problem here? Well, there's a few things I take issue with. First
of all, let's consider that $99 price tag. A hundred dollars?
That's nearly twice the full price of a newly released console game.
That's a lot of money, and for what? That's the other problem. All
these purchases do is grant you things that you could earn via
gameplay. To me, this implies that advancing through the game will
be a chore rather than a joy. I don't want to pay to advance through
my game, I want to enjoy it.
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| To play, or to spend money on? |
Of course there's
more to it than that, and this brings us to the next element common
in today's mobile games: Multiplayer. Don't get me wrong, I don't
have a problem with multiplayer, but I don't want it to be the focus
of my game. Unfortunately, this seems to be the craze that has hit
mobile gaming, and boy does it seem to be quite a profitable craze.
Take Game of War, for example. Anyone who watched sports this last
NFL season surely saw the constant live action commercials with Kate
Upton in them advertising the game. Kate Upton! Not only that, but
Liam Neeson was in a Clash of Clans commercial that ran during the
Super Bowl! I remember a few years ago being impressed when games
like Skyrim and Call of Duty were able to advertise during
professional sports. Now we have free to play games that can not
only advertise during professional sports but hire A-list actors and
supermodels and advertise in the most expensive slots possible.
The fact is that
microtransactions and free to play games are incredibly profitable
for developers. By making the game focused on multiplayer
competition, players are more and more encouraged to do whatever they
can to get better and better. The best part for the publishers is
that there is really no limit to how often a person can buy these
things, nor is there a reason for a devoted player to stop spending
money on it.
Obviously games like Clash of Clans are
really popular and I'm not about to criticize a business for making
money. There are plenty of independent games journalists who decry free to play games as “not real games” or “only for
casual gamers.” I don't think that's fair. Just because something
isn't what I prefer doesn't make it any less legitimate as a medium.
I just think its unfortunate that this type of game has so thoroughly
taken over the mobile market. Its not that I want free to play games
to go away, its just that I wish there were more options available.
For example,
although I think Doom Resurrection did an excellent job of
simplifying the gameplay to fit the mobile platform, mobile games can
still be serious. Nintendo proved over and over that portable games
can be engaging and fun, and there's no reason for ios games to not
be equally high quality. Turn-based strategy games like Advance Wars
would translate gloriously to the mobile platform. In fact, Uniwar
is a rather good knockoff of the aforementioned Advance Wars, but a
side by side comparison of the two is no contest whatsoever.
Of course, there
are some obstacles for mobile games to overcome. Uniwar costs $2.99
while Nintendo DS games retail at $40 upon release. An ios game that
costs more than five dollars to download is generally considered
overpriced. This limits how much time and money can be put into
developing these gam
es. |
| Civilization Revolution does mobile gaming right. |
However, there's a
right way to do things on the mobile market. Take Sid Meier's
Civilization Revolution. The game has a free demo version which
allows you to play it, but a full version with all the civilizations
and the ability to save your game costs around three dollars.
Multiplayer and unique units can be purchased later on as well. All
in all, the full game costs roughly sixteen dollars if you get all
the in-app purchases, but then that's it. I'm not necessarily
thrilled about the game dividing up its content like that, but at
least the three dollar version is fully functional and the total
version can't possibly break my bank.
Mobile games have
so much potential. Turn-based strategy, action/adventure and role
playing games are all perfect candidates for mobile games. Even
ports of existing games would probably be very well received. And
I'll admit that there are plenty of good games out there that I'm
sure I haven't played yet. Its just that I could wish there were
more.
