31–40 of 221 posts
Honestly, the lack of dedicated controls will never allow for mobile gaming to be anything more than a time diversion for most people. A touchscreen just isn't something that's comfortable to use for extended lengths of time, in my opinion at least.
If you can get past maybe the top 50 or 100 grossing games there are a lot of really good games out there that aren't looking to leech money from you. I have plenty of games that have been worth every penny I spent with a lot of depth and strategy required in order to master them. Letterpress, Spelltower, Hearthstone, Tiny Wings, Ticket to Ride, Strategery, GD Swarm, Ridiculous Fishing, Monument Valley...I could go o…
If you have a few pixels to animate and want to build something fun, you think about what makes a game fun.. When you have HD video, textures, etc., you think about implementation details.
Honestly, the lack of dedicated controls will never allow for mobile gaming to be anything more than a time diversion for most people. A touchscreen just isn't something that's comfortable to use for extended lengths of time, in my opinion at least.
Shit game everyone plays: clash of clans.
Basically, there's more non gamers than gamers, and more mkney in skinner box candy crush than good old school games. So the game makers sold out.
It's like how people think dark souls or Bloodborne is "too hard" to be fun. It's exactly fun because you have to try and not just do endless todo list quests!
Atari 2600 games are more playable, fun, immersive, and inspirational than any games for IOS and most modern console games. If you have a few pixels to animate and want to build something fun, you think about what makes a game fun.. When you have HD video, textures, etc., you think about implementation details.
Honestly, the lack of dedicated controls will never allow for mobile gaming to be anything more than a time diversion for most people. A touchscreen just isn't something that's comfortable to use for extended lengths of time, in my opinion at least.
I think there's certain games/tasks for which touch screens are miles ahead of the old mouse and keyboard. Card games, for example, lend themselves very well to touch screens. That's only one example, but I think the issue is that so many games try to adapt touchscreen to old control methods, rather than create new control methods for touchscreens.
Touch-screen joysticks are appalling - it's very hard to interact with a game when you've got a good deal of the game obscured by your fingers. That being said, I can't think of a better way to do it - those games probably don't belong on phones as phones are seemingly the wrong tool for the job.
I simply uninstall ad rich games, but controls? I've frequently felt the desire to throw my phone against the wall.
Honestly, the lack of dedicated controls will never allow for mobile gaming to be anything more than a time diversion for most people. A touchscreen just isn't something that's comfortable to use for extended lengths of time, in my opinion at least.
why not just use a single finger on the touchscreen, or tilt the device? I think the flaw is expecting the phone to behave like an elaborate 8-button hardware controller.
Part of it's because despite Apple's pretty spectacular accelerometer, detecting fine motion is very difficult, and so the amount of "resolution" available to you as a dev is pretty limited. Variation in fine motor control between players also means that you can't necessarily rely on players being able to affect small, precise movements. Motion controls ultimately ended up being low resolution and relied on substantial/large movements of the device.
This is worse on Android, where the quality of the accelerometer varies widely depending on hardware, and getting consistent experiences across a range of devices is nearly impossible.
Add to environmental factors (say, playing the game on a bus, train, or airplane) massively screwing with your accelerometer readings, and the propensity for mobile games to be played in those exact places, and the situation gets worse.
In any case, this leads to fatigue. Turns out holding your phone up and tilting it every which way is a bit tiring.
tl;dr: Because of individual biological variation, hardware limitations, and environmental noise, fine motion control for mobile games didn't work out, at all.
Honestly, the lack of dedicated controls will never allow for mobile gaming to be anything more than a time diversion for most people. A touchscreen just isn't something that's comfortable to use for extended lengths of time, in my opinion at least.