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TouchArcade Is Shutting Down

toucharcade.com

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Re: TouchArcade Is Shutting Down

#21

Post by golergka »

tourmalinetaco wrote: post #13
burningChrome wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be a huge mobile gaming person, but then a few years ago, I found out several of my mobile games were available on PC so I just stopped gaming on my phone all together. I have several co-workers who also did the same thing. We used to talk all the time about whatever new game was coming out on mobile, but now its all about PC and console titles. You're 100% right that it takes massive amounts of money to mo…

I haven’t bought a new game for myself for years. Most of what I play is retro emulation, and what PC titles I do play are ones I already own and have a lot of replay value. Indie titles are far cooler than AAA, but even they don’t speak out to me as often. Why spend $60 on a flop like Hyenas, or even $20 on a game inspired by Harvest Moon, when I can actually play the original games for free? Especially on mobile, w…

If you're already pirating games with game emulators, what's stopping you from pirating AAA titles as well? I'm not making any value judgement here, it just feels like you compare apples to oranges.

Re: TouchArcade Is Shutting Down

#22

Post by golergka »

fidotron wrote: post #20
golergka wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked in mobile gamedev a long time, and I remember the excitement around 2010, where it really seemed like we got a new, innovative platform which will allow for completely new types of gameplay and turn a lot of casuals into real gamers at the same time. But turned out, the mobile crowd (which is basically most of humanity at this point) really prefer spending their money in a very specific genres, and innovativ…

> Marketing doesn't lead people. It just enhances the signal about what people choose. Marketing is also the process of surveying the market and deciding what to make in the first place.

Good point, I should have phrased it differently.

Re: TouchArcade Is Shutting Down

#23

Post by [deleted] »

fidotron wrote: post #5

This is a highly visible manifestation of something that has been going on for years. I have been around mobile games for 20 years (going back to J2ME) and have never seen interest in the field so low. Essentially the noise is that people are locked into habits in the app stores. It takes huge amounts of money to get people to try something new, and this invariably leads to amazing conservatism on the part of publish…

[deleted]

Re: TouchArcade Is Shutting Down

#25

Post by [deleted] »

incrudible wrote: post #10
smileson2 wrote: post #7

Feels like the race to the bottom is nearing the finish line

Case in point, I just saw one of these bizarre advertisements for a game where they show some simplistic gameplay that is supposed to hook you, which is not at all the point of the actual game. It was about a pregnant women and her other child, freezing outside in the winter. I had to watch it to the end and it turns out the game was... Gardenscapes.

[deleted]

Re: TouchArcade Is Shutting Down

#26

Post by n_ary »

mschuster91 wrote: post #15
incrudible wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Case in point, I just saw one of these bizarre advertisements for a game where they show some simplistic gameplay that is supposed to hook you, which is not at all the point of the actual game. It was about a pregnant women and her other child, freezing outside in the winter. I had to watch it to the end and it turns out the game was... Gardenscapes.

Yeah they've run shitty ads for years now. And it seems like the one time they did face consequences for their fake ads four years ago clearly wasn't enough [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24761349

It is a common trick. There are many culprits using same tricks: Gardenscape, Whiteout Survival, Frozen City, Township, Fishdom, Hero Wars and to some extent Royal Match.

All of these appear to enjoy a lot of downloads, so whatever tricks they are using works very effectively.

Re: TouchArcade Is Shutting Down

#27

Post by rightlane »

One of the last bastions of good games journalism, and the only good mobile gaming site. Another casualty of the garbage listicles and AI generated garbage that fills up search results. I would do anything to have the old, fun, internet back. This monstrosity we have now just isn't doing it for me.

Re: TouchArcade Is Shutting Down

#28

Post by fidotron »

chasing wrote: post #19
fidotron wrote: post #5

This is a highly visible manifestation of something that has been going on for years. I have been around mobile games for 20 years (going back to J2ME) and have never seen interest in the field so low. Essentially the noise is that people are locked into habits in the app stores. It takes huge amounts of money to get people to try something new, and this invariably leads to amazing conservatism on the part of publish…

The mobile gaming market is overwhelmed with cheap trash. It's what you see when you open a mobile game store. (I just opened the iOS App Store games section and, apart from Minecraft and Roblox -- which I'm not interested in -- everything on the main screen pretty much looks terrible.) It's a marked contrast to the major consoles and other game store platforms which, for whatever reason, do a much better job of not…

> And they complained about the total switch over to micro-transactions. Those complaints were ignored.

There is a good reason for this. “Premium” mobile games never reliably made that much money, even during the early iOS boom. If you were a publisher it took having quite a few hits to compensate, and Android was more trouble than it was worth for a long time.

A successful MTX game made several orders of magnitude more. (Instead of getting low millions you would be getting hundreds of millions). The process was perfectly satirized in South Park by the “Canadian Department of Mobile Gaming” which like all the best South Park jokes wasn’t nearly as fictional as might be assumed.

Such games are “cheap trash” in the same sense as a vegas casino. Similarly the actual operating of them at scale becomes very sophisticated. Team Fortress 2 is an example of Valve indulging in exactly this on Steam, so it is far from isolated to mobile.

Re: TouchArcade Is Shutting Down

#29

Post by pier25 »

golergka wrote: post #18
fidotron wrote: post #5

This is a highly visible manifestation of something that has been going on for years. I have been around mobile games for 20 years (going back to J2ME) and have never seen interest in the field so low. Essentially the noise is that people are locked into habits in the app stores. It takes huge amounts of money to get people to try something new, and this invariably leads to amazing conservatism on the part of publish…

I worked in mobile gamedev a long time, and I remember the excitement around 2010, where it really seemed like we got a new, innovative platform which will allow for completely new types of gameplay and turn a lot of casuals into real gamers at the same time. But turned out, the mobile crowd (which is basically most of humanity at this point) really prefer spending their money in a very specific genres, and innovativ…

> the mobile crowd (which is basically most of humanity at this point) really prefer spending their money in a very specific genres, and innovative gameplay

Yeah although what percentage of mobile users actually play on their phones regularly these days?

It's anecdotal but I haven't played a mobile game in almost a decade now. I played a lot on my iPad 1 and 3.

The app fever of 2010 has passed. Again anecdotal, but I avoid installing apps on my phone as much as I can.

My wife still plays candy crush on her iPad almost every night but has zero interest in any other game.

Re: TouchArcade Is Shutting Down

#30

Post by jandrese »

incrudible wrote: post #10
smileson2 wrote: post #7

Feels like the race to the bottom is nearing the finish line

Case in point, I just saw one of these bizarre advertisements for a game where they show some simplistic gameplay that is supposed to hook you, which is not at all the point of the actual game. It was about a pregnant women and her other child, freezing outside in the winter. I had to watch it to the end and it turns out the game was... Gardenscapes.

The one thing I like about new Twitter is how those deceptive ads can get community notes that say "gameplay depicted is not in the game".
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