Eurogamer: Mobile Gaming Is A Joke and a Scam

"We don't have a mobile gaming industry anymore. We have a mobile scamming industry."

So said Thomas Baekdal in a column last week, swinging for the head of a nail with a strike so true that I found myself letting out an involuntary splutter of agreement.

Whenever you write about this phenomenon, the common complaint from people making the games in question is that not all of them are bad. As Thomas Baekdal realised though, the problem is definition. When your free-to-play game is all economy mechanics rather than game mechanics, when your game is all business design rather than game design, you're not actually making a game - you're constructing a scam, whether you realise it or not. If you're doing it knowingly, you're just a high-tech gangster.

The proliferation of games like Dungeon Keeper suggests it's too late for a lot of mobile developers, but the good work being done on PC points to another possible future. If I were busy building free-to-play ideas into a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One game, I know which side of the line I'd prefer to end up on. Reject the ways of the scammers. Be a game developer.

SOURCE

This is all true. While mobile gaming has the potential to be a viable alternative for gaming, and while it can certainly be a wonderful ecosystem unto itself, it's been used as an avenue to make glorified slot machines, games that aren't games, they are ongoing services that try to squeeze as much money from you as possible.

The worst thing is, these microtransaction philosophies are bleeding into console and handheld gaming design as well- look at games like Forza Motorsport 5 and Battlefield 4 for example.

Mobile gaming used to be full of neat indie style games which sometimes even harked back to the days of the spectrum but more and more this financial cash drain system started coming in and before long all it was was a scam designed to rip gullible people off. Even the big franchises are "free" to play.

I'd half expect the next civ mobile game to be free, but each move will take a day unless you spend "gems". It's a fuckin joke and whoever pays for this wants locking up to save themselves from their own stupidity and save the rest of us from their irresponsibility.

I wish developers would offer a "freemium" and a straight up paid version of their games sometimes. Like Asphalt 8 is hella fun on my iPad Air, but it's nothing but micro transactions and ads everywhere. Have me pay like $5 and remove all that crap.

**** mobile gaming. All I need to say.

I pretty much hate 98% of free-to-play games, almost on principle alone. Yes, some do it right, but most just aim to provide you with less and ask for more.

They are several years late with this. Yeah we know but that's what happens when $1 becomes the norm for what people expect to pay for a game. Devs are often forced to come up with all kind of crap like this to actually make money in the industry.

Mobile gaming itself is not the issue- there's lots of great mobile games (such as Game Dev Story, Plants vs Zombies, and so on)- but the practices prevalent on mobile platforms are the issue.

@charizard1605:

I know. These practices have killed my interest for mobile gaming.

Exactly. Gamers that play on consoles and PC dismiss mobile gaming but truth be told there are alot of great games that do not try to rip you off even if they are the minority. Unfortunately the practices of games such as dungeon keeper are prevalent but even so there are still great games ( world of Goo and Anomaly Korea are 2 great games done wonderfully on smartphones ).

I just want to point out at least one of those is a port and not a native mobile game.

There is a reason why companies like Square-Enix love it so much and not to mention that many say that there is more money to be made in mobile gaming than anywhere else.

Even so it translates to touchscreen great

There's some really amazing mobile games, but then you have shit like Dungeon Keeper and Plants Vs. Zombies 2 (which could have been amazing, had they gone the traditional route) that just incessantly pester you for money.

The only F2P mobile game I've ever liked and played for an extended amount of time was Jetpack Joyride. That's literally it. I hate getting 20% of the experience and/or feeling I can never truly "complete" the game, even if the initial download is totally free.

I hate mobile gaming and it's use of the free to play model. The article is bang on and I want to see more journalists like them to stand up and tell it like it is.

Temple Run is a great free to play game as well, simply because you literally do not ever need to pay, everything that you would gain by paying is easily accessible in game locked behind reasonable requirements.

yes yes yes and yesssss eurogamer i agreeee!!!! finally a game site mention this crap gaming

mobile gamers go awayyyy

People don't fall for this crap. If you have a high end cell phone you can run emulators for the ps2/gc/n64 and play all the games in hd. You can even use your dual shock 3 as well. There are also some decent games you can get also.

To my knowledge BF4 only has premium it doesn't have microtransactions. Char why do you insist on spewing shit sometimes?

This is very true. The best games on mobile are almost always ports from "real" gaming platforms. For example the original Plants vs Zombies. But if you look at Plants Vs zombies 2 EA has managed to ruin even these ports.

"Popcap and EA just added a new update to Plants vs. Zombies 2 last week...an update that has made me put it down for good.

People are acting like this isn't a big deal, so let me explain what happened.

In Plants vs. Zombies, you get five lawnmowers as a "safety" in case one of the zombies should happen to reach your house. The lawnmower will mow down the zombie and everything in it's path, but once it's gone, that's it...at least until you restart the level.

In the new update, I noticed that after losing a lawnmower I had the option to "buy it back" using in-game currency. Now this being a "Free to Play" game, the in-game currency takes quite a long time to acquire and can also be obtained more quickly by using your iTunes account to actually buy large amounts it. Interesting, but I wasn't going to use my coins for a lawnmower. They'll be back after I fail the pinata event anyway. NOPE. I used some coins to retry the event (I think this is new as well) and noticed my lawnmowers were gone. Huh. So in the events, doing a "retry" will not respawn the lawnmowers. You'll have to buy them back. Well that sucks.

I decided to return to the main quest for the sake of replaying some old stages to earn some of that precious currency.

Enter stage 1-4. What's this?

No lawnmowers.

None.

In their place are five "buy this" buttons. This can't be. It must be a glitch right? It has to be. I mean this is beyond "Dungeonkeeper" evil.

Enter stage 2-5. No lawnmowers. There are no lawnmowers in the entire game, even if I have already beaten the level, even it's a non-event, even if I'm starting it over.

They fundamentally changed a core mechanic of the game in order to make you pay more. It's not like a level or a part of the game is missing, no, a part of the inherent gameplay itself is gone and if you want it back you're going to have to pay for it. Every. Single. Time.

The outrage is more than justifiable, especially as someone who has been supporting these games and the franchise since it's birth. It's also no secret that Plants vs. Zombies is now a massively successful franchise. Why do this? I bet EA is really hurting financially and they just need to go to extreme measures, taking the risk to isolate consumers and fans alike, to make a bit more dough.

Free to play is clearly here to stay but this is taking it another level.

I'm done, deleting the game and not looking back until the gameplay mechanics are properly restored. Go ahead and say that I'm overreacting, but if you play them game and found yourself insulted or frustrated by this change, join me."

Why would anyone run those games on such a small screen. Seriously...

Because they look and play good.

Only if you have no standards. :)

@inb4uall: You're not overreacting you are doing the exact right thing. Delete this shit and tell everybody about it so they don't install it in the first place.

Consumer power is all we have.

I fail to see how terrible business practices have any say on the viability of a platform's ability to offer a good gaming experience. Just as the article pointed out, not all games are bad.

Final Fantasy VI just came out for iOS, and it is the definitive version of the game. The graphics have been beautifully redrawn, the menus reworked to make gameplay more efficient, it has a bestiary, music player, has all the extra GBA content, and best of all has auto-battle. It's $15 and not a cent has been asked more of me. Even if it had, that is not a reflection of the capability of the platform, it is simply a reflection of the greed of the publisher and the stupidity of the audience that enables it.

As far as I'm aware, consoles suffer from day-one DLC, bug laden products, and other business practices that are not exactly praiseworthy, yet I see no mention of people saying that console gaming is a "scam" or some such nonsense. Mobile works perfectly fine for gaming, people are just out to prove it to be a non-viable way to game in any manner they can and will use such examples as EA's Dungeon Keeper to prove their point.

I think it's more a statement of the audience than the platform when garbage "games" like Dungeon Keeper succeed. They support it, if they didn't these bullshit extortion schemes wouldn't exist.

It is a huge scam. You can't get much worse than the current state of DLC milking on PC/consoles, and mobile gaming is worse.

Agreed completely on every point. Good to see the big mainstream publications pointing this out, and not sugar-coating it.

Excuse me, what? Are you serious?

Final Fantasy VI on iOS is the worst version, and the graphics are a complete, absolute joke.

What the hell are you talking about?

@charizard1605: This is old. 4 days old:
http://www.gamespot.com/forums/system-wars-314159282/eurogamer-calling-out-microtransaction-scam-31069428/

Don't know why you started that comment with "don't fall for this crap", and then went right on to explain how you can use your phone to play better games, that don't have microtransactions. Do you agree with the article or not?

As for me, I know exactly what you're talking about, and do it all the time. I run old nintendo and gameboy emulators on my phone when I want some quick mobile gaming away from the house. Those games are fully-featured and totally free, and are better games than any iOS or android game, even if they didn't have horrible f2p models.

@WadeFan:

If they were going to have a micro transaction free version it would probably be more than $5 :(

Have you played it? I'm assuming not.

Yes, I am very familiar with the disdain many have for the redrawn sprites. I've browsed the Neogaf VI thread, which predictably had everyone hating on the sprites as if Square had somehow raped their childhood, yet after the game's release, whaddaya know......the large majority that had played it grew to love it. The game looks much, MUCH better in motion and screenshots do not do it justice. And the sprites are the only thing that really cause people to be upset over. The backgrounds and spells are all better, colorful, hi-res.

Here's a comparison. Sorry, I couldn't find one with characters, but this shows the work that's been done. Not just in Narshe, but everywhere.

iOS:

Original:

The original's better? Looks like the bottom one's the joke. The sprites I'll grant you are subjective (tbh I would prefer the original's, but I think that has more to do with nostalgia than their quality or look, but they've grown on me nonetheless), but the backgrounds are MUCH improved. Your reply reeks of someone who's simply jumped on the mobile hate bandwagon without even giving it a shot. iOS is the best version so far.

I like Sonic Dash. Too bad the stupid thing keeps sabotaging its own interface to try to sell me power ups that I don't want to the point where sometimes I don't know what I have to do to JUST KEEP PLAYING THE GAME.

I can understand the whole Free to Play/Microtransaction model, but you know you are doing something horribly wrong when someone who handles technology with relative ease gets lost while trying to just play the damn game. And I also know Sonic Dash is not even remotely close to being the only mobile game that's guilty of this.

lol at Mobile gaming seriously i laugh when someone mentions gaming on a mobile phone...i do everything on my phone except for gaming, same exact thing with my PC.

Why do you laugh?

I do not care for games on my mobile phone. That being said, it is a threat to console gaming. More and more publishers are looking at ways to shift focus onto the mobile platform.

I am not saying this is a doom and gloom situation, but rather why I have a pro-console approach even if I do not choose to game on the platform. More consoles being bought is better for this time period when everything is shifting and uncertain.

I would rather see Microsoft and Nintendo successful rather than shift to mobile. While the console market seems to be taking off this generation, it has never been more threatened.

I can understand the concern, but I think there will always be a large market for traditional, dedicated gaming platforms. The massive sales of the One and PS4 are showing this. I find mobile to be much more of a threat to dedicated handhelds than consoles or the PC platforms, and I do believe the days of systems such as the 3DS and Vita are numbered.

But I get frustrated that people automatically dismiss mobile as a capable gaming device simply because it's not dedicated and its offerings are 95% filled with superficial, IAP, micro-transaction laden trash that the general audience are stupid enough to buy into. But there ARE good games on the iOS store that do not have any IAPs or MTS and are well done, and it's great to have them in my pocket wherever I go. KoToR, FFVI (and previous versions), and Chrono Trigger are a few.

There's nothing wrong with mobile as a gaming device, it's just that its user-base is so mainstream that idiots are enabling horrible practices that taint its reputation.

Eurogamer is spot-on

And EA yet, again, manages to be at the heart of the controversy. It's as though they plan a certain number of f*ck ups each year.

Making games is tough business - but it's no excuse for the BS publishers pull with F2P.

The mobile market is so easy to exploit with all the flifthy casuals involved.

95% mobile games out there is a joke,

Well see here's the thing. It's not a scam unless you are tricking people. If people CHOOSE to spend 100s of dollars/euros on "gems" or whatever in shitty mobile games, then that's their choice. I don't defend the quality of the games, but I do defend the devs right to make whatever profitable systems work for them. Clearly many, many people DO enjoy this payment model.

@MirkoS77 said:

@charizard1605 said:

@MirkoS77 said:

Final Fantasy VI just came out for iOS, and it is the definitive version of the game. The graphics have been beautifully redrawn, the menus reworked to make gameplay more efficient, it has a bestiary, music player, has all the extra GBA content, and best of all has auto-battle. It's $15 and not a cent has been asked more of me. Even if it had, that is not a reflection of the capability of the platform, it is simply a reflection of the greed of the publisher and the stupidity of the audience that enables it.

Excuse me, what? Are you serious?

Final Fantasy VI on iOS is the worst version, and the graphics are a complete, absolute joke.

What the hell are you talking about?

Have you played it? I'm assuming not.

Yes, I am very familiar with the disdain many have for the redrawn sprites. I've browsed the Neogaf VI thread, which predictably had everyone hating on the sprites as if Square had somehow raped their childhood, yet after the game's release, whaddaya know......the large majority that had played it grew to love it. The game looks much, MUCH better in motion and screenshots do not do it justice. And the sprites are the only thing that really cause people to be upset over. The backgrounds and spells are all better, colorful, hi-res.

Here's a comparison. Sorry, I couldn't find one with characters, but this shows the work that's been done. Not just in Narshe, but everywhere.

iOS:

Original:

The original's better? Looks like the bottom one's the joke. The sprites I'll grant you are subjective (tbh I would prefer the original's, but I think that has more to do with nostalgia than their quality or look, but they've grown on me nonetheless), but the backgrounds are MUCH improved. Your reply reeks of someone who's simply jumped on the mobile hate bandwagon without even giving it a shot. iOS is the best version so far.

FF6 was an SNES game, so making the backgrounds look better really isn't much of a feat.

That is awful and not an overreaction at all in my opinion. Incredibly justified.

I'm not against mobile gaming at all, but I haven't found that experience that wows me. Infinity Blade was pretty but nothing great, Plants vs Zombies is fine but never grabbed me, same with Angry Birds. Anything else like platformers never felt right with just a touch screen. I'm just old-fashioned. :P

But I found myself in agreement with the article. There's good stuff out there but the current practices are painting a poor picture of the future. If the general public enjoys those free-to-play, microtransaction games that is great for them, but it's not a gaming ecosystem I'll take part in.

The title of this thread is largely misleading, the actual title of Eurogamers article isn't "Mobile Gaming is a Scam", it's "Console developers need to look at Dungeon Keeper and learn" and I think that's a very important distinction. In fact, I don't get from the article the sense that Eurogamer is saying that all of mobile gaming, the universal mobile gaming industry, is a scam. I think this is an important paragraph to read:

Blizzard has designed Hearthstone so you gain free packs for playing a few games a day and success in Arena mode earns prizes and enough gold to re-enter it for free.

When they get the balance right, though, the rewards are far greater than they are for the conmen sloshing around mobile development with their "coercive monetisation" manuals. The decision to buy expert packs in Hearthstone, for example, only comes after a dozen or more hours learning its fascinating intricacies, at which point you hand over your money as much because you believe it's been earned as because you want what you're buying. As a game developer, who has probably grown up loving games and got into this line of work to experience the other side of that rich relationship, isn't that what you would want?

Credit Eurogamer

This article is aimed at developers who create games that take advantage of or set up unreasonable barriers to the fun of the game itself. It's not about the fact that mobile gaming is a scam. That's a terribly inaccurate perception.

Mobile gaming is way beyond potential and is already solidly secure in it's own right, especially on iOS. Full games like Xcom, the upcoming Hearthstone, Limbo, The Walking Dead, Knights of the Old Republic (for crying out loud, KOTOR!), MtG Duels of the Planeswalkers 2013/2014, Frozen Synapse, Baldur's Gate, Max Payne, all the GTAS3 games, Chrono Trigger, The World Ends with You, GTA Chinatown, Ghost Trick: Phanton Detective, Crazy Taxi, Puzzle Quest 1/2, World of Goo, all the classic board games you played as a kid with online multiplayer, and so much more.

I frequent this site because of the excellent play videos, reviews, and news they post. It's also a good place to look if you don't know how rich the ecosystem already is. I've only mentioned popular games that many of us have likely played on other platforms. I haven't even gotten into the mobile-exclusive games that truly offer a real, actual, quality experience free of pay walls and other such "scammery."

Mobile gaming has arrived, it arrived a while ago.

EDIT: Updated link, forgot to post link to TouchArcade

@musicalmac: Did you play Knights of the Old Republic on your iPhone or iPad? I was curious how it played on iPhone; I thought it was only available for iPad so I haven't really done research on how it plays.

I have not, only because I've played it on my Xbox and on my computer already. I didn't feel like I needed a third version. There are quite a few reviews here, and I'm led to believe that you would find it to be a pleasing port (floating at a solid 88 on Metacritic).

@PurpleMan5000 said:

@MirkoS77 said:

@charizard1605 said:

@MirkoS77 said:

Final Fantasy VI just came out for iOS, and it is the definitive version of the game. The graphics have been beautifully redrawn, the menus reworked to make gameplay more efficient, it has a bestiary, music player, has all the extra GBA content, and best of all has auto-battle. It's $15 and not a cent has been asked more of me. Even if it had, that is not a reflection of the capability of the platform, it is simply a reflection of the greed of the publisher and the stupidity of the audience that enables it.

Excuse me, what? Are you serious?

Final Fantasy VI on iOS is the worst version, and the graphics are a complete, absolute joke.

What the hell are you talking about?

Have you played it? I'm assuming not.

Yes, I am very familiar with the disdain many have for the redrawn sprites. I've browsed the Neogaf VI thread, which predictably had everyone hating on the sprites as if Square had somehow raped their childhood, yet after the game's release, whaddaya know......the large majority that had played it grew to love it. The game looks much, MUCH better in motion and screenshots do not do it justice. And the sprites are the only thing that really cause people to be upset over. The backgrounds and spells are all better, colorful, hi-res.

Here's a comparison. Sorry, I couldn't find one with characters, but this shows the work that's been done. Not just in Narshe, but everywhere.

iOS:

Original:

The original's better? Looks like the bottom one's the joke. The sprites I'll grant you are subjective (tbh I would prefer the original's, but I think that has more to do with nostalgia than their quality or look, but they've grown on me nonetheless), but the backgrounds are MUCH improved. Your reply reeks of someone who's simply jumped on the mobile hate bandwagon without even giving it a shot. iOS is the best version so far.

FF6 was an SNES game, so making the backgrounds look better really isn't much of a feat.

Never said it was. What I'm saying is iOS is the definitive version of the game.