Another article about whether or not Nintendo should move into the lucrative but (largely) morally bankrupt world of mobile phone games came up today, this time from Forbes.
Thankfully, Forbes’ Erik Kain actually has his head screwed on correctly, unlike the various analysts who have, over the last few years, said that Nintendo “should” go mobile owing to the decline of dedicated handheld gaming in favour of gaming on smart devices, and the general underperformance of the Wii U compared to both its peers and its predecessor the Wii.
Nintendo’s in a very different position to where it was during the Wii and DS years, for sure, but the company is coming into the Christmas period in a strong position with regard to games. The Wii U in particular is in a much better position than it has been, with strong first-party titles like Mario Kart 8 and Super Smash Bros. (as well as Captain Toad Treasure Tracker soon) doubtless having places on many Christmas lists. The 3DS, meanwhile, is largely keeping to itself for the most part, but still has an enormous library of great games to draw from — not to mention backwards compatibility with the wealth of fantastic software available on DS.
Kain brings up an excellent point in his piece, which is something I’ve been saying for a while: Nintendo shouldn’t move into mobile game development because the philosophy behind it is fundamentally different to the way Nintendo does things. And not, for my money, for the better; while excellent mobile games like The Room, 80 Days and the like exist, for every one of those there’s a Candy Crush Saga, a Hay Day, a Clash of Clans: mindless tapping games designed not to be in any way fun, but instead to extract as much money out of their players as possible. And, worryingly, players are lapping these up. The aforementioned games all make obscene amounts of money each month — enough to be able to afford advertising campaigns that rival (and in many cases exceed) the presence of the most big-budget triple-A titles — and they’re all a load of cack.
Nintendo, conversely, is all about the fun, and I’ve been reminded of this as I’ve played Super Smash Bros. and revisited Mario Kart 8 this week. Nintendo makes games by the old book: they’re not trying to be movies, they’re not trying to be spectacular, they’re simply trying to be enjoyable fun that anyone can pick up and have a go with, but which those willing to put in a bit more time and effort can get even more out of. Every time I play a Nintendo game, it feels like that Christmas I got a Super Nintendo; they’re games just made to be enjoyed and savoured for the joy of playing, nothing more. They have no desire to be “art” — though for sure there’s artistry in both their aesthetic and top-quality mechanical design — nor any desire to say something about the human condition; they’re just… you know, fun.
Moreover, they’re games that are designed to gradually train players to get better and progress a little bit at a time, demonstrating their skill rather than how deep their pockets are. If you get stuck in a Nintendo game, it’s up to you to get good, scrub; no paying to skip a difficult bit here.
Up until very recently, Nintendo games didn’t even have downloadable add-on content; that’s changed with Mario Kart, but even that demonstrates Nintendo’s “players first” attitude. Rather than pre-purchasing the DLC costing as much as a new game as tends to happen with new triple-A games and their obnoxious “Season Passes” on Xbox, PlayStation and PC, Mario Kart’s DLC costs £12 and clearly shows exactly what it is you’re getting for your money and when. (8 new tracks and 4 new characters now; another 8 new tracks and 4 new characters in May of next year; alternatively, you can pay about £8 and get just the first half now.) Not only that, but when playing online, the player-base fragmentation issue that DLC creates is deftly taken care of by a simple on-screen button that asks whether or not you want to play with the new tracks included, or just those that came on the disc. Simple, effective.
I have not played a single mobile game for… probably well over a year now. Very little has appealed — though I do intend to give 80 Days a go at some point — and, moreover, the problems both Android and iOS have with discoverability have only continued to get worse and worse as time has gone on; the market is flooded with identikit crap from developers trying to make a quick bit of cash from reskinning existing games and cloning popular titles. There’s the odd diamond in the rough — stuff like Monument Valley, Threes! and the aforementioned 80 Days — but it’s very much in the minority and, frankly, even these great games are very rarely up to the standard of what you can get on 3DS and Vita, whether technically or in terms of gameplay.
Conversely, I take my 3DS and my Vita to work every day and play an hour of something like Senran Kagura Burst (3DS) or Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 (Vita) every lunchtime, and I have an absolute blast. I can enjoy a game without requiring an Internet connection, without having to pay up to progress, and without “social features” constantly bugging me to share my every move on Facebook and Twitter. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I’ll continue to prefer dedicated handhelds for portable gaming for as long as companies like Sony and Nintendo continue to make them, and it will be a sad day for me when the only available portable gaming platforms are mobile phones and tablets. I hope that day never comes.
Now, maybe a Neptunia dungeon or two before sleep…
Discover more from I'm Not Doctor Who
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Man . . . I am so all about Captain Toad . . .
Ah, phone games. I’ve tried to like them because they’re so convenient and easier to whip out during the 10 minutes between classes or on the bus, but they get boring too quickly.
I’ve enjoyed Square Enix/MediaVision’s Chaos Rings series, which debuted on iOS and, at the time, had revolutionary production values. Heck, I’d even argue that the second game has better production values than most mobile games today, with its excellent soundtrack. It’s a series of RPGs that cost what people would consider “premium” price for a phone game (*gasp* $16.99 each at debut), but contains no microtransactions whatsoever and were actually enjoyable as short-but-sweet turn-based RPGs (“short” here meaning ~20 hours). But I guess listing Chaos Rings is kind of cheating, because I played the JP Vita ports. The first game you could kind of tell that it was made to be quick and easy for mobile audiences (bosses die in 2-3 turns if you know your elemental rock-paper-scissors, and there are immersion-breaking block puzzles shoehorned into the dungeons), but the second game has challenge appropriate for a full-fledged RPG, as well as a rather nice story. The fact that the third game came out for both phones and the Vita at the same time suggests that the audience for this type of game is still on the dedicated handheld console side, though.
I tried searching on the App Store for other games like the Chaos Rings series and came out empty-handed. Even though most smartphones are more powerful than the 3DS (and the higher-end ones than the Vita, even), it seems like nobody actually utilizes that power to make high-budget games because the market doesn’t demand it.
There are a few high-budget mobile games around — or more accurately, games with a strong degree of technical proficiency — but the trouble is that in most cases they simply don’t have the gameplay to match the assets.
Take something like the popular Infinity Blade, for example. When that Unreal Engine tech demo first launched for iPhone and showed everyone that yes, it was indeed possible to have “console-quality” (whatever that means) visuals on a mobile phone, everyone collectively shat their pants and started sounding the death-knell for dedicated handhelds. Infinity Blade, of course, turned out to be approximately 15 minutes long and feature roughly as much interactivity as those old pre-rendered CD-ROM games of the early ’90s, and then expect you to play those same 15 minutes over and over and over and over again until you had either ground your way to the best weapons and subsequent victory or, in later patches, handed over the cash to skip all that pesky playing the game and just beef up without effort.
It’s far from the only example like this, either — The Drowning is a more recent example of something that looked great (i.e. visually) but totally failed to live up to its potential in terms of gameplay depth or true longevity.
Good point on Chaos Rings! I haven’t played the subsequent games but I enjoyed the first one a lot, and was more than happy to pay the “premium” price for it, which an audience who had become accustomed to free or £0.99 games initially balked at. I’d much rather pay £20, £30, £40 for a polished, full-length game that respects my time and doesn’t expect me to continue paying to continue playing, and rather than going along with mobile’s race to the bottom since the App Store’s launch, I’ve actually found myself more willing to pay a premium for quality experiences — usually on dedicated platforms.
As you say, though, it’s a market thing. The smartphone audience is vast and, despite the best efforts of both Apple and certain Android handset manufacturers, doesn’t have a particularly strong majority of what we’d call “gamers” — i.e. people who have grown up with Sony, Nintendo, Sega and Microsoft systems. Instead, the majority is a new breed of player who treat games the same way as they treat Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and whatever else they have on their — simple timewasters to while away a minute or two while waiting for a bus or as a means of pretending to be busy and avoid a conversation with someone else.
Some traditional “gamers” do have smartphones, but in most cases these people have other platforms too. And so long as we continue to have superior gaming experiences on 3DS and Vita, my phone will continue with its current role as “The Internet In My Pocket” while my on-the-go gaming time will continue to be 3DS and Vita-based.
There’s a Chaos Rings trilogy pack getting a physical retail release in Japan for the Vita. My fingers are vehemently crossed that that little treat makes its way Westward. I have yet to play any of the games due to a combination of my lack of ownership of a phone capable of running them, and my dislike of digital distribution – but they’re developed by my beloved Media Vision (the folks behind Wild Arms), so I’d relish the opportunity to own and play the franchise.