#oneaday Day 551: Mobile gaming is perceived as a "world of predatory monetisation and low quality" because that's what it is

A recent article on Gamesindustry.biz drew attention to a LinkedIn (ugh) post from one Christian Lövstedt, CEO of a company called Midjiwan AB, who is complaining that people don't take mobile gaming seriously.

Midjiwan AB, if you were curious, apparently make a mobile game called The Battle of Polytopia, which I've never heard of, which I suspect is at least partly what this is all about. In fairness to all the following, The Battle of Polytopia does not look all that bad… but I'd still rather play a game like that anywhere other than my phone. But I digress before we've even begun, so let's get back on track.

"Mobile gaming is one of the most played and most profitable platforms in gaming," Lövstedt says, "currently representing 55% of the global gaming market, but is often ignored and looked down on [because] it is perceived by too many as a world of predatory monetisation and low quality."

Okay. Let's start with this. People love to trot out that "over 55% of the market" figure (with variations on the exact figure quoted) but let's be real about this: the reason why mobile accounts for so much revenue in the global games market is precisely because it is a world of predatory monetisation and low quality.

Consider some of the most popular mobile games out there. Candy Crush Saga, which charges up to £34.99 for cheats that allow you to bypass levels — coupled with design that makes it near-impossible to win without buying these cheats. Gacha games such as Azur Lane, Granblue Fantasy and Fate/Grand Order, which exploit horny young people (particularly, though not exclusively, men) with attractive JPGs of hot anime characters, necessitating that you pay at least £20 at a time to be in with a reasonable chance of actually getting the character you want. And I'm pretty sure there are still plenty of "tap and wait" games out there that ask you to pay up to make things go faster or be able to simply play the game more.

When you consider that the term "whale" was coined to describe those who spend excessive amounts of money on free-to-play games, particularly in the social and mobile spaces — and that pursuing these whales to exploit them (at the expense of providing a good experience to free players) is a primary goal of the developers of these popular games — you will perhaps start to see exactly why mobile accounts for so much of the "market". It's because one user playing one heavily monetised mobile game will account for considerably more revenue than one user playing one pay-once-play-forever premium game on PC or console.

Games like this, you see, don't just ask you to buy them and are then happy with that. No; the most "successful" mobile games — measured by most folks who complain about mobile not getting its dues as the ones that generate the most revenue — are the ones that provide the opportunity for perpetual monetisation: the ones that entrap players into dark patterns that make them feel like they have to continually pay money into the game, month after month, in order to remain "relevant" and "current".

When you start from there, it's understandable why people see mobile gaming as rife with predatory monetisation and low-quality games. But let's look at the rest of this open letter.

"While some amazing mobile-first titles, like Monument Valley, manage to get the industry's attention," Lövstedt continues, "many other extremely popular and successful titles do not."

Monument Valley came out in 2014. That's over ten years ago! If you can't think of a more recent example than that of Doing It Right, I think we may have found the problem!

But he continues:

"Mobile games like Clash of Clans, Temple Run, Crossy Road and Candy Crush Saga are critically and commercially successful, yet are never or rarely acknowledged at game awards."

Perhaps that's because Clash of Clans, Temple Run and Candy Crush Saga are all prime examples of games with predatory monetisation and low quality? I actually don't know about Crossy Road, so I am willing to take a moment to actually research it before I brand it with the same scarlet letter. Give me a moment.

Tangent: Pete tries Crossy Road

"Contains ads. Contains in-app purchases". We're not off to a good start already. But let's download this and see.

After an initial tutorial, during which the simple tap-and-swipe, Frogger-inspired gameplay is introduced, I am given a "free gift" of in-game currency and then immediately invited to "win a prize". It costs the 100G of in-game currency I was just "gifted" to draw from a virtual gacha machine, which awards me with a mallard duck avatar to play in the game instead of the default chicken.

I am then taken to a main menu screen where I get an immediate popup about a new time-limited game mode and "sweet sales in the store". I'm then taken into that mode without having asked to play it. After playing it briefly, I am shown my top score with two non-descript icons, the purposes of which are not made entirely clear. It seems the one that the eye is most immediately drawn to — i.e. the one where you'd expect an "OK" button to be in typical UI design — is a "share" function for you to send a screenshot of your concluded run to any of your phone's connected social services or contacts.

After that, I am given a timer countdown to my next "free gift" and informed how many "G" of in-game currency there is "to go" until my next blind box of whatever the fuck you unlock in this game.

To Crossy Road's credit, it has no play-throttling energy system, no paying to bypass timers and it does have a one-off payment of £7.99 to remove all ads (if you're not already blocking them), but it also sells extra game modes, has "limited time sales" on special characters and sells a power-up to double your in-game currency income. And you can bet that it gets regular "content updates" to ensure there are always new things for people to pay for.

But it's just not very fun, the countdown timers and grind for currency make it feel more like work than play, and the "business" part of it being so front and centre is exactly why people don't take it as seriously as premium, pay-once games for PC and consoles.

So in conclusion to that little bit, while Crossy Road isn't as egregious as the other examples cited, it's still not… great. And certainly not the sort of thing that is in any way deserving of an award.

"Just because [low-quality] games [with predatory monetisation] like that do exist in the mobile market, it should not diminish the achievements of the market's best games," Lövstedt continues. "It perhaps makes them more impressive. And if we're honest with ourselves, there are AAA industry darlings crammed with the same monetisation mechanics."

Two things to pick out here: firstly, outside of the aforementioned Monument Valley (which, again, is eleven years old at this point), he cites no specific examples. And yes! Yes, triple-A does pull all this shit, too! And you know what? People hate it there, too!

"D.I.C.E., one of the better award bodies for acknowledging mobile gaming, has only ever nominated a mobile game for Game of the Year twice," he continues. "Angry Birds HD and Pokémon Go. And they were the only dedicated game awards body to nominate them, despite how commercially and culturally impactful both games are."

Okay. I have to look into this. Bear with me.

Tangent: Pete looks into the D.I.C.E. Awards

Angry Birds HD was nominated for Game of the Year in 2011 alongside Mass Effect 2 (which won), Call of Duty: Black Ops, God of War III and Red Dead Redemption. Honestly, the fact that it was even nominated is borderline laughable, because Angry Birds is not a particularly amazing video game. It's fine for what it is, but in 2011 people were still feeling the novelty of playing games on a tablet — the iPad first launched in 2010 — and the calibre of the other games that were nominated is just in a completely different league. What Lövstedt doesn't mention is that Angry Birds HD did win a D.I.C.E. Award that year — for Casual Game of the Year. Which is absolutely fair, although given it was up against Pac-Man Championship Edition DX, Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled 3, it wouldn't be my vote. (And I don't even like Plants vs. Zombies.)

Pokémon Go, meanwhile, was up for the 2017 Game of the Year award, where it was up against Overwatch (which won), Battlefield 1, INSIDE and Uncharted 4. My personal tastes put that as a much weaker overall lineup than that of 2011, but there's still a world of difference between gamifying Google Maps and the cultural phenomenon that was Overwatch in its first year. And, again, Pokémon Go won a perfectly acceptable award for what it is: Mobile Game of the Year.

Lövstedt is right; Pokémon Go in particular did have a certain amount of cultural impact, particularly as we moved into the pandemic years. But, again, it's just not a very good video game, which is why it lost out on the overall Game of the Year award. "A lot of people played this because they were bored" is not the same as "this is an incredible video game that should be celebrated as the pinnacle of its medium".

In conclusion, then, I have to reiterate that mobile gaming's reputation as being filled with low-quality games with predatory monetisation is well-earned. This isn't to deny that there are developers apparently doing interesting things on mobile — Lövstedt's own The Battle of Polytopia looks quite worthwhile, so I might have to actually give it a go — but at this point, the damage done by Apple introducing in-app purchases (and Google following suit) has already been done. There's no easy way to turn that back; no easy way to reclaim mobile gaming's reputation from those who, thanks to their greed, generate enough income to account for a supposed 55% of the global games industry's revenue.

Because what are Apple, Google and the other app store platform holders going to do? Just suddenly give up such a profitable revenue stream? Because let's not forget they get a cut of every purchase, so it is absolutely not in their interests to try and fix this.

Also, playing games on a touchscreen — particularly on small ones like those found on phones — sucks ass. This, honestly, is one of the biggest reasons I have zero desire to play any games on my phone today — even if they weren't low-quality games with predatory monetisation. Which a significant portion of them are, so I have precisely zero incentive to look any deeper — particularly because the vast majority of those which are cited as "good examples" (including the aforementioned Monument Valley, plus titles like Stardew Valley and Vampire Survivors) are available on platforms with control schemes that don't suck!

So in summary: if you want to be taken seriously, release your game on a platform that people will take seriously. Have you seen the shit they let onto Steam these days, recent examples notwithstanding…?

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#oneaday Day 329: Open your wallet

One thing that has been a constant in all the discussions over the death of Giant Bomb and Polygon yesterday is that we need to support independent creators. We need to support worker-owned organisations, we need to support publications that aren't corporate-owned, and perhaps most importantly, we need to support individual creators who, in many cases, do not have the backing of a corporation or even an organisation to help them out.

What this means in practical terms is that if you like something a particular creator or group of creators does, you should open your wallet and toss them a bit of change now and then. It doesn't have to be a regular pledge, it doesn't have to be a lot of money, but it's something we all need to get better at doing.

Of course, for those of limited means, ways of supporting creators that don't involve spending money are helpful, too. Telling others about the creators and their work; sharing links to ways people can support them; telling their own stories about why that creator and their work are important to them.

But there has to be a slightly mercenary element to this: there are people out there working hard who deserve to get paid for the work they put in — particularly if it is their actual job — and that payment shouldn't be contingent on SEO optimisation and ad revenue. The obsession with those to the exclusion of all else — including the quality of the work — is what has led us to a situation where almost the entirety of the traditional games press has collapsed, with the scraps being hoovered up by corporations that pay peanuts for absurdly unreasonable quantities of work. And when that happens, you get an Internet flooded with shite. And when there aren't workers to do that but the content still needs to flow, that's when you get an Internet flooded with AI-generated shite that is riddled with errors as well as being crap.

In many ways, the democratisation of information that the Internet has brought everyone is an amazing thing. There is no need to spend thousands of pounds on an Encyclopaedia Britannica because you have access to all that information and more via the Web. But the trouble is, this same democratisation of information has led everyone to expect everything for free. And that is simply not sustainable. People who make things as their job need to get paid. That money needs to come from somewhere. And we've proven pretty clearly beyond any shadow of a doubt that the ad-driven model is not a good way of doing things, for a variety of reasons: the workload it places on underpaid workers; the unreliability of it as an income stream; and the fact it encourages a race to the bottom in terms of content churn rather than the production of actually meaningful, worthwhile work.

So I say again: open your wallet. Think back to the days when if you wanted to read something about your hobby, you'd walk into Smiths and pick up a magazine, maybe flip through it a bit, then walk over to the counter and pay a few quid for it. You might do this multiple times a month for different aspects of your hobby, or, hell, for different hobbies altogether. You might even set up a subscription so you got the magazines sent straight to you. In doing that, you were supporting the people who made the magazines, the people who wrote the articles, and you were helping to ensure the continued existence of that magazine.

Sure, you could read the whole thing for free in Smiths if you wanted to, but I think most people were honest enough to actually pony up for a copy of a magazine if they had a quick flip through and saw one or two things they thought were worthwhile. More often than not, you'd find things you didn't expect to find interesting when you later perused the magazine in its entirety later in the day. And sometimes, you'd even return to that magazine years later and rediscover things you had forgotten about, or notice things you never saw first time around.

You can't easily do that with the churn of SEO optimised website content because of the sheer volume of it — and the inability to guarantee that the information will still be there [x] years down the line. Someone on Bluesky earlier noted that they were doing research for a video they were making and found a good article from 2014, but was unable to follow up on any of the sources that article cited because every link in it was broken.

So, I say again: open your wallet, if it is within your means to do so. Help writers produce fewer articles with more words that are better and which stick around for longer. Help video makers produce fewer videos that are better quality, more in-depth and completely devoid of SEO or ragebaiting.

And if anyone makes a new paper magazine about your passions, you throw those goddamn heroes a subscription.

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1200: It Was Just a Joke

Playing Robot Unicorn Attack 2 on the toilet earlier, a question came to me. It's been lingering in my mind for a few days, actually, but as I was there attempting to better my score and ensure supremacy for Team Rainbow in the twilight hours of the second of May, 2013 — Team Inferno probably have it in the bag, sadly — it struck me that perhaps Robot Unicorn Attack 2 is taking itself a bit too seriously.

And then this, naturally, led my mind on to ponder "how far is too far?" for things that are, essentially, jokes, memes, gags, whatever you want to call them. Because that's what the original Robot Unicorn Attack was — a joke. An immensely popular joke, yes — one million plays within a week of its release, apparently, and plenty more since then — but still a joke. This much is probably self-evident from its title. It is a game called Robot Unicorn Attack. No-one has called a video game something quite so literal and ridiculous and meant it since the 1980s.

And yet here we are in 2013 with Robot Unicorn Attack 2, a surprisingly well fleshed-out expansion of the original's "endless runner" gameplay that features online asynchronous cooperative "community" goals, an upgradeable unicorn, a levelling system, downloadable content, a bonus level unlockable if you either progress far enough in the game or stump up enough in-game currency, and all manner of other things. It's not the deepest game in the world, but it is a mobile phone game — and, more to the point, it is a mobile phone game that understands the sort of experience that is sensible and practical to put on a mobile phone. (It's also one of the less offensive examples of the "freemium" model I've seen recently, though the pop-up adverts are a bit gross.)

It's hard to explain, but it just feels a bit "wrong". It feels like it's not a joke any more. I hesitate to use the words "sold out" but… well, yes, it's sold out. It's Robot Unicorn Attack, but monetised out the wazoo to be profitable, whereas the original was a freeware Flash game that anyone could play without having to pay a penny.

I think that "monetisation" part is the key defining characteristic that determines "how far is too far" when it comes to jokes — particularly ones which started on the Internet. By the time money gets involved — i.e. it gets incorporated into something which is sold, or used to advertise something else for profit — it is probably already well past its sell-by date.

I can think of a number of examples where this has happened in advertising in particular. Take the advertisements for the price comparison website Go Compare, for example. For quite a while, these featured an irritating moustachio'd arsehole singing the service's jingle over and over again in various different styles. Everyone got immensely irritated with it. So, naturally, what the "clever" marketers did was leverage the fact that everyone was irritated with the "Go Compare Man" and put out some ads in which he was subjected to various indignities. But by that point, everyone had already pretty much just moved on to wanting to fire everyone involved with Go Compare into the sun and never hearing of their stupid company ever again. (Any time I need insurance, I will not go to their stupid site on principle any more.)

See also: the number of pointless mobile apps that have attempted to incorporate any combination of Nyan Cat, Gangnam Style, the Harlem Shake or any other "viral" sensation out there. Viral sensations are a marketer's dream — they provide a ready-made audience, so long as you can inextricably link one annoying thing with a specific brand. The audience doesn't even have to like the annoying thing — they just have to start thinking of these things not as "Gangnam Style" but as "that music off the [Brand X] advert".

I often wonder how a lot of marketers sleep at night knowing that their career is, essentially, to irritate people as much as possible. It surely can't be satisfying to flick on the TV, see a Go Compare advert and think "I did that."

Still, I guess they'd probably say the same about a games journalist's output. Oh well. Each to their own, I guess.