Welcome one and all to our Saturday club feature “Controversial Club”. As so much of our content is positive, charming and a lovely read, we thought we’d start a weekly article where we can get a bit of rage out, or just generally be dicks!

I introduce our controversial club, a place where we can all write about things that get on our nerves, rub us the wrong way…

With more and more hardware manufacturers delving into the mobile gaming market (Notably Razer and Acer), mobile gaming seems to be in it’s prime… Regardless of the fact that the mobile gaming market is sorely lacking in worthwhile experiences… Is there hope for mobile gaming? Or does it need to die off to pave the way for more worthwhile experiences and services?

Ben

Personaly, I’m on the fence about this issue. My main issue with mobile gaming isn’t that it started trends that now appear in most games (Notable microtransactions). But mobile gaming offeres a way for casual gamers to play something on the hardware they already have… And considering most phones have better hardware than peoples laptops it’s understandable people want to play games on them.

We recently saw PUBG and Fortnite make there way to mobile withe pretty good success, fornite became one of apples most downloaded apps, dispite the game being in open beta. There’s also the ability to play classic games, I’m thinking of GTA San Andreas. A huge game in its time and now running on something that fits in your pocket, if we can get more high quality games on mobile, then I’m all for it.

Chris

Yes, of course mobile gaming has a future, and it’s a bright one. Whilst games in the style of Candy Crush and Clash of Clans still have a large presence in the scene, we’ve seen more and more experiences aimed at the traditional gamer come to our phones. RPG classics Final Fantasy Tactics, Chrono Trigger, and Planescape: Torment are all available for mobile now, in addition to newer titles like Hearthstone, Minecraft, and Fire Emblem: Heroes. There’s more for us now than, say, five years ago, which is in no small part to the huge, and increasingly competent, indie mobile scene that showed that mobile gaming can be good. You can check out my review of one such quality indie title here.

I think that we do, however, need to be realistic about things – mobile gaming is always going to be a little different than console and PC gaming due to the limitations of what a phone can do, both in regards to what it can handle, and what controls we can use. It’s hard to see a contemporary AAA title be released on phones any time soon. But considering most of us just want something fun and accessible on the go, that’s not necessarily a bad thing – devs are creating and porting exciting experiences regardless.

Austin

Gaming-on-the-go has been in demand for as long as technology has been able to supply it. Whether it was one-feature handheld games on car rides or Gameboys in the playground, there was always a new device waiting to fill the need.

For thirty years, the industry was flooded with handheld platforms. Nintendo produced six success platforms across a decade, Sony took a shot with the PSP, and Nintendo’s current flagship, the Nintendo Switch, offers on-the-go gaming as one of the key selling points. The need has always been there, and probably always will be. Mobile gaming simply provides a way to meet that need that doesn’t ask the user to buy the new platform every handful of years.

There are, of course, downsides and differences. Full-on sequels are rarely made. The marketplace is flooded with microtransaction-laden titles, and the gameplay is stereotyped as simplistic. But then, the videogames of the earliest consoles were simplistic too.

Mobile gaming, as a platform, is in its infancy. Barely a decade old and fighting upstream against the bad business practices of today’s industry. Yes, it has a long way to go before it offers experiences as compelling as those on traditional consoles. Yes, we went from Pong to Mario about as much time.

We also went from Pong to E.T in the same span of time.
Fight against the anti-consumer practices. Decry the shoddy games. But give mobile gaming the same chance we gave our beloved consoles.

Javier

No. It is what it is.