Gaming

They always sucked.

Weird take, imo. Mobile games are probably the best they've ever been. They were traditionally a place for rampant p2w garbage gacha machines, and while those are still there, the platform has actual decent games nowadays. Real PC games are being ported to mobile and the platform is being taken seriously. Even in the world of micro transactions and gacha games, there are far more that are actually decent as games then there ever has been.

I've been playing Monster Hunter Now and I've been really impressed with it. The entirety of the Riot games are good games with reasonable microtransactions. Vampire Survivors, my go-to "I am offline" game, is the exact same game on mobile as PC, save the fact that it's free and you have a choice to watch ads for marginal farming speedups (which can be disabled if you buy literally any of their ~$1.50 DLC expansions, which are hilariously large considering their price). Fucking Warframe is coming to/already on (?) mobile.

I genuinely can't say mobile games have ever been in a better place than today, despite the existence of the shovelware P2W games that continue to roll out.

Nowadays? Mobile games have always sucked. All the way back to snake on your old Nokia. That game sucked too. It's just now the games suck and they're packed full of microtransactions.

What do you mean, "nowadays"? Mobile games always sucked.

The only good games on phone are now emulators and a few Foss games

Always has been.

bang

It's a two part story:

1. The mobile market mostly targets kids and boomers and their resistance to microtransactions has been basically non-existent, making the market quickly become predatory and full of spam

2. Modern app stores have become abysmal, making it impossible for smaller games to see the light of day. 99% of google play is a dumpster fire, and the 1% that is decent isn't published by a multi-billion dollar company so you're unlikely to ever see it. There are good games out there, but the way the algorithms and ads work makes them constantly pushed down in the list. This isn't "a problem" to a company like Google because they're making bank off of all these ad spaces.

Anyways, most good games are paid, but here's a list of stuff I've enjoyed playing on mobile:

• Fancy Pants Adventures

• Bloons TD 6

• Dicey Dungeons

• Dead Cells

• Slay the Spire (but the mobile port is rough on small screens)

• Knights of Pen and Paper +1

• The Enchanted Cave 2

• Let's Create! Pottery

• BAIKOH

• Data Wing

Probably a lot more I forgot. Have at it.

Has it ever been better?

What happened was that they made a fuckton of money that way.

Ports of older PC games are also often quite good.

The short answer is, because they make money.

Probably the only good mobile games are ports of console/pc games. There are some surprising ports, like the KOTOR games, medieval 2 total war, and lots of square enix's older catalogue. Fortnite, genshin impact, and pubg are probably the biggest games on mobile right now. But yeah nothing really worth going out of your way for, or even bother with at all, if you already have a gaming pc or steam deck.

Maayybee the only real usecase is if you are going backpacking and want to bring some games into the backcountry with you without lugging a steam deck along lol. Digital board games like Root and Wingspan would work well there and have pass around modes if you are with friends. Just remember to bring a battery bank with you, or a portable solar cell.

Nowadays

Lol they've always sucked.

Whales spend tens of thousands of dollars on p2w bullshit. It's all unregulated gambling.

If you're a gamedev trying to make a decent mobile game, you're competing on all the usual fronts like price and perceived quality, but competing for attention has gotten a whole lot harder when [arbitrary card game] has a hour of dailies, [arbitrary gacha game] always has a special campaign going and [arbitrary fake gambling game] is about to have its battle pass end and they're only halfway through. And that has gone up by so, so much over the past decade. It was never good but it's gotten absolutely egregious. At this point, even any generic snake clone will have a battle pass.

Every person that ends up committed to a couple of those long-term-commitment games ends up having much less time for other games. And they make a lot of money, which means they also end up having a hell of a marketing budget.

They always sucked

The Pathless is pretty awesome

Sky: Children of the Light is splendid

Horn is pretty neat but I guess its 12 years old now

Baba is You isn't originally a mobile game but it has a native version which is pretty excellent

To answer your question, its as others have mentioned: catching a whale is more lucrative than appealing to the average consumer. The entire micro transactions industry (which mobile gaming is built upon and makes it the most profitable portion of the gaming industry by a mile) is all about milking your customers for everything they have without them realising it. Why did we reach this point? Unregulated capitalism, probably.

Nowadays? I've never enjoyed mobile gaming. Every time I try, there's been an absurd paywall or monetization. Once that strikes, I'm out.

Enshittification, the rise of micro transactions in mobile games over actual in-game mechanics that make the game interesting etc

For me they have always sucked. The only one I liked a bit was "1112" (also known as Fade), BUT the developer actually cancelled the last episode because they didn't feel like making it anymore 🤬 So yeah it also sucked big time.

More details: https://www.reddit.com/r/adventuregames/comments/k3wc7b/the_history_of_1112_an_ambitious_adventure_game/

greed

They realized that they don't have to make good a game, they can make a bad game and just advertise the shit out of it.

Money

Touch screens don't lend themselves to Snake the way buttons did, so the only good mobile game is now functionally unplayable.

Fdroid app store has a lot of frankly amazing indie games.

Pirate ~freecell~ Solitaire. is fantastic.

Also, Warframe has an iOS version(not a port), is working on an android version, and its now fully crossplay compatible.

I think it's because most people play mobile games as a way to pass time, rather than to do something actually engaging. So, people don't typically want to buy mobile games upfront, meaning devs gotta monetize in some other way, like p2w microtransactions.

99% of people think all mobile games should be free to use. So they go for P2W to make money.

They wouldnt make anywhere close to the amount they do via P2W if they did an upfront cost.

I was wondering this recently, too. The two mobile games I miss most are tiny wings and the original fruit Ninja. But I remember playing Infinity Blade and other random games on my iPad touch that were really good back in 2010

I came across buried bornes 2, and it's been ok so far. I have no idea if it has microtransactions or ads yet. It claims it does, but I've yet to see them. It's not the best game I've played, but the concept is kinda interesting if you use your imagination a bit.

Everyone embraced smartphones and created a bigger market for games than there ever was before. Naturally when the mainstream latches onto something it becomes diluted and all about making a quick buck. Imo

Same problem that is crippling every human interaction on earth.

Money and greed.

It all goes to "we can do a good thing that will help people or that people will enjoy" or "we can make crap/do horrible things and get another 5 bucks off each of em", and the latter is always chosen.

Sadly because it works, mobile gaming is bigger money-wise than PC and consoles combined, all because people are susceptible to short term dopamine hit your can buy any time, it's a part of what we call enshittification, making the product less user friendly and make more money, shareholders are happy, your don't have to

Now that you mentioned this, I do recall in the early days of mobile games, back when the App Shops were first introduced, there were games that you would pay somewhere between $1 and $5, and you get the whole thing. No in-app purchases, no ads, and no lotteries for special characters or gear. I remember Square Enix had some really good JRPG games that were made specifically for the iPhone and iPad. Chaos Rings and DrakeRider were two games I recall playing, but they were much more expensive compared to the usual games I found. But, when you paid for it, you got the whole game and all.

I think mobile app developers have realized that they could get more engagement and cash from their users if they made games that had a gambling aspect to it. Kinda like the casinos in Vegas, the house always wins, but you keep putting in money on the hopes you get a jackpot.

That being said, there is one freemium game that I do find quite fun, and that is Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe. The thing that makes this freemium game a bit different is that Square Enix is quite generous in their in-game currency. You can actually do quite well without making any in-app purchases.