I’ve wrestled with Mobile games for years. As a player, I love the idea of playing games on my phone. But most phones games outside of flash like games (Angry Birds) weren’t fun.
So I tried to make them myself.
After 5 years of trial and error my conclusion was thus. Phones are a bad platform for games. Not because they aren’t capable, they are extremely capable. But because they have no proper inputs.
Games are built for the common input method. PC games have a keyboard and mouse mode. Console games are built with a controller. And mobile games need to use touch.
The problem with touch, is that it’s a bad input method for all games. Very good for simple visual games, but for the rest, you are touching a textureless, featureless, tiny surface, with no tactile feedback. This means that anything more complicated than angry birds or bejeweled will be difficult to play if it doesn’t play itself.
It’s possible to make games for phones. But due to the design constraints, the game needs to be simple, or not time dependent. Strategy games, puzzle games, board games will work, but action games, or shooters are doomed to be worse than their competitors on non-mobile platforms.
I’ve wrestled with Mobile games for years. As a player, I love the idea of playing games on my phone. But most phones games outside of flash like games (Angry Birds) weren’t fun.
So I tried to make them myself.
After 5 years of trial and error my conclusion was thus. Phones are a bad platform for games. Not because they aren’t capable, they are extremely capable. But because they have no proper inputs.
Games are built for the common input method. PC games have a keyboard and mouse mode. Console games are built with a controller. And mobile games need to use touch.
The problem with touch, is that it’s a bad input method for all games. Very good for simple visual games, but for the rest, you are touching a textureless, featureless, tiny surface, with no tactile feedback. This means that anything more complicated than angry birds or bejeweled will be difficult to play if it doesn’t play itself.
It’s possible to make games for phones. But due to the design constraints, the game needs to be simple, or not time dependent. Strategy games, puzzle games, board games will work, but action games, or shooters are doomed to be worse than their competitors on non-mobile platforms.