It's virtually impossible to make money selling mobile games because your average player expects the game itself to be free, and then expect some kind of premium currency.

If you try to charge an actual reasonable price for a game like $15 no one would buy it. But they'll happily spend $170 on premium currency over the course of a year.

Against those kinds of economic metrics originality and high quality gameplay stands no chance of survival.

[–] yamanii@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I wouldn't buy it either because mobile devs have a terrible track record of not bothering to update their games to the newest version of the OS, the older the game, the less likely it is they will update it, I lost considerable money many years ago when CAVE shooters weren't updated to the current (at the time) android version.

Even big ones like square enix had to be almost harassed to update The World Ends With You Solo Remix for newer versions and I think in 2021 capcom just gave up in updating monster hunter freedom unite.

[–] Radicaldog@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Windows' relentless backwards compatibility is underrated, but it's so damn nice I can still play games from 2005 effortlessly. Android has been a shitshow in comparison, as even when mobile gaming wasn't so shit (Doodle Jump, Angry Birds etc), the whole era has been almost wiped from existence.

[–] yamanii@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago

Yeah, even if an old game doesn't work out of the box, there are several tools that you can use to try to make it work like dosbox, dgvoodoo, fan patches; on mobile there's nothing you can do, only downloading an older android version on your PC through bluestacks or something, not very mobile now is it?

[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

I disagree. Yes, peoples expections are warped because of freemium but an indie developer should be able to make plenty of money with a small bit of notoriety. It really comes down to if developers expect capture the entire mobile gaming market they are barking up the wrong tree. They need to build an audience and not let freemium practices get in that space. I grew up on the snes and I would put those games head to head against any PS5 AAA game. Sure the PS5 game may be a visual spectical and have all sorts of complexity but the Nintendo developers had to do more with less. End of the day you could have the same amount of engagement with a cheaper to make product and we would all be better for it. Look at deadcells. Look a hollow knight. I know these are platformers but they are best in class and their budgets can't be extraordinary.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The trouble is I could make it truly excellent game and then I could either release it on mobile and make very little money or I could release it on Steam and make a lot of money so what am I going to do?

Sure I could release it on both platforms but then I'm committing to supporting another platform that probably won't net me that much profit. It's the same economics that means that developers tend not to release games for Mac.

[–] Daft_ish@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Certainly. It will take some true pioneers to build mobile as a viable platform but we would all be better for it.

[–] Landless2029@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

I'm a huge fan of freemium games. Free mobile games with ADs that you can one time purchase an ad free option.

Unfortunately there are MANY games that piecemeal the permanent upgrades instead of a one time price package.

Gold and Goblins has a $10 unlock that includes double coins and ZERO ADs.

Idle Cave Miner has a $5 unlock to turn off ALL ADs with other premium (but totally not required) upgrades.

Where other games like Tomagachi has a $2 unlock to turn off mandatory ADs but still has optional ADs in other areas. They even have a $5/month subscription to get a better play experience...

I'm happy to throw down $5-$20 on a game to get rid of all the AD infested crap and make it an enjoyable experience.