Era of Online and Mobile Gaming

Where to Play

We are on the cusp of yet another console generation for Nintendo, and while the Nintendo Switch is still selling strong at 150 million units lifetime, it’s time for something new, at least according to Nintendo and its fans. While Microsoft and Sony are keeping steady with their current systems – the Xbox Series X/S and the PlayStation 5 – Nintendo is driving into new territory where they hope to find success. There is one platform that never seems to need updating, however, and that is online and mobile gaming. And with so much available, do we still need consoles?

The easy answer to that question is a definite yes. Console games are unique, both because they can be exclusive to one platform – think Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Horizon, Halo, etc – and the power of the consoles and the amount of money poured into titles makes them attractive and fun to experience. But there is something to be said about smaller, quicker to digest mobile and online games. They are so plentiful, that it’s hard to go even a few seconds without getting inundated with ads for the latest and greatest.

Online Games

Previous years of online games have also made me nervous as a parent, wondering if my kids were going to get viruses on the computer. With better technology available to us, that is much less of a concern than it used to be. When my kids do find a safe, online gaming site, they go nuts with some of the dumbest, and most ingenious games I have ever seen.

Take Fork n Sausage for example. This is a fun little “flicking” game where you try to fling a sausage across a map, collecting stars, and ultimately landing it on a fork. Stupid in concept, perhaps, but I played level after level after level without stopping, trying to ultimately do two things: collect all the stars, and land the sausage properly on the fork. Easier said than done, but the uniqueness of each level and the simplistic fun of the experience made me say again and again, “Just one more level.”

It’s the simplicity of this that makes these games so attractive. No, this isn’t a better experience than The Legend of Zelda. And the shock and awe of the experience is also not the same. Sorry online and mobile games, but it’s hard to beat Link walking out of the cave and looking across the plains of Hyrule. That was an epic gaming moment, and those are generally reserved for the greatest titles available.

Think of Master Chief exiting his pod for the first time and looking out across the expanse of space. Think about the moment you climbed to the top of the pyramids in Assassin’s Creed Origins, or the first time you climbed to the tallest tower in Jerusalem in the first Assassin’s Creed. These are groundbreaking moments in gaming that leave a lasting impression on our brains. But online and mobile games do as well, just in other ways.

Back to Sausage n Fork – after playing that game for FAR too long, I shared it with my kids, and with my friends. Look at this silly little game. It’s nothing special, but it sure is a lot of fun. And then I started exploring around the site after finding Sausage n Fork, and landed on a series of games titled DOP, which in this case stood for Delete One Part game  although there are others. As a game name it sounds incredibly odd and, frankly, unappealing. But I tried it, and guess what? Just like the previous game I had played, I found another one with a small little hook that kept me saying, “Just one more level.”

And that is the hook of these smaller mobile and online games. And to get their money, they’ll serve you up with ads and guess what – you will be happy about it! This is such a great model for the release of video games. Cheap and free in most situations, while companies serve you ads to pay for the backend and make a profit. It is an igneous model that works very well, and it has adults and kids hooked. As long as the experiences are harmless as was the case in the two games I played, I don’t see an issue with this model.

Is this the future ?

There will always be the detractors, those who say this is all shovel ware crap. But I can say that I definitely got hooked playing Fork n Sausage, and my kids play games like Delete One Part all the time. In the life we currently live in, it seems that smaller, quicker experiences are slowly going to take over larger time commitments. In general, we are really busy, so anytime we get a chance to play a game or do something, it’s likely because we are waiting on something else.

For some, you might be waiting on your kids who are practicing for a sports match or a school play. For others, it’s waiting in line at the DMV, waiting for your doctor to call your name, or perhaps just stuck in traffic with nothing to do and nowhere to go. While systems like the Nintendo Switch have tried to weasel their way into this group of individuals (and have done a great job, by the way), they cannot account for the millions upon millions of cellular phones that sit in the hands of bored individuals every single day. These games are the future.