The Unstoppable Force of Mobile Gaming
Video gaming has become a huge craze over the past couple of years thanks to the accessibility of cheap and portable gaming devices. Your phone can now double as a fully-featured gaming portable that can even support gamepads, and video game consoles like the Wii U, Playstation 4 and Xbox One have been dropping in price especially with the winter holidays in full swing.
Many people see “core” gamers as those who play on computers and current-generation consoles, with gamers that focus on portable devices seen as “casuals”. This is a stereotype that has been forced upon mobile gamers due to the lack of serious games. Most mobile games are short affairs such as Flappy Bird or the newly released Super Mario Run—they can be played without much effort and can be stopped and started whenever.
Casual Gaming is Convenient
Without the need for an extra control pad, mobile gaming is the king of convenience. Simply pull out your mobile phone while waiting for a train or bus and kill a few minutes with a quick gaming session. There’s no commitment required, so you can simply pause and resume whenever it fits.
Using the screen as a control pad opens up a lot of creative possibilities as well. You can have virtual controls that display a working gamepad on screen, or you can use innovative and intuitive touch and swipe controls. Fruit Ninja is an excellent example of a fun and easy casual game that uses swiping to cut pieces of fruit. The most simple games such as Super Mario Run only require a single tap to control the game which makes it perfect for playing with a single hand while you hold a bag or wave for a taxi.
Mobile Gaming Can Be Serious
Many classic PC games such as Icewind Dale, Baldur’s Gate and Minecraft are seeing a fair amount of success on mobile markets. Square Enix has even ported many of its famous Final Fantasy games to the mobile platform with upgraded graphics, improved gameplay elements and good control schemes. This is a sign that developers are starting to take more interest in the mobile market, especially since smartphones are growing in popularity and hardware power every year.
In addition to popular games getting mobile ports, there are mature games for adults such as those on netentbigwins.com, or mobile games such as poker, slot machines and roulette. There are also ever-popular strategy games where people can invest ridiculous amounts of time and money to gain advantages, such as Game of War and Clash of Clans. These are known as freemium games—they’re free to play but it’s possible to pay money for a better experience or advantages over other people.
Mobile Gaming is Cheap
Most popular mobile games are actually free-to-play. This means you don’t need to spend a single penny to try out different games, but most of them offer extra features or in-game advantages if you do decide to spend money. This is because many mobile games are ad-supported to generate income, but you can pay a small fee to support the developers and remove advertisements.
Most paid games for the mobile phone are relatively cheap compared to console or PC games and they can be freely transferred to other devices as long as it uses the same operating system. For example, games bought with a Samsung Galaxy S5 can be re-downloaded and played on a Samsung Galaxy S7 because they both use Android. In some cases, it may make the game run faster and more smoothly, and some newer games (particular 3D ones) might not work on older phones.
Anyone Can Make Mobile Games
Android, in particular, is a very easy platform to start developing games for. It’s easy to integrate services such as Google Play to handle billing, microtransactions, achievements and analytics. It costs a small fee to register as a developer, but after that, you can freely upload your games and show them to the masses. Apple requires you to pay an annual fee to register as a developer, so it takes a larger (but still small) investment to register your game on the iTunes store.
Games can be created with development engines such as Unreal Engine and Unity, but you can also use traditional programming languages that utilise the Android Software Development Kit to create games from scratch. There are many online communities dedicated to supporting indie developers and it’s a simple and straightforward path to get started on mobile game development.