Yup! Bigger man Jim said all that there's to say there.
Feathers wrote:I'm so tired of all the trashy "Indie games" flooding Steam and Mobile myself. Most of them are 8-16 bit rehash rubbish (oh RPG Maker how I wish you were used better!), that are trying to relive the past to make a quick buck. Either that or poorly made Unity games with thrown together materials that have zero cohesion. It's like digging through a pile of crap to find something worth buying.
All true, specially with the ''Too many games'' issue. It's so hard to find those rare hidden gems underneath the steaming (hehe, pun unintended) piles of Shovelware, RPGMaker rehash-rubbish and perpetually-Alpha Early Accesses. But, despite all of its flaws, you CAN find those hidden gems on Steam. Sure it'll take you a couple hours of trash digging, but you will probably find them.
On mobile, however, it's another story....
For every bad game on Steam, there are at least 20 on the Play Store alone. And since their searching system is complete bullshit, unless someone points you to a game, you'll never find what you're looking for. Worse, even those games that are, in terms of story and gameplay, good and enjoyable, have 9 chances out of 10 to be constantly doing one of the following things:
A) DLC Teasing
''Look at this place! This is the dungeon of absolute coolness! Where you'll find all the stuff you've ever wanted. But, before we let you in, you must pay 9.99$ for the key to enter.''
This is perhaps the most harmless of them, actually. Usually, what you get in those places by paying you can get it without paying much later in the game. So this is just a trap for impatient gamers or those who find themselves losing too much.
B) Gem Locks
''You need to pay 100000 Gold (Game Currency) or 10 Gems (Cash Currency) in order to unlock that skill you need to finish this quest.''
Usually, this kind of game starts by giving you some Gems as you start (like a sort of free sample, to get you thirsty for more) but like most everybody, you probably already made use of them to UNLOCK YET MORE ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONALITIES WHICH WERE GEM LOCKED AND DIDN'T ALLOW YOU TO USE GOLD FOR THEM. And since by that point you probably barely have 2000 gold (if you were lucky), you either pay with cash or spend god-knows-how-long grinding the same monsters over and over until you reach that quantity.
C) Freemium
''Sure, this game is for free, but in order to truly enjoy it, you'll need to pay for this and that. You can still finish it without paying, but you'll only get the free stuff.''
This is basically a shareware in disguise. 90% of the game is locked behind a Paywall.
D) ''Your Mobile Device isn't supported by this game''
Name says it all. Even if you phone CAN hardware-wise and software-wise run this game, the company will tell you it doesn't so you go and buy yourself a new Galaxy S10, LOL. And even if you do, there's always the chance all of the above will apply.
All of that said, there ARE good mobile games. Band of Monsters might have been a total Pokemon ripoff with a plot worthy of a game from the 90s, but it was very enjoyable pay, and all of its Cash functions were completely optional (there was a ''Cash Vendor'' on every item shop, but the stuff it sold could be gotten for free in many places later on the game).
The problem is finding them, and THIS, THIS is what is killing the mobile market; the good games ending up drowned by the flood of trash...
