If you’re browsing reddit communities like r/androidgaming or r/iosgaming you might end up seeing posts from people complaining that mobile gaming isn’t actually gaming. Or that mobile games aren’t REAL games. This is not something specific to reddit. I’ve seen this question come up again and again. So let’s answer the question: Is mobile gaming real gaming?
Your answer up front:
Mobile Gaming is, by all definitions, real gaming and comparable to playing a PC or Console game. When people refer to mobile games as not being real games they actually refer to the shitty, completely broken and anti-consumer practices that the mobile gaming industry actively employes. But it’s not the medium’s fault. The same practices are starting appear on consoles and pc. Where mobile gaming and “regular” gaming truly differ is in the control scheme, input methods and convenience of play.
It’s like saying the Green Mile or Joker aren’t real movies if you watch them at home vs watching them at the Cinema.
Now that we got the answer out of the way, let’s look at why exactly people assume that mobile gaming isn’t real gaming.
We’re going to travel a bit back in time, before the PC, then move over to more modern era and then talk about mobile games. We’re going to look at the main argument thrown by people through the lenses of various gamers through gaming history.
The Original Gaming experience
I happen to be a big fan of retro computers and retro games. In my daily work setup I incorporate a Macintosh SE/30 from 1989. I use it for work (I am actively working and will release a game for old, vintage macs) and for fun, routinely taking Doom I/II and Start Wars: Dark Forces for a spin. Not to mention how awesome Sim City 2000 looks and runs on a Portrait Monitor.
Gaming in the late 70’s and early 80’s was nothing like modern gaming. You didn’t have achievements, you didn’t have a social presence.
Multiplayer was in it’s inception and gamer tags weren’t in the picture. You couldn’t download your games. And the controls were horrible. Man were they horrible. You couldn’t check your progress and quest logs were at best a single entry in a physical paper journal you didn’t pay attention to.
When people think of real gaming they think of brutally hard, strategic, tactic hardcore games.
They think of K/D ratios and pwning noobs, killing demons and 100%-ing Dark Souls with no armour and just punches.
They think of spending hundreds of hours trying to complete a game and earn all the rewards / trophies / achievements.
Back in the 80’s, real gaming meant reading the paper journal, reading the bestiary to search for a monster’s weakness.
Our argument for why Mobile Gaming isn’t real gaming because it’s not as complex can easily be applied to Modern PC and Console Gaming. They aren’t gaming because modern games are way more streamlined and simple than 80’s and 90’s gaming. Call of Duty isn’t a real game because consoles use auto-aim to shoot.
The “X Isn’t real gaming because Y is different” argument
Before pressing on, check out this commercial for the Magnavox Odyssey:
Just from the video along you could argue that modern gaming isn’t actually real gaming. As you don’t have cartridges anymore. And you don’t have to change overlays on your monitor to give any kind of sense to your games.
If you argue that mobile games aren’t real games because they are much simpler, then any gamer can’t say he’s a real gamer unless he just actively plays Elite: Dangerous.
Anything more simple than that could just as well be mobile gaming. And if you haven’t invested a few hundred dollars in a HOTAS + IR Tracker setup (at the bare minimum) for Elite Dangerous then you are worst than a casual gamer.
Mobile gamers aren’t gamers because they play Candy Crush and “FarmVille” clones. In this case Alien Isolation isn’t a real game because because you can track where the alien is with the motion tracker.
In Real Games, the game rolls a dice and if you’re unlucky, you instantly die and start from the beginning of the game.
Oh that reminds me, modern PC and Console games aren’t real games because they have a save feature. if you must resume progress in a game because you’re a filthy casual and you don’t want to leave your computer or console open till the next session, you don’t need anything more than a password to be able to load a given level.
How Mobile Gaming and “Modern Gaming” are more alike than people like to admit.
- Mobile Games didn’t set out to be huge, blockbuster experiences with hundreds of people working at producing them. Nobody expected the budget for producing a mobile game to end up north of a couple hundred million dollars in some cases.
- Just like nobody expect games to have any kind of future back in the day. It was a waste of times that was aimed at kids. Sounds familiar?
- If you look at how mobile games appeared, and you cross reference it with how gaming was in the early 80’s you’d see a common trend. Nobody knew what they were doing. People just threw stuff at the wall, called it a game and if it was successful – it would get cloned faster than you can say “Don’t Copy That Floppy“.
- The mobile gaming market is actively exploited by publishers and developers with more interest in earning money than delivering good content. Shovelware is the name of the game and subpar games plague discoverability.
- Which reminds me of the great video game crash of 1983. What happened in ’83? Well, publishers and developers were flooding the market with poor quality games because they were more interested in earning money rather than delivering good content.
- Developers and publishers use fake, non-representative, promotional materials in order to get players to purchase, pre-order or download their game.
- Am I talking about Gardenscapes or Alien: Colonial Marines? Maybe Watch Dogs?
Both types of Gaming Platforms have their issues. And a lot of them sprout from the same causes. Greediness and a love for money above everything else.
Where mobile gaming and modern pc and console gaming is in their control scheme and medium of play. It’s normal for games to be different in their design due to the limitations. As portable as laptops are, you really can’t pass the time when standing in a bus by playing the latest Call Of Duty on it. I mean, you can but the experience won’t be great.
The same can be said for mobile games. You can’t really have a good experience trying to play Elite Dangerous streamed to a mobile phone. It’s an actual case of set and setting being applied to the wrong game.
But you can blur the lines.
I can connect and stream my iPad Air to my living room TV and pair it with a PS4 controller while playing Oceanhorn 2 and the experience is pretty similar to playing a Switch Game.
I can get just as frustrated at my inability to stay alive playing PUBG on my phone as I get when playing on my gaming computer.
Is mobile gaming actually gaming?
Mobile Gaming is, by all definitions, real gaming and comparable to playing a PC or Console game. When people refer to mobile games as not being real games they actually refer to the shitty, completely broken and anti-consumer practices that the mobile gaming industry actively employes. But it’s not the medium’s fault. The same practices are starting appear on consoles and pc. Where mobile gaming and “regular” gaming truly differ is in the control scheme, input methods and convenience of play.
The lines between the graphical capabilities of mobile devices, consoles and computers are getting more and more blurred.
Here’s a comparison between the graphical fidelity of Alien Isolation on Xbox Series X, PC and Mobile:
Closing thoughts on the matter
Modern Gaming on PC and Consoles has a few decades of hindsight under their belt. Mobile Gaming is, by all means, still in it’s infancy and has yet to have it’s first bubble bust. But it’s bound to happen as things are becoming unsustainable for both developers AND mobile gamers alike.
I can see a future in which the differences between Mobile, PC and Console gaming becomes blurred. Hopefully this doesn’t mean that the latter becomes as infested with bad practices, advertisements and micro-transactions as the former.
When Smartphones started taking shape and being adopted, I envisioned a future where the device would compliment at home workstations. One where you’d have companion apps for all games. Where you could play an MMO RPG at home and due daily quests, read lore and work on the game’s meta while on the go.
Hopefully that future can still be achieved in some way. I’d love to see more mobile ports of PC games as well as successful and fair mobile games being brought to PC. But the reason why this isn’t seen as often as I’d like is a subject for another article.
Where To Next?
You’ve reached the end of this article and hopefully you found the answer to the question. I write extensively about the mobile gaming industry, their tactics and how greed influences a game’s design, subjects which were brought up in this post.
I believe that you might be interested in more articles on game monetisation. So if you want to stick around, you can check out “How Do Free Mobile Games Make money“, “Why Do Mobile Games Have Fake Ads” and “Why Do Mobile Games Have In-App Purchases“.
There’s also a monster post (about 4000 words) that answers the question: “How Hard Is It To Make A Mobile Game“. It goes in depth with actual examples on how Experience, Resources and Financials affect the difficulty of developing and releasing new mobile games!
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