I used to believe that Mobile Gaming was the future of gaming, especially back when I was a game designer at Gameloft in 2010 and I saw the games that were being developed (N.O.V.A 3, Asphalt 6, Gangstar, Dungeon Hunter 2). The games looked absolutely amazing, especially on the early iPhones and their limited hardware. As the years went on, my belief in mobile gaming waned, only to resurface a few months ago, with a vengeance.
Your Answer Upfront:
Mobile Gaming is the future of gaming due to the ever increasing power and graphical capabilities of mobile devices. More and more people are purchasing iPads and tablets for their day-to-day work and the new generation of gamers are growing up with mobile devices. PC & Console games have started taking inspiration from mobile games in terms of monetization and design and we’re just a few years away from a total mobile convergence.
In this article we’re going to take a look at mobile gaming, its past and future. We’re going to talk about how gaming evolved, where it’s at and where it is heading to next. By the end of this article you’ll have a pretty good idea of how the future of mobile gaming will look like.
The first part of this article is on the history of Mobile Gaming, as I experienced it. It’s a telling of how I saw the mobile gaming industry evolve from simple pixels moving on a black and white screen to the gigantic powerhouse that is today, together with all its turning points and moments of “Oh-oh” realizations I had as I grew up with it. You can skip it if you’re just interested in the future of mobile gaming.
Mobile Gaming History
Games on mobile phones have been around since the early 90’s. There’s a saying in this industry: if it has a screen someone will make a game for it. This was true back in the 70’s on mainframes and it’s still true today with people running Doom on pregnancy tests.
I am lucky enough to have witnessed mobile gaming since its inception, from the original Tetris mobile game from 1994 to actively developing big budget mobile game titles since the early 2010’s. In my career I worked on N.O.V.A 3 and the Dark Knight Rises as a game designer, helped with QA-ing and a little bit of design on Asphalt 6 and Backstab (a Pirate themed GTA 3 X Assassin’s Creed for the Sony Xperia), made hundreds of levels and mechanics for Frozen: Free Fall and released a few hundred mobile games to the market for my clients.
I’m lucky enough to be older than the industry I am in and that is a very rare thing. The craftsman is older than the craft itself (albeit, not by much). In order to understand why I think Mobile Gaming is the future of gaming you need to understand just how fast mobile gaming evolved. It’s an exponential evolution and quite a funny, and sometimes sad, tale. I’ll guide you through the highlights and the big evolutionary leaps that mobile gaming jumped through to get where it is today.
Early Proto Smartphone Gaming
Mobile phones started becoming really popular and within reach of the public (price-wise) around the mid to late 90’s. In 2000 I remember gathering in front of my school yard to witness Catalin, one of my mates, show off his Nokia phone running a game of snake. It would have been impressive have I not owned a Gameboy Color at home. I remember sitting there thinking “this will never take off. Mobile phones don’t have the power that consoles have”.
In my last year of middle school the Sony PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS were out and I was loving those consoles to death. It was pretty normal for me to carry them to class and play games on them. Another school mate Andrei owned a Sony Ericsson color phone and on it he had a few Java games: Asphalt 3 (from Gameloft) and a Gameboy Color emulator on which he was playing Pokemon Red.
I was in shock, how could a small, ugly, phone be able to run what seemed to be a 3D racing game and a handheld console game (Pokemon Red)? That moment is stuck in my mind and I can remember it vividly. It was completely shocking to me that mobile gaming went from Tetris and Snake to “3D” rendering and being powerful enough to play dedicated handheld console games.
It took less than 10 years for the mobile gaming scene to go from its inception with 1bit (black and white), incredibly simple games, to being able to emulate last-gen handheld consoles. This is a trend that’s not going to stop and you’ll notice this more and more throughout this article.
Modern Smartphone Gaming
The day that modern smartphone gaming changed forever and the modern gaming industry was born wasn’t anything special and no one expected things would work out this way. It happened in 2007 and it started with a now famous presentation and introduction of a 3 in 1 device.
In 2007 I was already in high-school and knee-deep into game development. I wanted to get a job as a Game Designer or Programmer as fast as possible and I had my eyesight set on Ubisoft Studios in Bucharest (I ended up applying at the wrong side of the reception desk and instead of Ubisoft, I joined Gameloft – upsie 😅).
I was home, trying to write my own 3D renderer in C so I can use it to work on my own game engine. My mom walked in and told me to turn on the TV because the news keep talking about a single thing: The iPhone from Steve Jobs & Apple.
The iPhone’s reveal blew my mind. The screen was huge and from really early on I understood the concept of a touchscreen with no keyboard. The idea of being able to control and make a different User Interface and Control/Input buttons that change from game to game? It would be revolutionary.
And I was right, the iPhone was revolutionary for the mobile gaming industry. In both good but especially bad ways as once the App Store launched? Things started going downhill before my very eyes.
I bought an iPhone 3G in my last year of high-school and I started prototyping games for it. As soon as I finished high-school I was off to join the Mobile Gaming Industry and I secured a job as a Game Designer at Gameloft and that’s where I noticed the initial negatives of the future mobile gaming industry.
Smartphone Gaming Had A Bright Future Early On
I joined Gameloft and I was stunned by how graphically impressive modern mobile games were. Beautiful 3D rendering, bump-mapping, real-time shadows, specular and thousands of vertices were on display. Voice Acting and high quality motion captured animations were being used by Gameloft and I even got to talk a bit with Jason Cushing (Sound Designer) who I knew worked on Bioware titles (Mass Effect, Dragon Age). And here he was working on the same projects as me. The mobile gaming industry’s future was bright and it seemed like more and more big Console & PC game developers were jumping onboard.
Here come In-App Purchases
While at Gameloft I started noticing a trend. The game I was working on was to be released as a premium, pay up-front title but there were other projects in the works that were to be made available for free, with limited content. You could purchase the locked content via the use of in-app purchases.
That sounded like a good way to cut down on piracy. But one of the studio heads at that point mentioned something on the balcony during the morning coffee routine that shocked me to the core:
“What if we introduce paid retries, like the Arcades? Or a stamina/energy system? Or get them to pay for Bullets?”.
For me this quote represents the turning point for the industry as I knew it and the moment my innocence as a Game Designer died. Because In-App Purchases for consumables became an actual thing.
Recurring subscriptions? Tiered VIP systems? Energy and Stamina Systems? Purchasing Lives and Moves? They went global faster than anything I ever witnessed. The jump from Premium Games on the Smartphone to in-app purchase ridden nightmares was instant. By the time I left Gameloft in 2012, In-App Purchases were ubiquitous with the smartphone gaming industry and it all went downhill from there.
The Power Of Modern Smartphones
The latest iOS and high-end Android devices are no slouch. They consistently clock higher and have better CPUs and GPUs than my 2012-2014 workstation. And Apple is bridging the line even more between mobile devices and general purpose computers. Heck, the latest iPad Pro and iPad Air is just as powerful as my MacBook Pro for 90% of the tasks. And they’re way more powerful than a 16″ top of the line MacBook Pro from 2019 and most laptops and workstations from 2014-2019 that were out there.
The only difference between my main workstation and my mobile devices? Their intended use. I write my articles, program and design my games on a laptop or workstation with a keyboard and a mouse. I can’t do that comfortably and with enough speed and proficiency on my iPhone or Android device. Not because the iPhone or Android smartphone lack the power and capability, it’s just ergonomics.
However, even that line is being bridged nowadays. Samsung has Samsung Dex and it turns your phone into a fully fledged workstation once you hook it up to a keyboard and screen. Apple is also going that way with the iPad.
I have an iPad Pro and an iPad Air with a Magic Keyboard and Trackpad and for 90% of the things that I do it’s already there. I wrote a few blog posts on it and I even worked on some retro games on my iPad by emulating older Operating Systems.
Modern Mobile Devices Are Fully Fledged Computers
Many, many people use mobile devices as their main workstation. And it’s pretty funny because this entire situation mirrors the nascent gaming industry of the 80’s.
People started using computers to get their work done. They were using them for business purposes, for keeping spreadsheets and managing meetings. They used their computers to write documents and reports. And now they are using their iPads and Android tablets for the same purpose.
A lot of people started casual gaming to pass the time during work hours. Solitaire has been incredibly popular because it came bundled with early Windows machines and everyone from CEOs to secretaries we’re playing it on and off. They weren’t gamers but they got interested in games this way. Some took it a step further and became full on gamers and purchased big box PC games. They went into console gaming or made a Steam account to get new games.
And this entire thing is happening once again at an increasing rate. As mobile devices become more and more ubiquitous and powerful so does mobile gaming. It’s easier than ever to get new games for your mobile device. You don’t have to manually install and configure them. There’s no messing and fiddling with drivers and configurations. You don’t need separate audio cards or new GPUs.
And this streamlined approach and simplicity is lowering the barrier to entry into gaming. In the 90’s it would take hours to configure a new gaming computer. Now your grandma and her iPad are 1 tap away from the latest promoted app store game. With no upfront cost to pay for.
Mobile Gaming Changed Gaming Forever
The thing about Mobile Gaming is that it’s incredibly successful and mobile games make more money than the entire Console & PC Gaming industry combined. Those simple, casual, loveless games that flood the market make more money than games with veteran developers and budgets of millions of dollars at their disposition.
And the big boys started noticing. It’s common to see In-App Purchases and AAA PC & Console games now. Ubisoft’s been doing it like crazy with the latest Assassin’s Creed games. EA has loot boxes and in-app purchases for their mainstream titles. And every game dev meetup that I go to talks about retention, core-loops and recurrent consumer spending.
The things that I dreamed about early on in my career are happening, but they are happening in reverse. Mobile Games aren’t becoming more like PC & Console games. PC & Console games are becoming more and more like mobile games.
And the line between Mobile, Handheld devices and Dedicated Computers or Consoles is becoming more and more blurred with each year. In terms of graphical prowess, high-end computers and consoles have the upper hand, but it won’t be an advantage they have for long.
The thing that high-end PCs and Consoles have is the lack of a battery which allows them to be as power hungry as possible in order to sustain the graphical prowess they boast. But, as technology becomes more and more mobile and, as the need for mobile workstations and multipurpose devices increases, less and less people will invest in traditional desktops and consoles.
There are more mobile gamers out there than traditional gamers. And the kids that are in middle school now? They own an iPhone, iPad or Android Device. They’re growing up with them and their expectations are set by the mobile gaming industry. When I was in middle school I never thought smartphone gaming will become a thing. It had no chances.
Now? Mobile Gaming is a multi billion dollar industry that shows no chance of slowing down anytime soon.
Is Mobile Gaming The Future?
Mobile Gaming is the future of gaming due to the ever increasing power and graphical capabilities of mobile devices. More and more people are purchasing iPads and tablets for their day-to-day work and the new generation of gamers are growing up with mobile devices. PC & Console games have started taking inspiration from mobile games in terms of monetization and design and we’re just a few years away from a total mobile convergence.
Where To Next?
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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