I agree there’s a big difference between casual games and… “advanced” games.
But splitting by platform is a bad way to do that.
Xcom2, Rome total war, alien isolation.
The full version of all those games is on mobile, none of them are even remotely “casual”.
Touch input can limit the kinds of games that play well, twitch shooters will probably never be great on mobile, but advanced strategy games are perfectly suited for mobile.
My point isnt that you cant have those games. My point is that Phone gaming is largely disconnected both in market and culture. Just because you get the occasional game that started on more traditional systems doesnt mean the two markets are interacting on any meaningful level let alone cultural.
These games are novelties more than anything else and are not reflective of the wider phone gaming market. Just like how idle games are largely novelties on the PC market. Like I said splitting them by system is the only practical way of filtering out and refining the data. Because even with your examples those games particularly reflect the communities around them.
My point is around culture and market, not playability.
I agree there’s a distinction between the 2 markets. I’d place it more on the style of monetisation than anything else, but I’ll admit there’s a difference.
But I still think using the platform to distinguish them is unhelpful, phones aren’t going anywhere, they’ll grow as a market and slowly absorb parts of the console and pc markets, so either the non-casual phone games industry needs to grow, or casual games will be the only games left.
I think it’s fair to say that phones are currently infested with low effort casual games with awful monetisation strategies, but they don’t have to be, and quality games do exist on the platform and do have a following, my hope is that continues to grow and finds a niche on the platform, so hopefully you see why I dislike defining the platform as casual with “novelties”
If we can get people to agree on what “casual” gaming means. I’ve run into people that thought the Civ games were casual, and I don’t think of them as casual, for example.
I agree there’s a big difference between casual games and… “advanced” games.
But splitting by platform is a bad way to do that. Xcom2, Rome total war, alien isolation. The full version of all those games is on mobile, none of them are even remotely “casual”.
Touch input can limit the kinds of games that play well, twitch shooters will probably never be great on mobile, but advanced strategy games are perfectly suited for mobile.
My point isnt that you cant have those games. My point is that Phone gaming is largely disconnected both in market and culture. Just because you get the occasional game that started on more traditional systems doesnt mean the two markets are interacting on any meaningful level let alone cultural.
These games are novelties more than anything else and are not reflective of the wider phone gaming market. Just like how idle games are largely novelties on the PC market. Like I said splitting them by system is the only practical way of filtering out and refining the data. Because even with your examples those games particularly reflect the communities around them.
My point is around culture and market, not playability.
I agree there’s a distinction between the 2 markets. I’d place it more on the style of monetisation than anything else, but I’ll admit there’s a difference.
But I still think using the platform to distinguish them is unhelpful, phones aren’t going anywhere, they’ll grow as a market and slowly absorb parts of the console and pc markets, so either the non-casual phone games industry needs to grow, or casual games will be the only games left. I think it’s fair to say that phones are currently infested with low effort casual games with awful monetisation strategies, but they don’t have to be, and quality games do exist on the platform and do have a following, my hope is that continues to grow and finds a niche on the platform, so hopefully you see why I dislike defining the platform as casual with “novelties”
If we can get people to agree on what “casual” gaming means. I’ve run into people that thought the Civ games were casual, and I don’t think of them as casual, for example.