Old gamers often misunderstand the quality of mobile games.
I realized this a couple of weeks ago when I asked my 12-year-old daughter whether she wanted to bring her Nintendo Switch or her Android tablet on our two-week vacation. She chose the tablet.
Why? Because her Android has Genshin Impact, Fortnite, Roblox, Candy Crush, Wuthering Waves, and Sky: Children of Light. She simply prefers those over her Switch library — which is decent but doesn’t compare to what she’s got on the tablet.
Adults tend to dismiss mobile gaming by saying things like, “There’s no 1:1 equivalent to Super Mario Odyssey, Tears of the Kingdom, or Cyberpunk 2077 on mobile.”
Fine. My daughter has access to all those games. Our family owns over 8,000 games across PC and consoles. She can play Super Mario Odyssey any time she wants, but she doesn’t. She’d rather play Genshin Impact.
And she’s not alone. Most of her friends are on their tablets or phones. It makes sense — gaming is as much about socializing as playing, and iOS and Android dominate for a reason.
Sure, we can scoff and say, “Kids these days don’t recognize a good game when it hits them in the face.”
But I remember feeling that way about Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh. They’re still thriving today, with now-grown adults still playing.
I also think back to my own childhood. My mom hated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yet, I snuck a TMNT Game Boy game into the house and played it behind her back. TMNT never disappeared — it’s still around.
With the original Switch’s price rising (at least here in Canada), it just makes sense to consider Android tablets — especially for kids. Sure, you can’t play Black Myth: Wukong on Android, but that’s why I have PCs ready for that. Kids? They just want to have fun and connect with friends.
Mobile gaming, on Android, is an interesting space right now. I used to buy flagship phones exclusively, as high spec as I could just…because I could. I played a few emulated Nintendo Switch games on them, as well as the odd Game Pass title (with a telescoping GameSir Xbox mounted controller thing) and then I realized I really had no use for them. I rarely played, and my most recent phone purchases have been mid-range.
The scene for Android emulation is incredibly dramatic with frequent in-fighting, but also pretty impressive from a technical standpoint. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea - and that’s fine, but the mobile scene which isn’t just gatcha games hooking kids on the Play Store is so varied. Then you’ve got actually impressive games like DREDGE getting a Android release, replete with custom builds and changes for the Android system (no lazy ports!). Heck, even No Man’s Sky is coming to Android soon!
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m sure you’re a loving parent and just want what’s best for your daughter. But what you’re essentially doing, is giving your kid pocket money to go play slot machines at the local dive bar.
The reason why mobile phone gaming is so bad, is because there are barely any actual games. The reason your daughter thinks it’s fun to play candy crush is not because the game itself is good, it’s because the game makes her addicted to it. This is bad. Really bad. This will have consequences on how her brain handles dopamine. Please, for the love of your family, get her off that shit immediately.
I think I know my kid better than you, a random Internet stranger who’s never met her before in her life. And consequently, has no understanding of what her actual needs are.
I’m not sure why you’re on a crusade to convince people to like mobile games. I’ve always got my phone on me, and I frequently find myself on a subway ride that’s too short to bother with a Steam Deck. Mobile games would fit in great there. My options are pretty terrible. For the kinds of games I like to play, the only ones that actually have mobile versions are basically digital versions of board games and a small handful of roguelikes. I tend to just read on the subway instead. It’s not for lack of trying. The library just sucks, and it offers less value than other places I can buy games. Your daughter is playing games designed to keep you “engaged” and addicted with all of the greatest tricks of the gambling industry; you can find the GDC talks with a quick search on your favorite search engine.
Whenever I see an echo chamber where people parrot the same shallow talking points—no nuance, no real analysis—the contrarian in me kicks in.
You claim there’s “no library” on mobile, but even a basic look at the stats and available titles proves otherwise.
If you actually want fun, premium mobile games with zero microtransactions, they’re not hard to find. You just have to look beyond the surface—and actually try.
I’m not parroting anything. I’ve looked. Sure, sometimes you get a port of XCOM or Slay the Spire, but then it’s not going to carry over progress back to my PC, where I’m more comfortable playing at home, and my reluctance to buy a version of the game like that explains why there isn’t enough money in trying to port the kinds of games that I like to mobile. Sometimes a game has a port, but it fell out of compatibility with modern Android and never got updated; and let me tell you, that’s a great way to convince me to stop looking. Even crazier is when something like Fire Emblem Heroes happens, because it’s adapting a traditional handheld/console game into an interface that makes way more sense for controlling the game, but it’s not a proper version of that series; it’s a gacha game. If I have any kind of extended anticipated desire to game on the go, my Steam Deck is just a better answer than trying to find the few games I would like that also got Android versions, because I’m going to spend more time playing them at home anyway.
We all know that decent games exist, somewhere. But the amount of effort it would take to wade through all the shovelware and gacha to try to find an even halfway passable game on Google Play simply isn’t worth my time.
And with the mobile market being what it is, it arguably isn’t worth it for developers to try and sell any serious game as mobile-first, because it’s so difficult for those types of games to succeed when mobile gamers want gacha and those that don’t simply aren’t playing on mobile. If it’s truly worth my time, it should be ported to other platforms.
Word of mouth is certainly a large part of it, yes. People talk about successful games. One way or another, the games I like make it onto my radar when I see buzz about them.
But what are the most successful games on mobile? What are the games mobile gamers talk about? Gacha. It’s all gacha. Whatever else is out there, nobody’s talking about it and I’m never going to see it. Nor do I have any reason to go searching through a toxic cesspit in the hopes that maybe I’ll eventually find something, when it is far easier to look elsewhere, on platforms that haven’t been thoroughly corrupted by the race to the bottom.
But again, the real takeaway I want to stress is that the market has been this way for long enough that both gamers and developers know the well is poisoned, and it will never be unpoisoned. The fact that mobile has become dominated by gacha has reinforced itself - everyone not interested in gacha has left the platform, and mobile developers will keep selling more gacha because that’s what the remaining audience wants. They even know that the average mobile gamer won’t spend money on a more ethical business model.
I know that developers know that I know that this is what mobile is. The way I see it, mobile itself has become a red flag. If a game is trying to be more than gacha trash, well why don’t the developers have the sense to put it on other platforms where non-gacha gamers are? If not, they’re shooting themselves in the foot and I have no pity.
Here’s where you and I differ: I don’t trust word of mouth. I don’t trust canons. I don’t trust marketing. And frankly, I don’t trust the so-called “gamers” who repeat the same tired narratives.
Instead, I dive deep—into the bowels of app stores, into archive.org, anywhere I can find games no one else has played or talked about. Then I judge for myself whether they’re worth a damn.
That’s how I’ve uncovered hidden gems, and why I know most of what passes for “good taste” is just groupthink dressed up as expertise.
The only people with real taste? The ones willing to seek things out and form their own opinions. Everything else is just noise.
So what, you just buy games at random and hope maybe you landed on something good? Without anything that would make for an informed purchase? Sounds like a horribly inefficient way of running headfirst into Sturgeon’s Law.
But usually, I’m a deal hunter—I scour for discounts, read descriptions carefully, study screenshots, and watch gameplay footage. If it grabs my interest, I pull the trigger.
Surprisingly, most of the games that catch my eye turn out to be pretty good.
You should give it a shot. Ignore the hype, forget word of mouth and influencers. Dive into something completely new and different—you might just be pleasantly surprised.
I don’t. You are exposing children to those exact mechanics and normalizing that behaviour. Without further thought in the future they will go for increasingly scammy shit tactics.
Seriously, you played behind your mom’s back. As did I and everyone else. Be careful, talk to her about the shitty tactics. She has to be aware of them, spot them, and know how they work to be able to avoid them. The hardest part will be for her to actually believe it. Those life service shit uses the most disgusting psychological tricks.
Or she will spent all her money behind your back someday.
We all had our tricks, and children will always be cleverer than their parents.
My 13 and 15 year olds are PC first gamers, then consoles, then mobile. I raised them that way on purpose because I wanted to avoid tablet and phone screens. I could control access better that way.
And yea, also because I’m a pc and console gamer and wanted to play my favorite games with them.
The older one has started playing mobile games more often and yea, it’s Genshin and Honkai. That kid was always in love with Fire Emblem, so Honkai makes sense to me. The stories are all kind of the same.
A friend stayed with us for a few days and they have a 12 and 10 year old. I have every console imaginable, PCs on big screens, and they never left their tablets.
I think once kids get on the tablet/phone/mobile games, they don’t really leave. I don’t know that I would have either.
Yes cause they are designed to be addictive and maximize the profitability with addictive content like loot boxes and fomo tactics to push micro transactions.
I just feel bad for a lot of kids because maybe their phone or tablet has the game they want but often they are playing using just the touchscreen and that interface sucks for anything that requires joystick or button controls (where the touchscreen just has vague areas with pretend joysticks and buttons).
It just does.
I get that kids get used to it, but it’s like getting used to being kicked in the nuts when you have the option of not being kicked in the nuts.
Hmm I’m not sure using gacha games which are designed for addictive gameplay loops and predatory monetisation being the games that your kid prefers over standalone experiences is a good argument to make
I understand just fine. The only good mobile games aren’t mobile games. They are ports of normal games for mobile devices. Which is a super incredibly small number of games.
And latching onto Gatcha games as a good thing for kids? Might as well get them cigarettes and alcohol too if you wanna get them addicted earlier.
Wow, an expert on all mobile games—based on exactly how many hours scrolling and judging from your porch?
There are over 700,000 mobile games on Google Play and the App Store combined. Over seven hundred thousand. You really think you’ve played, let alone fathomed, the quality of that entire universe?
Lumping all mobile games together because of a few gacha titles is like calling all movies “just commercials” because of some awful reality TV. Face it: the world’s moved on, but you’re still shouting at clouds.
There are over 700,000 games on the play store. … and 699,900 of them are basic, traditional mobile games that are basically a gamified e-store for imaginary goods…
How about we stick to facts instead of making things up?
As of July 2025, there are 14,139 premium, paid games on the iOS App Store—meaning games that are not free-to-play, not gacha, and have no microtransactions.
To put that in perspective: iOS alone has more complete, self-contained games than the NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube libraries combined.
Bro are you a sales rep for this data company and this whole post is just a way to drive people to your product? Because that’s about the only explanation I have for, all t h i s.
Wow, that’s some next-level conspiracy thinking—just because I share stats with a source, you leap straight to “sales rep for the statistics company” territory?
What’s next, claiming schools teach math just to line Texas Instruments’ pockets?
Here’s the simple truth: I’m tired of hearing people mindlessly parrot the same tired talking points with zero facts to back them up.
If having an unpopular opinion rattles your echo chamber, so be it. I’m perfectly fine with that.
Bro this entire post and every reply you’ve made is just next level unhinged, I was giving you a generous benefit of doubt here, because you being a sales rep is about the only way this isn’t insane cringe.
It was obvious hyperbole to point at how you are still hilariously wrong. Congratulations on being too stupid to understand how speech works. No wonder you let your kids engage with addictive games… You’re too simple to understand how it’s still bad.
I don’t need to have played every game ever made. But I do own several thousand and have played thousands more.
From that experience, I can tell you this: you never truly understand a game until you play it yourself. That’s why I don’t waste time forming opinions about games I haven’t actually tried.
If you can’t be bothered to actually try what you’re criticizing, you have zero business judging it. That’s not opinion—that’s ignorance.
If there are 700,000 games then you must judge games without trying them. Otherwise you’d be constantly playing games to see if they’re any good and would still not get through them all.
My point is that you need to decide which games to play and that you have already judged a game when you decide not to play it.
You might not like the art style, or the gameplay, or the reviews or whatever but you have definitely judged it without playing it. The only other alternative is to literally download and play every game that you see.
Buddy please. Its like a farmer ok? Knows fruit, knows what makes it good and or bad, often. And perilously for your world view, at a glance. Effectively your kinda saying you can’t judge a game accurately without playing it through. So then no one can. And it comes off as rather immature/inexperienced masquerading as thoughtful or mature
Its not a person OK. Its a product and sometimes its more then that OK? But a lot of addictiveness isn’t good game. Like addictiveness isn’t a good drug or food or lifestyle choice (looking at gambling and cigs and stuff 👀)
We make it special we get that, what you don’t get is bad fruit your making special cause it is your holiday gift is still when looked at objectively and compared to the greater whole of produce. In general. Its bad fruit. Though genshin seems like its a legit game, not fully legit, cause of all the predatory design. So there. Objectively worse. Predatory by design is bad. Period. Now its better then many others. So with the greater whole it isn’t as bad. Or candy crush. Like don’t feel like a bad parent or anything but its definitely not getting a judgement pass, sorry
Also explain to your kids there tech bros toys when they play and insist upon the addictive games. They can decide but an informed person is always got a better chance of making well reasoned, informed decisions that makes there brains develop away from that bull 💩 you know
I’m skeptical that people here are as knowledgeable as they claim.
I know from several other threads that the majority of folks here stick to a few handfuls of games and sink 1,000s of hours into them. That might make them an expert at a specific MMO, but it certainly doesn’t make them experts in every game at a glance.
true on the only good mobile games not being mobile games, though you’re wrong about the number being small. Emulation means that entire console libraries are available. I’ve been plinking away at the SNES library for the past couple of years on my phone and am still spoiled for choice.
My kid loves roblox because its controls are pretty much completely ideal for her ipad and apple pencil
Roblox is entirely unplayable to me because its control schemes inevitably break all my millennial expectations and I don’t have great internet connectivity at home anymore. It hurts me and makes me angry, lol. ANY game that properly works with an Xbox controller is superior for my personal experience because of decades of that paradigm. Touchscreen controls are death and other control schemes are second class citizens in the modern landscape
Super fancy shinny quad AAAA game with photorealistic (2025 edition) graphics that You can talk about on dedicated forums, that maybe 5 other persons in Your area ever heard of.
vs
Common, whatever graphic, cube themed, low poly game with music in midi… that whole school talk about and every yt influencer too.
It’s all about blindly following the fashion. Again.
Sky is fun but you know it hooks you with those candles. The only evolution you make clear here is they’ve gotten better at disguising the loot boxes and cash grabs.
The potential has always been there for phone games, but its far a few between that are worthwhile. Touch screens suck for controls, really limits to a few good genres, but the stores suck too for any form of support. I’m still bitter that they updated iOs and not xcom so I lost that game and couldn’t get a refund. Most good phone games are ports though, and otherwise so riddled with poor design and mtx its not worth the time. Honestly, the buggest disappointment with phones is that games could be awesome on them and they’re not.
Kids are easily entertained by all kinds of arguably crappy things. Similarly mine has access to tons of great games but will spend weird amounts of time on some janky web based crap. Its not a sign its good, he just has no taste cause he’s an inexperienced kid. I similarly wouldnt look at his choice of mismatched clothes and chicken nuggets for every possible meal and think “wow that stuff’s great!” Maturity and judgement take awhile to develop, so I dont think its bad that he does that, but roblox is still utter garbage no matter how much him and his friends love it. A lot of people love garbage - it doesn’t make it good.
Kids are easily entertained by all kinds of arguably crappy things.
Guys traditional games AND mobile games are going the way of the dodo because my 6 month old plays with their fisher price phone more than our phones or tablets. - OP
The inverse is just as true. Just because you and many “gamers” accept a rigid canon of what counts as “quality” doesn’t mean those games are actually good.
Go to any retro gaming board and you’ll hear the NES era hailed as a golden age. I’ve played nearly all those games—and apart from a few true gems, most of them don’t hold up.
Yet people still pay hundreds of dollars for cartridges like Action 52 and treat them like holy grails, even though we all know that some of the worst mobile games today are technically better.
The truth is, I don’t think the average gamer really knows quality. I think most of their taste is just parroting what someone else told them to like.
Quality deserves to be judged on its own merits—not nostalgia or consensus.
Action 52 committed a crime worse than all those gacha games combined: it was not fun. And you had to pay good money for the privilege of being bored out of your mind.
But seriously—what’s stopping you (or anyone else) from buying games outright for your smartphone?
No one’s given me an answer, so here’s the truth:
Nothing.
But sure, keep pretending every mobile gamer is chained to gacha hell, like their phones come pre-installed with Only Microtransactions Forever™. Everyone with a smartphone is forced to play gacha 24/7, no exceptions.
Yeah, sure. Yeah, and I’m the CEO of Bigfoot Sightings Inc.
Mobile is so thoroughly dominated by gacha that any game that tries to have an ethical business model has almost no hope of succeeding on the platform, no hope of competing with the endless sea of gacha.
And I’m sure you’re about to cherry-pick like two counterexamples, but I know you know that those exceptions are so scarce that I have every reason to decide that it simply isn’t worth my time to go out of my way looking for them.
Have you ever considered that many people make games not just for some arbitrary measure of “success,” but because they genuinely love the craft of creating video games?
Some of these creators simply want to share their creativity with the world—no gimmicks, no exploitative business models.
There’s an entire universe of these passionate developers out there. We call them “indie” devs. You’ll find them on platforms like itch.io, and they’re far more common than most realize.
Many make games for PC, some for the web, and plenty for mobile as well.
If you want to play truly good games—without being at the mercy of marketing machines, no matter the platform—it’s on each of us to seek them out and discover what’s really worth playing.
Its the age old subjective vs objective criteria, and for certain people of different perspectives one will outweigh the other. Nostalgia is very subjective - most of those classics are called classics because they were fantastic at the time of release. They dont hold up today on a technical level, so objectively their quality by today’s standards is dirt, but whether or not someone still finds it entertaining or fun to play is entirely dependent on that person. The only way to measure that is to take an average of the judgemental reactions of many people - essentially consensus.
The problem with phone games is that objectively the large majority of them are poorly made, with subversive mechanics meant to manipulate the casual audience into spending on them. Their goal isn’t fun so much as addiction. It works because it is so largely available to a massive casual audience. The large majority of these people wouldnt bother to purchase a console or a PC for gaming. I’ve met people who actively say they think video games are a waste of time but they’re on level 1000 of candy crush and spending money on power ups. These people do not visit gaming forums and are not gaming enthusiasts, they dont see an issue, nor would they care if you point it out. Subjectively, they like it, they’re having fun, and that’s fine, but that is not the audience you are speaking to here. For this crowd the issues are readily apparent. Its immediately obvious to use why these games are balanced poorly, why ads are shoved in our faces constantly, why the constant updates are anti-consumer. An enthusiast audience will always be more critical of such practices that the larger casual crowd easily ignores.
Last time I went to mcdonalds it was because of that same kid who loves phone games. He was so excited for chicken nuggets. I tried one, it was horrible. I choked down a burger that is an insult to burgers. No food enthusiast would ever recommend this, no self respecting chef would ever endorse this, and I can easily make better food at home for cheaper. But they’ve served millions, and have franchises world wide! People love it, so it must be great! It sure as fuck is not, and I certainly have the capacity to be a more discerning consumer with that just like I am with video games or any other interest.
I’m not looking down on anyone, but dont pretend that’s high quality stuff over there. Just like with the games, I said earlier theyre having fun and thats great, but its still low quality games. I can continue the comparison - beer. The most popular ones are complete swill (bud miller coors). Books - James Patterson and Danielle Steel will keep pumping shlock out until they die, and I bet that shit will still sell like hotcakes for years after. Its not like I’m going around knocking burgers and beers out of hands going “hey loser get some taste!” I just choose a higher quality item for myself. Dont be too much of a victim here, you’re allowed to enjoy those things too, by all means. Just dont fool yourself into thinking it’s high tier premium grade caviar.
You seem to think your taste is more exceptional than people you deem as basic.
But how exactly did you arrive at your taste? Hype? Influencers? Marketing?
You compare games to beer and say Bud is “complete swill”. Fair enough. But almost everyone drinking IPA is doing so because some hipster said this is real beer – and everyone else just went along with it.
Personally, I’ve never read a James Patterson or Danielle Steel book in my life. But I’ve met plenty of people who claim up and down that Jack Kerouac and David Foster Wallace is top tier literature. How have so many people – who oddly seem to dress the same, have the same manners, operate with similar world views – seem to all be convinced those two authors are peak?
My personal standpoint is that nobody has taste unless they do the discovering themselves. That means no relying on marketers, gatekeepers, tastemakers, or algorithms. Go and dig for themselves.
If you’re willing to do that, form an opinion all on your own, kudos. But most people – even people who swear up and down that they have taste – won’t.
@Screen_Shatter@atomicpoet Imho everyone who talks about quality in games should define how they define quality ;) I for example value story and game mechanics over graphics and usability perfection. So Balatro / Knights of the Pen and Paper or alot of the Square Enix Classic Releases on Android still are high quality games for me. My advice would be before you argue you start to define what quality means. After this you can much better measure and argue.
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If the Candy Crush is a quality for you, I feel sorry for yourself. Also comparison to a console is flawed.
Mobile gaming, on Android, is an interesting space right now. I used to buy flagship phones exclusively, as high spec as I could just…because I could. I played a few emulated Nintendo Switch games on them, as well as the odd Game Pass title (with a telescoping GameSir Xbox mounted controller thing) and then I realized I really had no use for them. I rarely played, and my most recent phone purchases have been mid-range.
That said, so much is now possible on Android. You can emulate everything from Switch to PS3, use pretty front-ends to use as a launcher station (a quick note of appreciation for the totally FOSS option - Lemuroid), and as unbelievable as it still is to me, you can even play full PC games like GTA V using winlator
The scene for Android emulation is incredibly dramatic with frequent in-fighting, but also pretty impressive from a technical standpoint. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea - and that’s fine, but the mobile scene which isn’t just gatcha games hooking kids on the Play Store is so varied. Then you’ve got actually impressive games like DREDGE getting a Android release, replete with custom builds and changes for the Android system (no lazy ports!). Heck, even No Man’s Sky is coming to Android soon!
Streaming from a local PC yo. Great times.
Please don’t get me wrong. I’m sure you’re a loving parent and just want what’s best for your daughter. But what you’re essentially doing, is giving your kid pocket money to go play slot machines at the local dive bar.
The reason why mobile phone gaming is so bad, is because there are barely any actual games. The reason your daughter thinks it’s fun to play candy crush is not because the game itself is good, it’s because the game makes her addicted to it. This is bad. Really bad. This will have consequences on how her brain handles dopamine. Please, for the love of your family, get her off that shit immediately.
I think I know my kid better than you, a random Internet stranger who’s never met her before in her life. And consequently, has no understanding of what her actual needs are.
Yes the needs of your very special child are so unfathomably different from all the other children in the planet lol
Actually, my kid’s needs really are substantially different from others.
My daughter is autistic. She has trouble communicating verbally. But on Roblox, she finds it much easier to socialize.
She has never spent a cent on microtransactions but gets the opportunity to talk to other kids without being bullied.
I’m not taking that away from her just because strangers on the Internet can’t fathom different kids have different needs.
I’m not sure why you’re on a crusade to convince people to like mobile games. I’ve always got my phone on me, and I frequently find myself on a subway ride that’s too short to bother with a Steam Deck. Mobile games would fit in great there. My options are pretty terrible. For the kinds of games I like to play, the only ones that actually have mobile versions are basically digital versions of board games and a small handful of roguelikes. I tend to just read on the subway instead. It’s not for lack of trying. The library just sucks, and it offers less value than other places I can buy games. Your daughter is playing games designed to keep you “engaged” and addicted with all of the greatest tricks of the gambling industry; you can find the GDC talks with a quick search on your favorite search engine.
Whenever I see an echo chamber where people parrot the same shallow talking points—no nuance, no real analysis—the contrarian in me kicks in.
You claim there’s “no library” on mobile, but even a basic look at the stats and available titles proves otherwise.
If you actually want fun, premium mobile games with zero microtransactions, they’re not hard to find. You just have to look beyond the surface—and actually try.
I’m not parroting anything. I’ve looked. Sure, sometimes you get a port of XCOM or Slay the Spire, but then it’s not going to carry over progress back to my PC, where I’m more comfortable playing at home, and my reluctance to buy a version of the game like that explains why there isn’t enough money in trying to port the kinds of games that I like to mobile. Sometimes a game has a port, but it fell out of compatibility with modern Android and never got updated; and let me tell you, that’s a great way to convince me to stop looking. Even crazier is when something like Fire Emblem Heroes happens, because it’s adapting a traditional handheld/console game into an interface that makes way more sense for controlling the game, but it’s not a proper version of that series; it’s a gacha game. If I have any kind of extended anticipated desire to game on the go, my Steam Deck is just a better answer than trying to find the few games I would like that also got Android versions, because I’m going to spend more time playing them at home anyway.
Games as a service is a scam and goes hand in hand with gambling and addictive mechanics used to keep people hooked. It’s absolutely toxic.
Nintendo is a corporate shithole but at least they make some sort of semblance of non abusive games.
“Portable gaming” is always welcome but the business model of phone games is fucking disgusting.
Then don’t play games-as-a-service on mobile. Plenty of great mobile games you can buy outright, no strings attached.
Worried about ownership? Back up the APK files—problem solved.
You don’t have to swallow every business model you hate. Choice is still on your side.
We all know that decent games exist, somewhere. But the amount of effort it would take to wade through all the shovelware and gacha to try to find an even halfway passable game on Google Play simply isn’t worth my time.
And with the mobile market being what it is, it arguably isn’t worth it for developers to try and sell any serious game as mobile-first, because it’s so difficult for those types of games to succeed when mobile gamers want gacha and those that don’t simply aren’t playing on mobile. If it’s truly worth my time, it should be ported to other platforms.
Honest question: how do you find “decent” games elsewhere?
Because all storefronts on PC and console suck when it comes to discoverability.
Do you just accept what marketers and “gamers” tell you about value?
Word of mouth is certainly a large part of it, yes. People talk about successful games. One way or another, the games I like make it onto my radar when I see buzz about them.
But what are the most successful games on mobile? What are the games mobile gamers talk about? Gacha. It’s all gacha. Whatever else is out there, nobody’s talking about it and I’m never going to see it. Nor do I have any reason to go searching through a toxic cesspit in the hopes that maybe I’ll eventually find something, when it is far easier to look elsewhere, on platforms that haven’t been thoroughly corrupted by the race to the bottom.
But again, the real takeaway I want to stress is that the market has been this way for long enough that both gamers and developers know the well is poisoned, and it will never be unpoisoned. The fact that mobile has become dominated by gacha has reinforced itself - everyone not interested in gacha has left the platform, and mobile developers will keep selling more gacha because that’s what the remaining audience wants. They even know that the average mobile gamer won’t spend money on a more ethical business model.
I know that developers know that I know that this is what mobile is. The way I see it, mobile itself has become a red flag. If a game is trying to be more than gacha trash, well why don’t the developers have the sense to put it on other platforms where non-gacha gamers are? If not, they’re shooting themselves in the foot and I have no pity.
Here’s where you and I differ: I don’t trust word of mouth. I don’t trust canons. I don’t trust marketing. And frankly, I don’t trust the so-called “gamers” who repeat the same tired narratives.
Instead, I dive deep—into the bowels of app stores, into archive.org, anywhere I can find games no one else has played or talked about. Then I judge for myself whether they’re worth a damn.
That’s how I’ve uncovered hidden gems, and why I know most of what passes for “good taste” is just groupthink dressed up as expertise.
The only people with real taste? The ones willing to seek things out and form their own opinions. Everything else is just noise.
So what, you just buy games at random and hope maybe you landed on something good? Without anything that would make for an informed purchase? Sounds like a horribly inefficient way of running headfirst into Sturgeon’s Law.
Sometimes I do buy games on a whim.
But usually, I’m a deal hunter—I scour for discounts, read descriptions carefully, study screenshots, and watch gameplay footage. If it grabs my interest, I pull the trigger.
Surprisingly, most of the games that catch my eye turn out to be pretty good.
You should give it a shot. Ignore the hype, forget word of mouth and influencers. Dive into something completely new and different—you might just be pleasantly surprised.
I don’t. You are exposing children to those exact mechanics and normalizing that behaviour. Without further thought in the future they will go for increasingly scammy shit tactics.
My kid knows full well what is allowable and what is not. She has never spent money on micro-transactions.
Seriously, you played behind your mom’s back. As did I and everyone else. Be careful, talk to her about the shitty tactics. She has to be aware of them, spot them, and know how they work to be able to avoid them. The hardest part will be for her to actually believe it. Those life service shit uses the most disgusting psychological tricks.
Or she will spent all her money behind your back someday.
We all had our tricks, and children will always be cleverer than their parents.
My 13 and 15 year olds are PC first gamers, then consoles, then mobile. I raised them that way on purpose because I wanted to avoid tablet and phone screens. I could control access better that way.
And yea, also because I’m a pc and console gamer and wanted to play my favorite games with them.
The older one has started playing mobile games more often and yea, it’s Genshin and Honkai. That kid was always in love with Fire Emblem, so Honkai makes sense to me. The stories are all kind of the same.
A friend stayed with us for a few days and they have a 12 and 10 year old. I have every console imaginable, PCs on big screens, and they never left their tablets.
I think once kids get on the tablet/phone/mobile games, they don’t really leave. I don’t know that I would have either.
Yes cause they are designed to be addictive and maximize the profitability with addictive content like loot boxes and fomo tactics to push micro transactions.
Once again, choice is on your side. There are hundreds of thousands of games on mobile, many that are not service-based.
Not for a kid it isn’t.
And that’s the point you keep sweeping away.
Again, my kid has never spent a single cent on microtransactions.
I just feel bad for a lot of kids because maybe their phone or tablet has the game they want but often they are playing using just the touchscreen and that interface sucks for anything that requires joystick or button controls (where the touchscreen just has vague areas with pretend joysticks and buttons).
It just does.
I get that kids get used to it, but it’s like getting used to being kicked in the nuts when you have the option of not being kicked in the nuts.
Hmm I’m not sure using gacha games which are designed for addictive gameplay loops and predatory monetisation being the games that your kid prefers over standalone experiences is a good argument to make
I don’t think of gaming as socializing - that’s your daughter’s metric.
Not all game players are the same, which is why there are so many different categories of games.
To me it is the inverse of socializing. It’s an escape to a world where I don’t have to deal with people.
I understand just fine. The only good mobile games aren’t mobile games. They are ports of normal games for mobile devices. Which is a super incredibly small number of games.
And latching onto Gatcha games as a good thing for kids? Might as well get them cigarettes and alcohol too if you wanna get them addicted earlier.
Wow, an expert on all mobile games—based on exactly how many hours scrolling and judging from your porch?
There are over 700,000 mobile games on Google Play and the App Store combined. Over seven hundred thousand. You really think you’ve played, let alone fathomed, the quality of that entire universe?
Lumping all mobile games together because of a few gacha titles is like calling all movies “just commercials” because of some awful reality TV. Face it: the world’s moved on, but you’re still shouting at clouds.
How many of the mobile games that you specifically mentioned aren’t gatcha games?
I could have just as easily listed Monument Valley, Florence, or The Room—none of which are gacha.
And hey, I just did.
OK, just making sure you’re aware that the reason everyone is talking about gatcha games is because they’re the ones that you brought up!
There are over 700,000 games on the play store. … and 699,900 of them are basic, traditional mobile games that are basically a gamified e-store for imaginary goods…
How about we stick to facts instead of making things up?
As of July 2025, there are 14,139 premium, paid games on the iOS App Store—meaning games that are not free-to-play, not gacha, and have no microtransactions.
To put that in perspective: iOS alone has more complete, self-contained games than the NES, SNES, N64, and GameCube libraries combined.
https://42matters.com/stats
Bro are you a sales rep for this data company and this whole post is just a way to drive people to your product? Because that’s about the only explanation I have for, all t h i s.
Wow, that’s some next-level conspiracy thinking—just because I share stats with a source, you leap straight to “sales rep for the statistics company” territory?
What’s next, claiming schools teach math just to line Texas Instruments’ pockets?
Here’s the simple truth: I’m tired of hearing people mindlessly parrot the same tired talking points with zero facts to back them up.
If having an unpopular opinion rattles your echo chamber, so be it. I’m perfectly fine with that.
Bro this entire post and every reply you’ve made is just next level unhinged, I was giving you a generous benefit of doubt here, because you being a sales rep is about the only way this isn’t insane cringe.
That’s great—I love being cringe. It means I’ve hit a nerve and said something so contrary that it actually rattles you.
Funny thing is, you haven’t actually told me how or why I’m wrong—just that I’m cringe.
If that’s all you’ve got, I’m doing something right.
It was obvious hyperbole to point at how you are still hilariously wrong. Congratulations on being too stupid to understand how speech works. No wonder you let your kids engage with addictive games… You’re too simple to understand how it’s still bad.
One does not need to play every single piece of shovelware to be able to identify shovelware.
Nope. You must play a game before you call it shovelware. Anything less is just lazy, uninformed hot air.
If you can’t be bothered to actually try what you’re criticizing, you have zero business judging it. That’s not opinion—that’s ignorance.
So stop pretending you’re some gaming authority when all you’ve done is shout from the sidelines without ever stepping on the field.
So you’ve played every single game ever made, huh? 🙄
I don’t need to have played every game ever made. But I do own several thousand and have played thousands more.
From that experience, I can tell you this: you never truly understand a game until you play it yourself. That’s why I don’t waste time forming opinions about games I haven’t actually tried.
Try it sometime—it might change your perspective.
I don’t need to step in every pile of shit I see to know it’s shit. Seeing it and smelling it is enough to know I don’t want to touch or taste it.
You just told me you don’t play anything, so by your own admission, you’ve seen nothing.
If there are 700,000 games then you must judge games without trying them. Otherwise you’d be constantly playing games to see if they’re any good and would still not get through them all.
I have a more compelling suggestion: only judge games you play.
My point is that you need to decide which games to play and that you have already judged a game when you decide not to play it.
You might not like the art style, or the gameplay, or the reviews or whatever but you have definitely judged it without playing it. The only other alternative is to literally download and play every game that you see.
It’s entirely your prerogative to spend time and money on whatever you think will be likely worthwhile to you.
But without actually playing a game, it’s strict guesswork on whether a game is quality or not.
Seriously, there’s no harm in saying, “I don’t know whether this game is good – I haven’t tried it.”
Buddy please. Its like a farmer ok? Knows fruit, knows what makes it good and or bad, often. And perilously for your world view, at a glance. Effectively your kinda saying you can’t judge a game accurately without playing it through. So then no one can. And it comes off as rather immature/inexperienced masquerading as thoughtful or mature
Its not a person OK. Its a product and sometimes its more then that OK? But a lot of addictiveness isn’t good game. Like addictiveness isn’t a good drug or food or lifestyle choice (looking at gambling and cigs and stuff 👀)
We make it special we get that, what you don’t get is bad fruit your making special cause it is your holiday gift is still when looked at objectively and compared to the greater whole of produce. In general. Its bad fruit. Though genshin seems like its a legit game, not fully legit, cause of all the predatory design. So there. Objectively worse. Predatory by design is bad. Period. Now its better then many others. So with the greater whole it isn’t as bad. Or candy crush. Like don’t feel like a bad parent or anything but its definitely not getting a judgement pass, sorry
Also explain to your kids there tech bros toys when they play and insist upon the addictive games. They can decide but an informed person is always got a better chance of making well reasoned, informed decisions that makes there brains develop away from that bull 💩 you know
That’s my take, hope it helps clarify 💪
I’m skeptical that people here are as knowledgeable as they claim.
I know from several other threads that the majority of folks here stick to a few handfuls of games and sink 1,000s of hours into them. That might make them an expert at a specific MMO, but it certainly doesn’t make them experts in every game at a glance.
true on the only good mobile games not being mobile games, though you’re wrong about the number being small. Emulation means that entire console libraries are available. I’ve been plinking away at the SNES library for the past couple of years on my phone and am still spoiled for choice.
My kid loves roblox because its controls are pretty much completely ideal for her ipad and apple pencil
Roblox is entirely unplayable to me because its control schemes inevitably break all my millennial expectations and I don’t have great internet connectivity at home anymore. It hurts me and makes me angry, lol. ANY game that properly works with an Xbox controller is superior for my personal experience because of decades of that paradigm. Touchscreen controls are death and other control schemes are second class citizens in the modern landscape
Super fancy shinny quad AAAA game with photorealistic (2025 edition) graphics that You can talk about on dedicated forums, that maybe 5 other persons in Your area ever heard of.
vs
Common, whatever graphic, cube themed, low poly game with music in midi… that whole school talk about and every yt influencer too.
It’s all about blindly following the fashion. Again.
Sky is fun but you know it hooks you with those candles. The only evolution you make clear here is they’ve gotten better at disguising the loot boxes and cash grabs.
The potential has always been there for phone games, but its far a few between that are worthwhile. Touch screens suck for controls, really limits to a few good genres, but the stores suck too for any form of support. I’m still bitter that they updated iOs and not xcom so I lost that game and couldn’t get a refund. Most good phone games are ports though, and otherwise so riddled with poor design and mtx its not worth the time. Honestly, the buggest disappointment with phones is that games could be awesome on them and they’re not.
Kids are easily entertained by all kinds of arguably crappy things. Similarly mine has access to tons of great games but will spend weird amounts of time on some janky web based crap. Its not a sign its good, he just has no taste cause he’s an inexperienced kid. I similarly wouldnt look at his choice of mismatched clothes and chicken nuggets for every possible meal and think “wow that stuff’s great!” Maturity and judgement take awhile to develop, so I dont think its bad that he does that, but roblox is still utter garbage no matter how much him and his friends love it. A lot of people love garbage - it doesn’t make it good.
Guys traditional games AND mobile games are going the way of the dodo because my 6 month old plays with their fisher price phone more than our phones or tablets. - OP
The inverse is just as true. Just because you and many “gamers” accept a rigid canon of what counts as “quality” doesn’t mean those games are actually good.
Go to any retro gaming board and you’ll hear the NES era hailed as a golden age. I’ve played nearly all those games—and apart from a few true gems, most of them don’t hold up.
Yet people still pay hundreds of dollars for cartridges like Action 52 and treat them like holy grails, even though we all know that some of the worst mobile games today are technically better.
The truth is, I don’t think the average gamer really knows quality. I think most of their taste is just parroting what someone else told them to like.
Quality deserves to be judged on its own merits—not nostalgia or consensus.
At least Action 52 never tried to financially ruin gambling addicts.
Action 52 committed a crime worse than all those gacha games combined: it was not fun. And you had to pay good money for the privilege of being bored out of your mind.
But seriously—what’s stopping you (or anyone else) from buying games outright for your smartphone?
No one’s given me an answer, so here’s the truth:
Nothing.
But sure, keep pretending every mobile gamer is chained to gacha hell, like their phones come pre-installed with Only Microtransactions Forever™. Everyone with a smartphone is forced to play gacha 24/7, no exceptions.
Yeah, sure. Yeah, and I’m the CEO of Bigfoot Sightings Inc.
Mobile is so thoroughly dominated by gacha that any game that tries to have an ethical business model has almost no hope of succeeding on the platform, no hope of competing with the endless sea of gacha.
And I’m sure you’re about to cherry-pick like two counterexamples, but I know you know that those exceptions are so scarce that I have every reason to decide that it simply isn’t worth my time to go out of my way looking for them.
Have you ever considered that many people make games not just for some arbitrary measure of “success,” but because they genuinely love the craft of creating video games?
Some of these creators simply want to share their creativity with the world—no gimmicks, no exploitative business models.
There’s an entire universe of these passionate developers out there. We call them “indie” devs. You’ll find them on platforms like itch.io, and they’re far more common than most realize.
Many make games for PC, some for the web, and plenty for mobile as well.
If you want to play truly good games—without being at the mercy of marketing machines, no matter the platform—it’s on each of us to seek them out and discover what’s really worth playing.
If they want to share that creativity, share it on a platform where the people who would most appreciate it will actually play it.
Plenty of devs continue to make games for the Commodore 64. Should they stop just because most people don’t have one?
Its the age old subjective vs objective criteria, and for certain people of different perspectives one will outweigh the other. Nostalgia is very subjective - most of those classics are called classics because they were fantastic at the time of release. They dont hold up today on a technical level, so objectively their quality by today’s standards is dirt, but whether or not someone still finds it entertaining or fun to play is entirely dependent on that person. The only way to measure that is to take an average of the judgemental reactions of many people - essentially consensus.
The problem with phone games is that objectively the large majority of them are poorly made, with subversive mechanics meant to manipulate the casual audience into spending on them. Their goal isn’t fun so much as addiction. It works because it is so largely available to a massive casual audience. The large majority of these people wouldnt bother to purchase a console or a PC for gaming. I’ve met people who actively say they think video games are a waste of time but they’re on level 1000 of candy crush and spending money on power ups. These people do not visit gaming forums and are not gaming enthusiasts, they dont see an issue, nor would they care if you point it out. Subjectively, they like it, they’re having fun, and that’s fine, but that is not the audience you are speaking to here. For this crowd the issues are readily apparent. Its immediately obvious to use why these games are balanced poorly, why ads are shoved in our faces constantly, why the constant updates are anti-consumer. An enthusiast audience will always be more critical of such practices that the larger casual crowd easily ignores.
Last time I went to mcdonalds it was because of that same kid who loves phone games. He was so excited for chicken nuggets. I tried one, it was horrible. I choked down a burger that is an insult to burgers. No food enthusiast would ever recommend this, no self respecting chef would ever endorse this, and I can easily make better food at home for cheaper. But they’ve served millions, and have franchises world wide! People love it, so it must be great! It sure as fuck is not, and I certainly have the capacity to be a more discerning consumer with that just like I am with video games or any other interest.
So wait a minute. You cannot enjoy a simple cheeseburger with fries because McDonalds is beneath you?
I love a good burger and fries, but mcdonalds is fuckin awful
Whatever floats your boat, but it’s a waste of time looking down on people enjoying the occasional McDonalds cheeseburger and fries.
I’m not looking down on anyone, but dont pretend that’s high quality stuff over there. Just like with the games, I said earlier theyre having fun and thats great, but its still low quality games. I can continue the comparison - beer. The most popular ones are complete swill (bud miller coors). Books - James Patterson and Danielle Steel will keep pumping shlock out until they die, and I bet that shit will still sell like hotcakes for years after. Its not like I’m going around knocking burgers and beers out of hands going “hey loser get some taste!” I just choose a higher quality item for myself. Dont be too much of a victim here, you’re allowed to enjoy those things too, by all means. Just dont fool yourself into thinking it’s high tier premium grade caviar.
You seem to think your taste is more exceptional than people you deem as basic.
But how exactly did you arrive at your taste? Hype? Influencers? Marketing?
You compare games to beer and say Bud is “complete swill”. Fair enough. But almost everyone drinking IPA is doing so because some hipster said this is real beer – and everyone else just went along with it.
Personally, I’ve never read a James Patterson or Danielle Steel book in my life. But I’ve met plenty of people who claim up and down that Jack Kerouac and David Foster Wallace is top tier literature. How have so many people – who oddly seem to dress the same, have the same manners, operate with similar world views – seem to all be convinced those two authors are peak?
My personal standpoint is that nobody has taste unless they do the discovering themselves. That means no relying on marketers, gatekeepers, tastemakers, or algorithms. Go and dig for themselves.
If you’re willing to do that, form an opinion all on your own, kudos. But most people – even people who swear up and down that they have taste – won’t.
@Screen_Shatter @atomicpoet Imho everyone who talks about quality in games should define how they define quality ;) I for example value story and game mechanics over graphics and usability perfection. So Balatro / Knights of the Pen and Paper or alot of the Square Enix Classic Releases on Android still are high quality games for me. My advice would be before you argue you start to define what quality means. After this you can much better measure and argue.