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.

  • atomicpoet@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    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.

      • atomicpoet@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • nogooduser@lemmy.worldEnglish
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          1 year ago

          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.

              • atomicpoet@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
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                1 year ago

                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.

                • Blueberrydreamer@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
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                  1 year ago

                  You’re judging the gaming habits of the entire population of Lemmy based on a couple anecdotes from random threads? And you want to talk about not making snap judgements?

                  • atomicpoet@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
                    0·
                    1 year ago

                    Lemmy isn’t a big place. People who populate gaming threads are an even smaller fraction of the userbase. So to see the same handful of opinions, repeated again and again, upvoted ad infinitum – that’s a pretty good sample size.

                    I deliberately posted this thread as a contrarian take. And what do you know, it proved to be contrarian.

                    I didn’t say anything outrageous or mean-spirited. Everything has been quite reasonable. But judging by the responses – you all think every mobile game is a gacha game – I can safely say few of you have nearly as much experience with games as you believe you do.

                    By the way, this is why I generally put little stock into self-declared “gamers” opinions. Most of you are obsessed with playing things in a prescribed manner, in a particular way, regarding a specific canon. And you generally adhere to the same bland culture with little appreciation for diversity.