The importance of mid-tier gaming

One of the biggest reasons for stagnation in the mainstream gaming market is the tendency of big publishers to focus on the large, blockbuster titles. With the current model of huge, multi-million dollar releases every year, there are clearly signs of fatigue in the gaming market. As such big titles compete for the tightening consumer wallet, the question should be asked whether such a model is sustainable and what could be done to fix the situation. 

This is where mid-tier games could fit comfortably in the niche; Jim Sterling has recently championed the use of such titles, citing the practice as a boost to creativity in the industry, especially during the peak times of the PS2 era. Jim is indeed correct that mid-tier games could produce a more sustainable niche for big publishers. 

With the costs of development skyrocketing, many game publishers have engaged in shady practices to boost their profits. Imagine how much better games would be if hundreds of millions of dollars and the fate of the developers themselves didn’t hinge on their profitability; there would certainly be more creative risks taken, as well as fewer implementations of anti-consumer ‘features’ such as loot boxes.

There is a need for more ‘useful’ games; ones that may not make all the money all the time but don’t need to be so big to be profitable. Given the tightness of customer wallets, this model would arguably be more sustainable; there’s a lot more room for someone to buy a couple of £20-to-£30 games on top of a big budget £60 blockbuster, rather than expecting them to pay for three or four such ‘must-have’ titles (representing nearly a £240 outlay – almost as much investment as buying a whole new console!). In this way, mid-tier games could be the bread and butter of a mainstream gaming industry that currently stands on unstable footing.

While some may argue that game dev costs are spiralling out of control as technology is pushed further and further with each yearly release, the question should be asked as to whether such costly development is always the way to go. Surely for a risk-averse big company, smaller and less costly games could represent a salvation for creativity. Instead of risking hundreds of millions on a single title, and the jobs that come with those big bucks, surely it would be more sustainable to have a varied portfolio where games can make profit at all levels of the market. This practice also represents an insurance policy against disaster; if your big, AAA blockbuster falls by the wayside one year and suffers from terrible sales, then you can fall back on a portfolio of smaller, profitable titles to shore up the earnings before the next instalment.

As mainstream gaming continues into the next generation, big companies will undoubtedly need to review their strategies and cost-efficiency. If a game doesn’t need to have the best graphics, why bother spending so much and then push that cost onto the consumers? Many such players will be content with paying a little less while getting a slightly less graphically-intense game, and in fact will probably be more likely to buy the game ‘on-top-of’ a AAA £60 purchase. Mid-tier games represent an interesting avenue for a more sustainable, more creative gaming future, so hopefully these will be utilized correctly and more often in the coming years.

Bottling Lightning Twice: the challenge of following up a phenomenon

Occasionally a game comes around that surpasses all expectation. Such games become phenomenal, smashing genre conventions and presenting critically-acclaimed, excellent mechanics that other games scramble to replicate. I like to call such successes ‘bottled lightning’ games, as these titles tend to hit at just the right time and scratch just the right itches that make such phenomena practically impossible to feel ‘for the first time’ again. 

One example of such a game is Minecraft; in a games industry that at the time was dominated by linear action experiences and cutscenes, this game created a unique mix of survival and free-form creation unlike any other experience at the time. The true measure of the game’s bottled-lightning status was in its imitators; Minecraft clones became a dime-a-dozen; before it went multi-platform, developers raced on consoles to have their own ‘Minecraft-like’ experience to capitalize on the game’s immense popularity by presenting near-imitations. A renaissance of sorts happened in the genre of ‘survival games’ (a genre I’d argue didn’t so much exist pre-Minecraft), where hunger and thirst meters, as well as the mechanic of crafting from gathered materials, became commonplace in the market, even in games where it made no sense. 

With Minecraft being a billion-dollar product nowadays, and therefore the go-to-target of hipster scorn, it’s easy to forget the game’s early status as a pioneer that launched many modern trends we see today. Like it or not, Minecraft indeed bottled lightning. Who doesn’t remember the unique feeling of discomfort and newness as they launched the game for the first time, and how exciting the community was when they were discovering and re-telling every little legend and myth that formed around the game? It’s impossible to recreate that feeling in the game today; to play Minecraft for the first time again is impossible.

Dark Souls exists in a similar vein to Minecraft, and achieved widespread popularity in a similar, albeit less extreme way. As mainstream RPGs, such as Skyrim, became perceived as being simplified and ‘too easy’, and with the industry suffering from a perception of being ‘dumbed down’ to fit with an increasingly mainstream audience, Dark Souls came along as a punishing, opaque experience that offered deep, complex systems and a high barrier to entry. The game was a celebration of everything that had, up to now, been accepted tropes of videogames being so niche. As a phenomenon, Dark Souls gained notoriety rather than outright affection at first, as a difficult game accessible only for a certain kind of gamer and unapologetic of that fact. But as an industry trend, Dark Souls was a bona-fide cult hit, and it was undoubtedly helped by its unique flavour of gameplay that was rare to see in the games industry. 

Arguably, Dark Souls was the only game of its kind to truly strike its own unique formula that has been difficult to replicate, even for its sequels from the same company; for all the love Dark Souls II and III get, most fans now agree that the original Dark Souls is undoubtedly the quintessential experience of its gameplay. Even the game that preceded it, Demon’s Souls, doesn’t quite scratch the same itch. Dark Souls is certainly not without its imitators, many of which are excellent games, such as the sublime Japanese mythology-inspired Nioh. 

This leaves the problem of how to bottle lightning a second time; how does one follow up such phenomenal success with the weight of expectation? Fans would arguably want a sequel which would bottle lightning a second time and so uniquely feel new and exciting to play. But the sad reality is that this is, by definition, impossible to achieve with a sequel. Even if it succeeds in being so unique that it becomes its own phenomena, much like how Dark Souls did with its following-up from Demon’s Souls, a quitter hit that didn’t quite match its successor’s dizzying heights, it’s arguably because that game is so uniquely its own that it is instantly set apart from anything else. Instantly a game like this would set itself apart from its predecessors. Such games may bottle lightning in their own way but not their original inspiration’s lightning. So maybe the best way to approach such sequels and follow ups is not to expect this to happen and instead be happy creating new and interesting interpretations of the lightning formula; arguably, Dark Souls has already found some success in doing this with its sequels and with Bloodborne. Its sequels are successful and well-liked by critics and present interesting takes on the formula their predecessor founded. While not quite the same as playing the original, sublime title, what these games do is create unique interpretations of their own that make for great videogames. 

Bottling lightning may be something to aim for, but for audiences to expect the same to happen with follow-ups to the game would be foolish; a Minecraft 2, for example, would probably not nearly be a successful venture because it wouldn’t go off on quite the same tangent that Minecraft did and scratch the unique itch in quite nearly as impactful a way as the original. But instead creating new formula that expand on and interpret gameplay in new ways is still a worthy aspiration for any sequel and can sometimes be its own bottled lightning.

The frustrating potential of mobile gaming

In-app purchases, cheap cash-in microtransaction farming games, Candy Crush Saga, touch screen controls. The list of frustrations that I have with mobile phone gaming is a long, aggravating one. But do I think that mobile gaming will never be a legitimate platform? Controversially, I would say no. Mobile gaming has the potential to be a fully-featured and satisfying game platform in the future.

This may shock some of the more ‘hardcore’ gamers out there, many of whom will have looked upon the mobile gaming landscape with scorn and mockery. The word ‘casual’ is thrown around a lot when discussing mobile gaming. There is a kind of stigma in the topic where gamers feel that some genres are more legitimate pursuits than others. In terms of simple, ‘time waster’ games that are only made to entertain during short commutes, perhaps this criticism is somewhat valid. However, when talking about mobile gaming’s potential, there is certainly a possibility of more worthwhile gaming pursuits. 

In terms of raw power, the mobile phone market is more capable than it’s given credit for. Razer, a brand famous for PC gaming products, have even found value in the mobile gaming market. The Razer Phone carries 8GB of RAM on top of a state-of-the-art Snapdragon processor that matches rival flagship brands. The result is a mobile powerhouse that can output 120Hz gameplay, a standard not to be sniffed at by any means. 

Even the games themselves are quickly starting to catch up; the surreal experience of playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas on a mobile phone is testament to that fact. The humble smartphone is more than capable of handling complex 3D gameplay and graphics. The presence of Minecraft, Don’t Starve, and a growing indie market show that there is more than just Candy Crush available. With mobile’s signature portability, versatility and multi-tasking capabilities, it’s arguable that the platform could even become a preferred medium for the right kind of gamers if the technology is there. The Nintendo Switch is evidence of the fact that there is a desire to play fully featured, low-compromise games in a portable form, and undoubtedly it won’t be long at all until mobile processors come within grasping distance of Nintendo’s highly-successful machine. 

So what are the problems with mobile gaming? Firstly, it has to be said that those gamers who scoff at Candy Crush have a point. The install base of lifestyle users, as well as the barriers of simplistic touch-screen controls, make it difficult to see any real, quality entries in the smartphone space. Why would anybody create a relatively high-price, complex and rewarding phone game? It will make practically nothing in the face of massive, saturated competition that churns out exploitative low-price, free-to-play games that can capture the lifestyle market easily. Gamers on mobile are less tolerant of any game that has a price tag of more than a couple of pounds, so there is a massive culture change required from gamers on mobile expecting everything for free.

On top of that, touch screen controls just suck. To relate back to San Andreas, attempting to play the game on anything but a controller is an infuriating, painful experience. There is no kind of tactile feedback to help your hands know what to do and all you can do is vaguely rub the screen hoping it can catch some semblance of what you want to do. Not only that, but this control scheme means there are great finger-sized areas of screen being entirely blocked out from view. To play any kind of game that’s more complex than swiping at fruit, a controller is most definitely the way forward.

What mobile gaming needs is a unifying standard of controller. Much like how the Xbox 360 wired controller for Windows became the de-facto controller mapping for games on PC that needed joypads over keyboards, there needs to be a brand or product on mobile that universally becomes adopted and imitated as ‘the’ standard for controller maps. If we can decide on how to control the games, then we can start to see more complex games on the market as gamers become adaptable to the playstyles of mobile. I feel that we’re almost there, in fact, as gamepads on mobile start to look to console controllers for inspiration. My own controller for mobile is actually a modified 360 gamepad with a frame for attaching the phone, which is connected to the joypad by Bluetooth. The result is a much more satisfying experience than touch-screen controls, and it works with a wide variety of apps.

Ultimately, the key to solving the problem with the mobile market’s saturation of terrible games is simpler in theory than it is in practice. It requires a wider adoption by more core gamers, and voting by our wallets. If it is proven that there is a profitable market for more satisfying, premium games on mobile, then you can be guaranteed that there will be development. If there is one area where mobile excels it is in quickly and dramatically adopting a profitable idea. 

Until this happens though, gamers will continue to view the mobile market with scorn and righteous mockery, which makes the mobile market one of the more frustrating problems facing gamers today. Unfortunately with its widespread adoption by non-gaming users, its Candy Crush saturation, and its lack of a unified control scheme, it is difficult to see mobile gaming, for all its great potential, become the legitimate and vastly enjoyable platform that I know it can be. But solve those problems, and mobile gaming stands a real chance of being a lovable gaming platform, where the real benefits of smartphones in their growing power and versatility can shine through in a gaming context.