sixteen-bit
Member
Not surprising
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Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!
"Gamers Playing More on Mobile Devices Than Consoles and PCs"
- Thread starter Frankfurt
- Start date
Yes. If someone really fucking loves Monopoly they are a gamer, but this is a video games discussion board discussing an article on video games so that's not really relevant.
Unless something happens soon we will hit a wall where we can't make the hardware any more powerful or smaller. When that happens everything will start getting big again a console will allways be able to have more powerfull hardware than a phone and a pc even more powerful hardware.
If we hit a point where for a few years we are stuck at say 12nm till something else comes along , they can allways make the pc cases bigger to allow for more cooling for faster and more hardware.
Is someone going to want to lug around a 10lbs tablet or phone ?
whatsinaname
Member
Now that I think of it, I can easily see how the huge PopCap market of bejewelled, peggle, hidden object games might have moved from the PC to mobile devices. Easier to find good games and install and less expensive
and one can say that solitare or poker on a phone is not relevent either , but these stats include that .
Are they including video game adaptions?
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
Like I said, I'm not interested in the debate over the definition of the label (which I agree is often pointless). I am interested in data and its accurate interpretation. In this case that requires discussing the meaning of the label, not to put anyone below anyone else, but to actually understand what kinds of people engage in what kinds of gaming. This article is not very good, and isn't worth the trouble, in any case. It provides too little data.
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
No one with money on the line would follow this data, as described. I'll bet the write-up in the article is simplified for the sake of a general audience. The real study is probably more granular. If it's not, I hope no one will base any real decisions on it.
What's so moronic about selling casual games to the huge number of people who want to play them? Seems like sound reasoning to me.
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
Nobody selling casual games has learned anything new from this data. They already knew there's a big audience.
What is at issue is treating all gamers equally. So say you make "non-casual" games (I'll assume that because you used "casual" you'll accept that the opposite is also a real thing) and this data makes it look like the overall trend for gamers is going in a certain direction. You would be foolish to panic and conclude that your "non-casual" base is shrinking. Your base may not have changed at all; it's just shrinking in proportion to the total pool once a bunch of casual gamers are lumped into the same category. That's why it's important to know who's who.
I'm not even sure if this debate is relevant to the article. The sample was from MocoSpace, which has something to do with mobile gaming, so presumably all the mobile gaming numbers are inflated (compared to the whole population of gamers) as a result. But the point is, I don't know enough about the sample to be confident that any of the points I'm making are relevant.
The amount of casual games released compared to the few that are actually successful is pretty slim..
DidntKnowJack
Member
I don't understand why people like to play games on the platform, I guess that's what's tripping me up. It's almost like people saying, "Flash games. Those are the future of gaming right there." I know they're convenient because everyone has a phone, but the future of gaming? Seriously?
I say we all go back in 1989 in my time machine. Who's with me?
* I'm not saying all mobile titles are flash games. It's just the best bad analogy I could think of.
I say we all go back in 1989 in my time machine. Who's with me?
* I'm not saying all mobile titles are flash games. It's just the best bad analogy I could think of.
Exactly. Some people on both sides are treating this like a zero sum game, when in fact the number of people who play video games of all types is experiencing tremendous growth, particularly on mobile platforms.
bigdaddygamebot
Member
I get what you're trying to do...I get it.
You're being clever.
This is a gaming enthusiast forum and if you believe all of these people playing games on their cell phones, games on facebook and jezzball/solitaire on their computers are "gamers"...well...you might not be as clever as what you're hoping to pull off.
What I find funny is the fact that most phone games are pretty much flash games. What use to be totally free on the PC is now a market on phones.. Who would have thought a game like angry birds which is a rip off of a old free flash game would sell billions. Then to think people would act like the creator is revolutionary or something. Ugh.
dream
Member
Me too. The latter tends to be insular and elitist while the former just wants to have fun.
I feel I'm more of a gamester with some gamist tendencies.
PRO-TIP: Such distinctions are completely arbitrary. The fewer categories you try to pigeonhole people who play video games into, the more wrong you'll be.
Alexios
Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
People don't want to make the distinction to feel better about themselves, they want to make it because there is one that's part of our interests around here, and tends to have a certain kind of games, experiences, and companies involved, regardless of any overlap when either company wants money from either "side" of the fence, and one that isn't, and we don't really care to keep hearing the obvious and at the same time completely irrelevant and uninteresting to us, as pointed out by articles like this, especially when more often than not such things are used to proclaim how Apple/mobile/whatever is killing or taking over in place of what we're interested in, when in fact it isn't because they can co-exist as they offer different things and most often to different people, not to mention how much of such drivel is more often than not little more than marketing tools for Apple, Zynga, Rovio, or other companies, rather than any actually insightful and interesting piece worth reading.
My personal distinction is someone for whom gaming is one of his/her hobbies, an enthusiast if you will, vs someone who uses it to more or less kill time, not unlike doodling while on the phone. Yes, there's often overlap, I too doodle sometimes, but that doesn't change anything. It looks like you're the one who has something to deal with given how annoyed you seem to be by such opinions.
While "gamer" might not be the right word to make the distinction with, it's not like such articles help in figuring things out or coming up with better terms by lumping everyone together either, yet I don't see any rage against that...
Also, if "gamer" was just to imply the literal meaning then why even include it in the title? The sentence would flow better by replacing it with "people" or similar or just writing "mobile devices played on more than" etc, since of course it's "gamers" that "play", if you automatically turn into one by just doing that, so it's redundant to make the distinction by name.
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
You troll GAF incessantly. You're a gamer. *thumbs up*
.
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
An apt comparison. I can play Tetris on my phone but that will never replace the dedicated gaming platforms. iOS has strength in numbers but that means little to my taste.
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
You are completely and utterly wrong on this point.
If I collected the right data about everyone who plays games, I could use a statistical procedure to create different groups (based on tastes, frequency of play, intensity of interest, whatever) based purely on the data, unbiased by my theories or stereotypes about what groups might exist. These groupings would be of interest to anyone who wants to understand the market.
Your "gamers are gamers" attitude is fine for a gaming forum, where the debate is largely bullshit and wastes everyone's time and derails threads, but there are distinctions to be made even if they are hard or impossible to make through casual observation.
Re: bolded # 2, you meant "the more categories" right? Otherwise I'm not understanding your viewpoint.
dream
Member
You're not. All those records you set and all those high scores you break don't count because anyone could do that.
Also: people that play Call of Duty aren't really gamers because dudebro games aren't really games. Madden players aren't really gamers because they just keep buying the same game every year. Dark Souls players might be gamers but only the ones that play on consoles because you can't quick save on there.
natethegreat409
Member
Am I weird because I don't play games on my phone? I had Angry Birds for a little while, but it got boring.
DidntKnowJack
Member
You're a cross-over gamer. Or something.
I agree the labeling and defining of certain gamers into certain categories gets convoluted and a bit silly, but it happens because there are so many kinds of games. So many kinds of experiences. A person whose game of choice is Angry Birds is having a completely different experience than the guy whose game of choice is Skyrim.
Besides, it's human nature to place people into categories.
bigdaddygamebot
Member
True.
However you're also douchy (sp?) enough to swing you back into the "gamer" category.
I don't doubt that it's possible to identify certain long-range trends in who plays video games and how. My beef is with people who invent two or three labels and pretend they've got it all figured out, when the real data is a thousand times more granular and more interesting than sweeping generalizations of GAMER and NOT GAMER. The real statistics and patterns are absolutely fascinating, and using simple labels is insulting to the sheer variety of people who enjoy this hobby.
I agree with you, and most of this post is an attempt to nip the pointless semantic arguments in the bud.
dream
Member
But people are trying to categorize gamers based on really granular and nebulous criteria. Rage is probably a more shallow experience than Skyrim -- what category would a FPS fan fall into? Civilization is inherently a deeper game than Skyrim; does that make a TBS fan more of a gamer than someone who prefers Bethesda games?
hey_it's_that_dog
benevolent sexism
Fair enough. Debate resolved!
no you just have bad taste in games loL!!!
but don't worry, it's not like you want to be a gamer anyway. i mean look at us.
No, that makes you a whore. Just playing with whatever you want like that, don't you wonder why people stare at you in the street?
bigdaddygamebot
Member
True...but a contented whore.
Maleficence
Member
People who play mainly mobile games on phones are about as much "gamers" as people who like the Transformer movies are film fans
No one is content living in sin! REPENT, SINNER, SO THAT THOU SHALL BE HEALED!
Well i could get games as payment for my whore services.
CoffeeJanitor
Member
Sounds about right. I probably fit into this category more often than not.
So... They are, by any reasonable standard. You just don't like their taste in movies/games.
CoffeeJanitor
Member
And dammit GAF, your tastes are no better than anyone else's and your games are no more "serious". Why are people so immature and defensive when talking about games they don't like?
dream
Member
You could make a case that someone who dominates a ridiculously hard iOS game like Super Crate Box (like our good friend Wario) is more of a gamer than someone who plays something easy like Skyrim. I would never do that though because judging someone based on what they play is a douchey move.
jim-jam bongs
Member
This argument that we need to accept that the word "gamer" means "enthusiast" is absurd. Obviously there's a notable demography difference between someone who exclusively plays Facebook games and someone who plays COD but how does creating two fairly arbitrary camps help in any way to understand the finer distinctions between demographics?