Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. It’s been… five
years since my last confession, I think. I don’t wanna talk about what I did
back then but let’s just say I’ve downloaded a few dozen videos of the “hot
Japanese girls” kind and I’ve always had a good night’s sleep. Anyway, where
were we? Oh right, confession.
I’ve always considered myself an average gamer. I’m not
good at any particular game as I’ve always been the load of any team in a first
person shooter like Call of Duty or Counter-Strike. Yes, I try my best when
I play multiplayer but my best is apparently using my head as a bullet magnet.
I’ve never gotten past the Taurus Demon, an early non-required (I think) boss in Dark Souls and never bothered again
after the first half dozen attempts. It’s like I said “Okay, you win, I won’t
bug you again, Mister Demon. May I please have my spine back?”
But I’m not THAT much of a beginner that I won’t play
huge games like GTA V or Just Cause 2 and lose interest because I
don’t know how to use the controller or one of the new features like the
character-specific skills in GTA V or
the grappling hook in Just Cause 2.
What’s that father? Well, yeah, I’m also aware - not an
expert, mind you - of which games go into which systems. It’s not like I’ll
ever say that a Halo game would ever
be playable on a Nintendo Wii or think that I can use an Xbox Kinect on a PS3.
True story: on my vacation in the Philippines, I heard two women talk about how
they were going to buy a PS3 just so they can play Just Dance 4 with a Kinect.
A freakin’ Kinect.
Lastly, I’ve also spent hundreds of hours playing Dynasty Warriors games to the point
where I start to think that if I hadn’t ever played Dynasty Warriors 4, I wouldn’t be playing video games to this day
and I probably would be happy with life, have a lovely girlfriend (probably of
the “hot Japanese girl” kind), and wouldn’t be posting this right now but we
can’t all have what we want, now can we?!
But I need to confess that I’m actually enjoying those
free-to-play games on my Android tablet and phone. You know, those games that
expect you to pay for in-game money with real money. The main difference with
spending 15 dollars on a copy of Arkham
Asylum: Game of the Year Edition and buying in-game money for something
like Gangstar City or High School Story is that Arkham Asylum never asks you to pay for
anything again.
The only downside to playing these free-to-play games is
that they ask for an infinite amount of money, which is not alright when you
compare it to most console games.
The thing about these microtransactions is that they’re
used to make everything quicker. I’m not saying that console games that I love
don’t offer them – GTA V offers
“Shark Cards” which is instant money – but console games don’t usually require
the microtransactions out of the gate.
A $20 game such as Batman:
Arkham City – Game of the Year Edition, will still cost you $20 (without
taxes, of course). The Game of the Year
Edition comes with all the DLC of course so that’s not really fair. Let’s
say, Dynasty Warriors 7. There is no
Game of the Year Edition for Dynasty
Warriors 7 and there is a ton of DLC for this game. The big difference is
that the company still makes money off of a new copy, digital or physical. Dynasty Warriors 7 DLC is of course not
required to make the game flow faster. It’s more of the mashed potatoes to your
20-piece chicken meal, you fat bastard.
A game like Simpsons:
Tapped Out involves waiting for hours but could even reach up to, and this
is true, 90 days. The same could be
said for Family Guy: The Quest For Stuff
and Japan Life. You tap and wait. Tap
and wait. Tap and wait! Once you finish waiting, you tap again and you wait
some more. It gets to the point where you think “Jesus Christ, I know the endgame
is making a city but at what limit?!”
Mobile games never end. That’s why they’re free. They give
you momentary satisfaction in something that lasts a lot longer than it should have. The difference between mobile
tap-and-wait games to a game that never ends like, say, Minecraft is that mobile games are free and would give you
something to pay money for. Minecraft,
on the other hand, asks for money upfront to something that never ends and you
can create that city however you want it with little blocks. The only
similarity is that these kinds of games never end. Minecraft however will
always continue to exist outside of micropayments you make.
Now you know where I’m getting at, right? There is no end
to mobile games and majority of them will always try to needle you for money
somehow whether it’d be energy or waiting time. Then why do I play them then if
I say they’re terrible? I like testing them out and giving me a momentary high
that doesn’t make me keep coming back. Of course I can’t play GTA V or Just Cause 2 while I’m on the bus to work unless I feel like a dick
and bring my own TV to the bus. That’s what mobile games are for. Pop out your
phone and launch the free game. Use up all your in-game energy for 10 minutes
and stop because you have to go to work. Not much of an addicting high but
enough to keep you going for a part of the day. Maybe I just like the short bursts of highs instead of
the commitment high that GTA V gives
you. You don’t have to invest large amounts of time in mobile games, perhaps
that’s why I like them nowadays. WWE
Supercard always gets me 20 minutes through the day even though. Maybe I
just need to admit it.
I like mobile games!
