What Mobile Games Should Be: A Sugar Rush!

Sony’s Chris Mahoney has been talking about what makes a good mobile game – and I agree with him on the core idea here – that you are not replicating a console experience:

Beyond all of those reasons, though, Mahoney said the appeal of mobile games is “We all have these little moments of downtime, like when you’re at an airport or waiting at the DMV.” It’s gaming as a snack, a comparison that others have made as well. “When you look at mobile gaming today, it feels a lot like eating a Twinkie. A Twinkie is something where you have a craving, and you eat it, and it gives you a little sugar rush, and you feel great, but immediately afterwards you feel like that wasn’t a meal,” Mahoney said. “Consumers are starting to tell us some of that.”

In a nationwide survey Sony conducted of all kinds of mobile gamers, 89 per cent said mobile games are fun to play; 78 per cent said they are relaxing, and 76 per cent said they are replayable. But consumers are dissatisfied with mobile games, too; 36 percent said they are low quality, 49 per cent said they are bad graphically or narratively, and 76 per cent said they are mostly a waste of time.

One of the reasons by I wanted to do Call of Cthulhu:The Wasted Land as turn-based is I feel the genre suits the mobile arena well. So you have some moments free, where you can enjoy the game but you can easily stop and look up and not loose as a result. Games like Temple Run might not have the same thing going on as they are real time, but again it is not the end of the world if you look up and die – indeed they are designed that way. Short sharp slices of fun – like a sugar rush!