It's really sad what is happening with the game industry, especially the mobile game industry. It thankfully hasn't become that big of an issue with AAA games yet (but it is certainly trying to go in that direction, albeit slowly since there is more resistance from gamers). And the consumer is at fault here for playing these games, can't fault companies for giving the market what it wants and making money doing so, that's what companies are there for. People vote with their wallet and they vote for really bad games so that's what they get.

When the iPod Touch and the first iPhone came out, I remember there being so many cool games. They were just like games you'd find on actual handheld gaming devices, like the Nintendo DS. The only thing holding these games back were the bad controls (touch is just not enough for serious gaming). And these games still exist today, lots of really great games still come out, but it is becoming increasingly hard to find them because all of the top spots in the app stores, all of the most popular titles (with rare exceptions), are these crappy f2p games, which are all clones of two or three actually different games just with different graphics. When you get bored of one of these games, you go to the next one, but it's still the same game! You never stopped playing that game you grew tired of! Really crazy if you think about it.

And I have no idea what can be done about it. Maybe nothing can be done. They are the most popular games that make the most money. So you won't be able to convince anyone, neither producer nor consumer, to change their ways and give up on these games. It looks like we'll just have to live with how things are until at some point in a decade or so, this f2p fad hopefully comes to an end naturally. And how does this come about, naturally? Usually something better comes along. There is obviously something wrong with f2p games. But what if there is something wrong with other games too, that we just don't see because it isn't so obvious? Maybe whatever is wrong with those games has to be fixed, before f2p games can die off.

It probably is because we still don't really understand the market. Through mobile phones, gaming has suddenly gone from being a niche market to a mainstream market, a new market with new (and vastly different) demographics that nobody fully understands yet. All these new gamers don't (and can't) know what games they would want to play because they probably haven't seen many different types of games yet in their life. If you've never eaten chocolate in your life, you don't know what you're missing. And these new gamers don't know what they are missing by playing these f2p games. So maybe thinking of new ways to expose this new generation of gamers to different genres of games is what will solve the issue.

But like I alluded to earlier, better controls would also slowly lead to better games that would hopefully become popular over time. Mobile phones will never come with a real game controller attached to it (or never again, there was the Nokia Ngage, which I even owned). But mobile phone technology is evolving all the time. There are now touch screens being made where the flat screen can morph into physical buttons. Who knows what technology will make possible in just five years or so. And all of that will eventually lead to better mobile games and hopefully the death of crappy free to play titles that all have the same boring gameplay.