I posted this back in November and I stand by it I don't want to see big games that are probably better suited for controllers, PC, consoles, crammed onto IOS devices. I want to see developers instead focus on using the strength of the platform to make games that could only be done on IOS/mobile. The simple one touch scheme of Badland to Sky Tourist's dual finger controls and Rocket Robo's mix of touch, tilt, and swipe. Device 6's blending of text adventure with the innate ability to rotate and swipe on your device. Monument Valley's tangible touch-friendly interface, as you directly manipulate the environment with your fingers.
There are a wealth of amazing titles on iOS once you learn to look past the freemium garbage. Look at the board game ports, the strategy games from Shenandoah Studios, the point-and-click adventures, the gamebooks. There is some brilliant stuff here. Heck, there are even some decent blobers and if Apple wasn't such a crap company, we'd have a legit version of Dos Box.
^ This. Seriously. Sometimes it can be disheartening to see the top 10 grossing apps and stuff, but remember that we are not part of the majority who get free games and buy thousands of $ of consumables. We are the minority, who buy premium apps and play them. I've been part of the IOS scene from the start, and there are more premium (non-IAP driven) games always coming out; they are not in decline. I mean sht, I was playing Chronicles of Inotia on my iphone and that was one of the better RPGs out at the time. It's a terrible grind-fest lol. Check out my other thread in this section where I ask people what their top 5 console-quality games are. There's enough suggestions in there to keep someone playing for thousands of hours. And that doesn't even tough the plethora of indie-based games that may look simple, but have a ton of depth (Mission Europa, Dungeonism, Sword of Fargoal to name a few).
What has really come to disappoint me on this platform aren't the games being released but the perception of IAP. Of course, they can be crap, and when they are crap it's easy enough to know just but looking at them; because, no, I don't want to buy coins or crystals or whatever worthless currency you've devised to thinly veil your skinner-box mechanics but a premium game with extra maps, new dungeons, a pack of new classes... those are all good things. After all, we're not talking horse armor here, we're talking about DLC, we're talking about the closest thing to expansion packs that will probably ever exist again and yeah, they can be a rip-off too, PC developers prove that all the time, but people need to start understanding the realities of game development and start evaluating IAP on a case by case basis. It's not all hourse armor and fake currencies.
