Mobile gamer no more...?

Discussion in 'Off-Topic Lounge' started by Primoz, Aug 3, 2013.

  1. Primoz

    Primoz Well-Known Member

    Aug 14, 2012
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    Mobile gamer no more...?

    This whole thing started as I received the 1000$ from my summer job. I was a hardcore mobile gamer since 2004 and I only played certain PC titles, such as: COD 2, Assassins creed, the Fallout series, the elder scrolls series, and some more in between; my point is, that I only played AAA games on the PC.

    I was planning on playing Skyrim since it's release in 2011. I wanted to play it in sommer, because I know games such as Skyrim require a lot of time. I couldn't play it in 2012, so I played it this year. Literally 24/7.

    Now I'm in a huge dilemma... I have the 1000$ and I was planning on buying the new iPhone 5s. But... Because I played Skyrim another option was revealed to me; buying a new Laptop. I currently have a useless stationary PC, which is 7 years old and an old 3Gs iPhone. As you can see I desperately need both, a new computer and a new phone.

    I realized something... MOBILE GAMING HAS NO FUTURE... Why? There are only a handful of 3D AAA quality RPGs and FPS games and on the other side you've got a million of those sucky generic 2D mini-games. And who is to blame? The mobile hipster community imo; "Oh look, a new artsy pixely game is out, I should download that right now!" on the other hand indie developers who struggle with developing awesome games (Crescent Moon, Ravensword, Aralon, for example) get almost no attention... Mobile phones are more than capable of having large scale AAA games. But, because all publishers and developers see that sucky generic 2D IAP games provide more money they make those games. As long as there are those mobile hipsters around mobile gaming has no future. There may be one or two note-worthy games per year, but nothing more.

    I think I'm buying a new PC, because my old 3Gs will still support those crappy apps for years...

    PS: I may be a little drunk, but still... I think I have a point
     
  2. Greyskull

    Greyskull Well-Known Member

    Dec 13, 2009
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    PRIMOZ! Don't you DARE leave us!

    Sober up man! I drank last night too, spent 33 bucks on the appstore. Here's the trick-find a secondary hobby for your iDevice. I forget, don't you usually respond to my music price drop notices (or is that Primozz? Confusing)? Let me ease you into the world of ios music making. You'll fall down a money pit that forces you to stay on ios...FOREVER!
     
  3. Greyskull

    Greyskull Well-Known Member

    Dec 13, 2009
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    So I have about 1100 budgeted for fun stuff. You can get a desktop that will play anything out right now(OR a PS4), AND a new iDevice. Why choose?
     
  4. Primoz

    Primoz Well-Known Member

    Aug 14, 2012
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    I do use the iPhone quite a lot lately for my art projects (2 hours per day). I was also thinking of buying an old cheap iPad with the minimum requirements to support those apps. And yes, that must have been primozz... I dont enjoy making music.

    1000 is definitely not enough though... I would have to pay at least 600$ for the new iPhone and if I were to buy a new Laptop, I would definitely pay 1000$ and get the best possible thing for that money. I will have to make a choice.
     
  5. Pixel_Gamer

    Pixel_Gamer Well-Known Member

    Feb 6, 2013
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    Used to be a hardcore game. I wouldn't recommend buying a laptop just for games. I bought a gaming laptop about a year or two ago which cost roughly $1000, it was an Aspire 5755G. I had a pretty bad experience playing games on the laptop, it overheats way too easily, it requires anual maintenance in cleaning the insides of the laptop to free it from dust. It will easily go up to 95c whenever you play any sort of games, it wares out the hardware fairly fast. In two years of having the laptop, I've replaced the heat sink twice, and replaced the motherboard once due to overheating.

    After purchasing an iPod touch, I seldom use the laptop to game anymore. Now I just use it for university work and indie gaming which does not take up lots of hardware resource.
     
  6. JBRUU

    JBRUU Well-Known Member

    May 9, 2012
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    First of all, if you want the best games go PC or console. Absolutely a no brainer there.

    Second, if you go with PC, skip the laptop. Equivalent hardware to a desktop is roughly double, and like a previous poster mentioned, it overheats fast. It's simply not a cost effective solution to your problem; a very capable desktop gaming rig could be build for a mere $800.

    Finally, sad to see you go. I'll remember that counter-strike thread for a long while yet :p
     
  7. Greyskull

    Greyskull Well-Known Member

    Dec 13, 2009
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    And a 600 desktop,properly sourced, will run anything for a long time. Moore's law is dead. At least on standard-voltage computing devices.
     
  8. JBRUU

    JBRUU Well-Known Member

    May 9, 2012
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    Well, not if you're going to be playing current and next gen games - an $800 rig is cutting it close for the next gen titles.
     
  9. Oceraux

    Oceraux Well-Known Member

    Apr 16, 2013
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    Cool! We're in the same position, but it was years ago. I still have my iPhone 3GS here, just using it to play music outside or call somebody, and yeah, coincidentally, I've got a very weak PC, all the good games are very laggy, you couldn't really get any fun out of it. That was back in the day, but luckily I forgot it was payday, bought a new graphics card and somehow 'new' processor, which is just a bit different. And yeah, bought a new iPad 2. I'm telling you, don't buy a laptop, don't buy a new PC, just buy these: NVIDIA GeForce GT 430 - what I'm using now, its pretty good, but you can't max out the graphics of games like Battlefield 3, but you can get decent graphics (I recommend a 2gb one), and a new quad core CPU, just to match your card. Their both good for your 1k dollars, and go on, buy that iPhone 5 you're wishing too, we just don't want you to leave.
     
  10. Primoz

    Primoz Well-Known Member

    Aug 14, 2012
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    #10 Primoz, Aug 4, 2013
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2013
    Haha... It's a little more complicated than that. I know stationary PCs are way better for the price, but if I'd be buying a new PC I had to buy a laptop, because I'm going to college next year and I'll need one anyway.

    Besides, that about over-heating isn't such a big problem. My brother has some cheap Asus laptop, on which I played Skyrim (as I mentioned; 24/7) and it didn't overheat at all. I just had to have a fanboard under it. The laptop is 3 years old and the only thing my brother had to replace was the battery...

    You guys are missing my point though. I wanted to buy a new iPhone, but after realizing that we will "never" get quality games for it I simply wondered what's the point of buying it? Perhaps I'll buy a new phone in three years from now and I won't miss anything. I will be able to catch on what I missed in a month or two...

    I also have no games to look forward to, so this just boosted my decision...
     
  11. Zevious Zoquis

    Zevious Zoquis Well-Known Member

    Sep 20, 2010
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    #11 Zevious Zoquis, Aug 4, 2013
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2013
    When I'm at home, I'm never a mobile gamer. The only time I'm a mobile game is when I'm, you know...mobile. And when I am mobile, I never have a PC/laptop/console for my gaming. It's the iPhone or, occasionally the iPad. I'm not sure why anyone would ever expect a device like an iPhone to compete with a good laptop or a console in terms of gaming. The sorts of games I expect to play on my phone are games that work in a mobile sense - games that offer a "bite-size" experience. I would never play something like Skyrim on my phone.

    My phone will never be a good laptop or console. Otoh, my laptop and PS3 will never be good for mobile gaming. They are different things.

    As far as the IOS devices never having quality games, I just have to completely disagree. Some of the funnest, most original games I've played in years are iOS games...
     
  12. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
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    Yeah i didnt agree with that bit at all. Some people might think mobile games are just crappy throwaway snake or Angry Bird clones. How times have changed.

    iOS games can be very complex, hours of gameplay or quick short levels, just so much variety.

    Yes its 'mobile' gaming but i tell you when you have a family, or a full time job with overtime etc, fitting in a bit of gaming here and there whether its a few levels on one game, or 30 minutes on a huge RPG which you save and come back to later, iOS gaming is incredible.

    In a perfect world i wish i could tell my wife to stop watching tv so i could hook up a console and play games all night. Or tell my 3 year old she cant watch her programs so i can play on a console. Lifes not like that though !

    With little time and having lost the TV to childrens channels forever after (!) iOS gaming is perfect.

    I also work away a fair bit, long train journeys or flights. Again iOS gaming is superb as lugging my console/a tv on the train/plane 'might' be tricky.

    And call me old fashioned, as much as i love TA what happened to people getting drunk and just watching tv ? When i'm drunk the last thing i want to do is log onto a forum !
     
  13. Exact-Psience

    Exact-Psience Well-Known Member

    Jan 12, 2012
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    The Work-At-Home Guy
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    Speaking of which, I was gonna buy a wiiU earlier at the mall today, but i thought about saving the money for when the baby comes out. Family > WiiU :D
     
  14. Appletini

    Appletini Well-Known Member

    Jan 8, 2011
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    #14 Appletini, Aug 4, 2013
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2013
    Largely because they eventually will, as phones/tablets become even more powerful and the gap in technology between platforms slowly grows ever smaller. There was a time not too long ago when this was considered the epitome of "mobile gaming":

    Snake
    [​IMG]

    And now we're here:

    Deus Ex: The Fall
    [​IMG]

    XCOM: Enemy Unknown
    [​IMG]

    Arguing that mobile games are never going to get any better/deeper/more complex than the ones we have at the moment would be just as foolish now as arguing years ago that games were never going to get any better/deeper/more complex than Snake would have been back then.
     
  15. psj3809

    psj3809 Moderator

    Jan 13, 2011
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    Hear, here ! Great post ! Totally agree
     
  16. Exact-Psience

    Exact-Psience Well-Known Member

    Jan 12, 2012
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    ^+1! d(",d)
     
  17. Alister

    Alister Well-Known Member

    Jul 1, 2012
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    OMG!!You dare spite people who like unconventional games yet you championed the LIKES OF ALPACA EVOLUTION!!!What a hypocrite...Look in the mirror man,you might see a mobile hipster there..With all this name calling,your worst than some who got banned here..Yet you get sympathy and a free pass?That's all beyond me..:rolleyes:


    Your an adult,you can choose what ever you like...Doing all of this for a cry of attention seems juvenile..
     
  18. JBRUU

    JBRUU Well-Known Member

    May 9, 2012
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    Ah, but there's a problem: nearly all of the great iOS games are ports or spinoffs of major console franchises; almost nothing original is truly any good. It's all clones and garbage cookie-cutter games that we've seen a thousand times before.

    And then there's pricing. AAA iOS native games are simply not sustainable in the AppStore market, even huge games like MC4 or Deus Ex. Almost all the multimillion dollar AAA games are what...? F2P. And that's not a pricing scheme you want to embrace as a gamer, at least at this point.

    The future of iOS gaming? It's not AAA console ports and native titles. It's F2P, plain and simple. Mobile will become the test market of sorts while publishers and developers figure out how to implement it in as fair a profitable way as possible, before it snakes its way even more into the PC/console market.
     
  19. Zevious Zoquis

    Zevious Zoquis Well-Known Member

    Sep 20, 2010
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    Did I argue that mobile games were never going to get deeper than they are now? I don't believe so. Of course they will. But there are some things my phone will never do. It will never have a 46" screen for instance. It also will never likely be as powerful as state of the art console or PC gear at any given time. But yes, there already are lots of games that offer a pretty decent amount of console-like "depth" - certainly as deep as consoles from the last gen at least.

    Games have to be designed with the limitations of their destination hardware in mind. The premise of this thread is that iPhone games aren't as deep as PC games and therefore the op is a "mobile gamer no more" to which I would respond "OK, good luck with that laptop on the bus..."
     
  20. Zevious Zoquis

    Zevious Zoquis Well-Known Member

    Sep 20, 2010
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    #20 Zevious Zoquis, Aug 4, 2013
    Last edited: Aug 4, 2013
    Got news for you - nearly all console franchises are boring retreads of some other game or franchise. Almost nothing is truly original on the consoles either.

    There's lots of great, original games on iOS, but they aren't "console style" RPGs and shooters. They are great mobile games, which is the ideal thing for a phone.

    I also disagree that F2P is the future. I suspect the F2P model is going to die off before too long as people tire of paying for consumables and stop doing so...
     

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