History of mobile games
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History of video games |
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The popularisation of
The introduction of the
A major transition in game monetization came with the introduction of
More recent trends have included
.Prior to mobile phones
Early precursors of mobile gaming include
Introducing gaming on smartphones (1997−2006)
In 1997, Nokia introduced its Nokia 6110 mobile phone which included Snake. Snake proved to be one of the phone's popular features, and Nokia continued to include the game, or a variation of it, on nearly every phone it released since, with about 400 million devices shipped with the game installed as of 2016.[3]
In 1999,
Snake showed there was a viable interest in expanding the capabilities of mobile phones for gaming applications. With the introduction of the
Prior to 2007, Japan was the leading developer for games on handsets since most of the primary handset developers were located there and smartphones had a greater proliferation among the population. A wide array of various genres were tried, including virtual pet games which used early camera phone features as part of the gameplay cycle.[7]
Meanwhile, handheld consoles still typically offered superior gaming experiences compared to the limited smartphone games; Nintendo had released its Game Boy Advance in 2001 as a successor to the widely popular Game Boy. To try to merge the two markets, Nokia released the N-Gage in 2003, designed as both a handheld console and a phone. The N-Gage was able to offer similar video games as the Advance, but even with its N-Gage QD redesign in 2004, the unit was a commercial failure.[8]
The iPhone and the App Store (2007−2008)
Developers, including game developers, rushed to take advantage of the App Store. At launch, there were 500 apps,[13] while six months later, there were over 15,000, along with over half a billion app downloads.[14] These figured doubled three months later (circa March 2009), and by November 2009, the App Store had over 100,000 apps with over 2 billion downloads.[12]
Gaming applications were one major area that found success on the App Store.[12] One such early success was Trism, a tile-matching game incorporating the phone's accelerometer released near the App Store launch developed by a single person, Steve Demeter. Demeter had priced the game at US$5, and within two months of launch, had made US$250,000 in profit, and Demeter was highly publicized as a rags to riches story on the lucrative nature of developing for the iPhone.[15] Another early success was Tap Tap Revenge, a rhythm game by Tapulous, which also was released at the App Store's launch and saw over one million downloads in 20 days.[16] Following on similar stories, numerous smaller developers tried to release the next big game, while larger game publishers took to their existing catalogs and released mobile-compatible titles where possible.[17] PopCap Games, which had already had success with a line of computer and browser-based puzzle games such as Bejeweled, was one of the first companies to transition their products to mobile versions in 2009 which helped them to rapidly grow their mobile business,[18] leading to their acquisition by Electronic Arts in 2011 as to allow Electronic Arts to compete in the mobile and casual games area.[19]
Beyond games, the iPhone and App Store caused most other smartphone manufacturers to abandon their own attempts to build out a more sophisticated smartphone environment, such as BlackBerry and Symbian. BlackBerry had attempted to release its own app store but failed to gain the success as Apple's.[12] Only two major competitors remained after the iPhone's introduction, the Android-based devices (based on the Java language), using the operating system that had been developed by Google, and Windows Phone by Microsoft which has close interoperability with its Microsoft Windows operating system. Both took up the same approach as Apple, introducing app stores in Google Play and Windows Phone Store, respectively, with similar developer policies.[6] Ultimately, Microsoft ceased active development of Windows Phone, leaving iOS and Android as the principle players in the mobile operating system and app store market.
At launch, the iOS App Store only allowed single-time purchases of apps akin to how one purchased music from iTunes, so most games were purchased on the traditional "premium" model, buying the game upfront. In October 2009, the store introduced "in-app purchases" (IAP), microtransactions that an app could offer with the transaction made through the App Store's storefront. Some existing app devs were savvy to jump on this; Tapulous released Tap Tap Revenge 3 shortly after this change that included IAP to obtain new songs.[20] Similar IAPs were added to the Google Play store on Android as well.
In December 2009,
Mobile game development was also not limited to the English-speaking world, as Japan and many Asian countries had an active mobile development scene. As the app stores on iOS and Android had regional distinctions, apps developed in different regions typically would not be available in others unless translated or localized. An important region during this period is China. Separate from most other markets, the
Apple further introduced the iPad in 2010, its tablet computer based on similar design principles as the iPhone. While tablets had existed before as descendants of PDAs, the iPad was the first tablet to achieve mass-market success. Part of the iPad's success was using iOS for its operating system, assuring that all apps and games on the App Store worked for the iPad as they did for the iPhone.[27] Android-based phone manufacturers followed suit with their own suite of Android-based tablet in the years that followed to create a similar dichotomy. Mobile game developers had a whole new audience available to them without any extra work, while others saw potential in tablet-based games due to the larger screen space that they offered. These could be geared towards children for educational purposes or elderly where hand dexterity is not as agile to use a smaller screen. Amazon developed its own Amazon Fire tablet first released in 2011 with Quanta Computer with its own customized version of Android as a means to offer digital products from its storefront to users which included apps and games.
Candy Crush Saga and Puzzle & Dragons: Establishing the freemium model (2012–2014)
While casual games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope were gaining success on mobile devices, the development of new
Zygna's success with Farmville drew gamers away from non-social browser games on portal sites. King, who ran one such portal site, was impacted by this and decided to change their own model to incorporate Facebook games that worked alongside their portal games.[33][34] One of the first games King offered on this approach was Bubble Witch Saga, released in October 2011. Bubble Witch Saga used mechanics similar to the older game Puzzle Bobble, where players shot colored orbs to clear away matching orbs. However, as to avoid the drawn-out gameplay that FarmVille was noted for, King introduced the "saga" model; the game was divided into a number of levels which each was effectively a puzzle. The player had a number of turns (shots) to clear the board or meet other conditions. If they did this, they were able to continue, but otherwise they lose one "life", though these lives would regenerated in real-time, or players could ask friends on Facebook for free lives. The game thus only required the player to commit a few minutes each day. By January 2012, Bubble Witch Saga had over 10 million players and was the fastest-growing game on Facebook.[35] King followed this with Candy Crush Saga on its portal and Facebook by April 2012, a more direct tile-matching game but using the same "saga" approach, which also enjoyed similar success.[36]
Buoyed by the success of these games, King opted to enter the mobile game market with these titles, developing ad-supported versions for iOS that synchronized with the portal and Facebook versions; Bubble Witch Saga for mobile was released in July 2012, and Candy Crush Saga in October 2012. Both games still integrated with Facebook to ask their friends for lives, but also included an in-app purchase to fully restore one's lives or on special powerup, however, the game was still designed to be playable without having to purchase these, and 70% of the players had been able to make it to the final level of the game (as of September 2013) without spending any money.[37] Candy Crush Saga proved to be the more popular game, and by the end of 2013, King had seen over 400 million new players of the game and their revenues had jumped from US$62 million in 2011 to US$1.88 billion from advertising revenue and in-app purchases.[38] In June 2013, King opted to eliminate advertising in-game and simply let the mobile version of its games earn revenue from in-app purchases as they continued to release additional games.[39] The strategy proved effective as by the final quarter of 2014, King had seen 356 million monthly unique players, with only 8.3 million spending money on their games (2.3%), but had brought in over US$23.42 per player per month, as to make over US$580 million across its game portfolio that quarter.[40] King's success with Candy Crush Saga created the freemium model that numerous mobile games that followed used.[41]
Separately, in Japan, developer GungHo Online Entertainment had released Puzzle & Dragons in February 2012 first in Japan, a tile-matching game with some role-playing elements that including improving one's team of "monsters". At the time of its release, one of the more popular mobile apps in Japan were card battle games, but GungHo believed they could improve on the formula. Like Candy Crush Saga, the game used regenerable "stamina" to limit how many times the player could play in a row, but could use in-app purchases to immediately restore their stamina, or obtain other forms of in-game currency.[42] By October 2013 the game has been downloaded 20 million times in Japan (about 1/6th of the nation's population) and over a million times in North America,[43] and was earning an estimated US$3.75 million a day. News of these numbers caused GungHo's stock market capitalization to rise sharply in October as to surpass that of Nintendo at around US$15.1 billion, and further establishing the success of the freemium model for mobile games.[44]
In 2013, Apple was able to secure deals to distribute the iPhone cheaply in China. Because of the feature set and its relatively low cost compared to a computer, the iPhone became nearly ubiquitous for many Chinese residents.
Clash of Clans and the massively-multiplayer role-playing experience (2012−2015)
During this same period, Supercell released Clash of Clans in 2012. Clash of Clans is a strategy game that at its core has elements of city management and tower defense as the player oversees a fighting clan's home base. To obtain resources to maintain and upgrade the base, the player can send their forces to attack another player's base, which is handled asynchronously with the opposing player's forces managed by the computer. Should the attacking player win, they steal some resources from the losing player, while the losing player, when they next access the game, will learn of these loses. To encourage cooperation, players can join into "clans" which help to attack or defend automatically. Clash of Clan retains similar in-app purchases as with Candy Crush Saga and Puzzle & Dragons that can be used to rush certain building objectives, but also weigh heavily on social engagement similar to MMOs. By September 2014, the app was earning US$5.15 million per day, and many users had reported playing the game for thousands of hours since its launch.[48] Supercell considered part of its success to be able to draw in both casual and hardcore games with the Clash of Clans gameplay.[49]
Clash of Clans inspired numerous other games that gave a simulated multiplayer experience, including Game of War: Fire Age and Empires & Allies that typically required more of a time commitment and a deeper understanding of the game rules to be successful but still could be played in a casual manner.[50]
In China, Tencent released
Crossy Road and the growth of the hyper-casual game (2014–2015)
Around early 2015, a new type of gaming app emerged on the app stores, called
Other companies soon followed to build on the hyper-casual games market, with Voodoo and Ketchapp among those releasing a new wave of hyper-casual games with similar monetization schemes as Crossy Road. Often these games were reductions of other gameplay concepts or simple expansions of more trivial games: Voodoo's Paper.io was effectively a remake of Snake and its later Hole.io a simpler version of Donut County.[55] Hyper-casual games have continued to gain popularity, both as easier games for players to get into compared to titles like Clash of Clans, and typically are much easier and cheaper to develop, and are said to have disrupted the mobile gaming market as much as Candy Crush Saga had done when it was introduced.[57] For established studios, the rapid development time allowed them to publish more experimental titles which they could monitor to see if players took to enjoy them, and if any title became popular, they could commit more resources and advertising to it.[57]
Pokémon Go and location-based gaming (2016−2017)
Under license from
While Pokémon Go was not the first location-based game released for mobile devices, it established a fundamental monetization model to make such a game work and that would engage the user in physical activity in moving to nearby local areas. It also was seen as a positive impact on social interactions since players would often interact face-to-face at the gyms.[63] Other location-based games based on popular properties have since been released with similar gameplay and monetization models, including Harry Potter: Wizards Unite and Minecraft Earth.
Video game analysts had been watching the mobile market for several years, in part due to the growth of mobile gaming from China. Market analysis firms identified that mobile gaming global gross revenues exceeded that of either personal computer or console games for the first time in 2016, earning around US$38 billion, and remained one of the fastest growing sectors of the video game market.[64]
Fortnite and cross-platform play (2018–present)
In mid-2017,
Notably, Epic Games challenged the requirement from both Apple and Google that in-game purchases had to be made through the specific storefront. In August 2020, Epic purposely released a version of Fortnite on mobile that allowed players to purchase directly from Epic. The game was pulled from both the App Store and Play Store, leading Epic to file a pair of lawsuits against Apple and Google citing that this practice was an anti-trust violation. While the lawsuit was largely decided in Apple's favor in 2021, the judge did affirm that Apple's anti-steering policy which prevented apps from informing users of alternate pay schemes violated various laws and required the company to allow apps to notify users of such systems.[71]
Game subscription services, cloud gaming, and popular players
Apple introduced the Apple Arcade in September 2019 which worked with its iOS, macOS, and Apple TV. Comparable to Xbox Game Pass, users pay a flat monthly fee to gain access to a number of curated games, with new games added to the service periodic while other games are removed over time. Games on the service lack in-game purchase options or advertisements, but allow the user to purchase the game to keep to own, as well as store progress through their iCloud account if they purchase the game at a later time. Thus, games on the Apple Arcade tended to be those that resembled more traditional premium-priced games that were not built on microtransactions.[72] Google followed suit with its own Google Play Pass, launched in the same month, but which also extended to general apps as well as games.[73]
Separately, both Microsoft and Google have been developing
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 and 2020 caused many people around the globe to be quarantined or forced to stay at home to prevent transmission of the virus, and video games became a popular pastime. Mobile game saw a significant boost in revenues as a result of the pandemic, with a 40% increase year-to-year in the second quarter of 2020 according to Sensor Tower.[74] Mobile-friendly games such as Among Us and Genshin Impact, alongside Fortnite and other mobile titles, saw large player counts during the pandemic period.
Through most of mobile gaming's history, mobile game publishers have come from new publishers created in that space, such as
See also
- History of arcade games
- History of online games
- History of video games
- List of most-played mobile games by player count
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