Making Mobile Games More Suited for "Hardcore Gamers"

Posted by movieman52 on August 20, 2012 08:02 pm 34

A huge stigma with iOS and other mobile games is that the "hardcore gamers" won't touch them or rarely stick with them.

Side note: I do not wish to define "hardcore gamer" or intend to start a fanboy war pitting Angry Bird lovers and someone with +30k gamerscore, I would much rather discuss how mobile games can leap to a new level.

Don't make the home button close the game. That simple.

Whenever I am playing a game on my phone and I get stuck, annoyed, and/or confused I immediately hit the home button and am taken back to my home screen. From there, I check something else and move on completely from the game. For all intensive purposes the game is gone from view and it is almost like it never existed.

On a console there is no instant back to home screen button. Even on a PC you have to consciously press Alt Tab to "instantly" leave but at that point at least I can see it is running. In order to truly quit a game, you have to go through multiple steps - and often times those steps will give me the breath I need to calm down and try again. Also, from being conditioned from an early age on consoles, I rarely get to the instant quit mode with console/PC games because I know the steps involved with leaving the game (and in some cases starting the game back up). Whereas, in a mobile game I am conditioned to hit the home button so frequently that a game barely stays on screen.

This is something that Apple would not allow in their devices because it would fundamentally change the user experience, but it would allow for games to last longer in a mobile experience. Even an "Are you sure you want to leave" dialogue box might give me the split second longer to say, "Fine, one more try." Often, I don't give some mobile games a fair shake because of how easy I can leave them, and if I have one bad experience I know I am one button away from something much more familiar.

This solution would take the urge to quit the game and put a stopper on it. The games at that point would become much more similar to their console counter parts and finally I won't quit the next big mobile game in order to tweet.