Clash of Angry Birds With Friends

It wasn’t so long ago that mobile gaming meant loading up on AA batteries and taking your Game Boy with you on a road trip. Tetris, Super Mario Land and the now multibillion dollar franchise of Pokémon all saw significant time gracing that tiny, monochrome display. Simpler times no doubt, but how did this grey block meant for gaming on the go shape what we take for granted now in the ability to hop on an app store filled with thousands of free time-sinks? With everything else we can do on a phone, is mobile gaming even still popular?

Our now borderline antique friend the Nintendo Game Boy launched back in 1989 and, while the most popular by a long stretch, it wasn’t the only portable on the block. Atari launched their Lynx handheld in the same year, and Sega followed with the Game Gear two years later. These products were revolutionary as they offered the user the ability to swap out a cartridge and play different titles. Any of their ancestors employed a single, inbuilt game; which once you’d completed rendered the device sort of useless. The Game Boy with its rampant popularity and 14-year run actually saw over a thousand titles released for it. There was, if you looked hard enough, really something which anyone could pick up and enjoy for as long as your batteries would last.

Using our phones to idly pass the time first entered normalcy when Nokia’s handsets started shipping with Snake in 1997. This simple, again monochrome game saw even non-gamers competing for high scores against their friends and paved the way for what would become the plethora of vivid, engaging titles anyone with a smartphone has access to today. It actually took a decade and the launch of Apple’s App Store for their new iPhone 3G for mobile gaming to skyrocket. At the launch of the app store, there was around 500 apps and only some of those intended for fun. Today, there is more than 3.5 million apps available on Apple’s distribution platform alone, with around 1 million of those in the games category.

The drive for this kind of more casual gaming is largely rooted in convenience. One doesn’t always have a games console or computer with them, even though systems like the Nintendo Switch have made that easier. You can relatively unobtrusively whip your phone out and sink some spare minutes into Clash of Clans, no matter where you are. It’s a little break from reality without sitting down to play through an entire level of something. Developers know their market, too. Typically mobile games will be tailored to this kind of “quick fix” gaming. Surprisingly and contrary to conventional gaming, women statistically spend a little more time playing mobile games than men do; which to me is testament to games’ commitment to inclusivity.

What’s unsurprising however, is the steepness of the dollar figures involved. While most, actually around 92 percent of games in the App Store are free to download, they run on a Freemium model, meaning they cost a little to get the most out of. This resulted last year in $93 billion in global spending on mobile games, representing 52 percent of gaming revenue in general. Titles like Candy Crush, Roblox and PUBG Mobile bringing in millions of dollars means there’s continued investment in making these games more enjoyable and easier to pick up. For the average person, I think this is a good thing. The ability to let off some steam over a round or two of Words With Friends between chores is a great way to break up the monotony of adult responsibilities. I for one am excited to see how it evolves.