Once upon a time, our cell phones could make calls and play Snake, and that’s about it. Those times were easier. Back then, I didn’t have every social media platform in existence constantly begging me to download a mobile game that plays nothing like it looks. It’s a lesson we all had to learn. Except me. I chose to never learn that lesson and continue to download and play them all.
I’m not a boomer figuring out my cell phone or someone that exclusively plays mobile games. Truth be told, I play video games across too many different platforms and don’t actually need to spend time on mobile games. And yet, even as I sit here writing this, I’m thinking about the free spins I have waiting for me in Carnival Tycoon, a game that started out as an idle management simulator that has since become, basically, a slot machine.
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Usually, I feel a bit ashamed of that sort of thing. Nobody needs that many iterations of Candy Crush, along with a collection of other connect-three games. At some point, though, I became that person. And that’s before Instagram and the rest of the world’s social media platforms started showing us trailers for mobile games that lie.
Currently, there are five different versions of Candy Crush. I’ve played them all and have four of them on my phone as we speak.
It’s a meme at this point that the games social media ads are advertising don’t actually resemble the gameplay used to promote them. It’s so commonplace that it’s made way for ads that point out other ads are lying to you about their games. This game, though? This is real.
It’s not.
And yet, like a fool, I go down the rabbit hole every time. At this point, I’m not even sure why I do it. Why am I spending over an hour a day playing Royal Kingdom – the sequel to Royal Match – when I could be doing anything else? I’m not convinced that any mobile game advert will properly portray the playing experience. And what’s more, they’re often riddled with their own ads and potential malware.
Royal Kingdom is not one of those games. It has no ads, just items to sell me.
So why keep going down path over and over?
Why The Obsession With Mobile Gaming
My reliance on mobile games is due, at least in part, to a need to be constantly engaged. And it’s something I’ve always felt, a necessity to tune in and partake in something new. And while I was a fan of games on my phone, the combination of factually incorrect social media ads and a pandemic that left me inside for over a year grasping at any form of connection is what has created the person I am now.
When I wasn’t gaming on my desktop, I would be glued to my phone, attempting to reach new levels of Candy Crush Soda Saga or the two WWE games I played at the time – SuperCard and WWE Champions – just passing time and slowly giving them my money, one or two dollars at a time. It wasn’t perfection, but, in 2020, that was about as good as it got.
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Fast-forward five years, and I’m still losing hours to any number of mobile puzzle titles. The habit is now keeping me from playing actually good games – including good mobile games. I downloaded magical horse girl racing card game Umamusume: Pretty Derby after hearing my colleagues singing its praises, but I only enjoyed it for about half an hour. Since then, I’ve gone back to all of my usuals, as well as a mindless new title called Top Tycoon, which doesn’t even explain what the game is about or why its icon features a pig in a top hat.
Would you believe that, like every other game advertised on Instagram and TikTok, it was nothing like the footage they showed? The only difference is that by now, I never expect them to resemble what’s being advertised. Instead, like I’m Neo in The Matrix Revolutions, I see through their lying code and am able to figure out what the real game is. Then I download it anyway.
I’m Not Alone; The Numbers Say We All Play Them
Candy Crush Friends Saga.
My desire to branch out into bigger and more thoughtful games – in addition to my console and PC gaming – comes up against the ease, availability, and thoroughness of the mobile game marketplace. Even Block Blast, a very basic Tetris variant riddled with ads and microtransactions, is played by over 40 million people every day, and that’s just a single title.
If you were to take a look at your phone right now, chances are you have a folder of games you’ve downloaded out of curiosity. Some you likely still play regularly, while others are sitting there collecting digital dust and have been for ages. That’s the nature of mobile gaming, and it’s one we have all come to accept (except those who make the games, for some reason). Maybe one day they’ll just admit what the games they’re convincing us to download are really like. After all, we are clearly still playing once we find out we’ve been lied to.
