Analysis of Mobile Gaming: Characteristics and Limitations

Introduction

Mobile gaming is quite popular and it started with the first ever mobile game Tetris, this game was launched on the Hagenuk MT – 2000 phone in 1994. Although this was the first ever game it wasn’t as popular as Snake, this was the second ever game to be produced and was available on Nokia phones. in 2018 games being preloaded onto mobile devices is very rare, in fact it doesn’t happen anymore, most games are playable on smart phones and the only way to play these games is through downloading them from the store. They have also been given a new name as they are no longer called games but apps (applications).

Range – there is a huge selection of games available on play stores and Appstores today, they have all been sorted into genres and there is a game for everybody. The game also comes with a description allowing the user to know what is included in the game and helps them decide whether the game is for them or not.

Portable – mobiles are highly portable and can be taken anywhere. They easily fit into pockets and are always accessible. Due to this they are similar to handheld consoles and can be taken and played anywhere.

Saved data – saving data on your phone is very important, it can save straight into the cloud of your device and this can be helpful. If you wanted to purchase a new device from the same company, you would be able to reload the game and transfer all of your gaming data from one device to another. This saves the user time and effort because if they weren’t to save the data they would have to start all over again.

Touch screen – with newer phones the user has touch screen built in meaning that they do not have to use buttons to navigate around the device and can simply press on what they would like to use. This is very beneficial for gaming use because it allows the user to play so many more games than what they would be able to play if they had a handset with buttons. But this is also beneficial for the creator because they can use this to create more games in different ways e. g. using the pressure plate built into iPhones for added power if the user presses down harder on the screen.

Paid apps – this is a limitation to mobile gaming because not everyone wants to pay for games, even though these may be of a smaller amount it still affects the platform as a whole.

Download size – downloading games on mobiles can result in a lot of space being taken up, most enjoyable games have complex structures which mean that the size of the application is huge, this can take a long time to download as well as taking up a lot of space within the device.

Transfer data – this is a major limitation for mobile gaming, if you were to buy a new phone but play the same game on that phone then you wouldn’t be able to transfer the data across. The only way that this is possible is if the brand of the devices are the same if not then the user needs to start the game from the beginning again.

Touchscreen difficulty – using touchscreen to game can be very difficult to use because the sensitivity may be too high or low, this can lead to the user not having as much control over the game character and lead to frustration.

Overall gameplay on mobile is as the game is, if the game is very simple and has one or a maximum of 2 things that need to be performed together then it will be fine and should be easy to play, however when it comes to games that require more skill or a higher amount of activities that needed to be completed at once it can be much more difficult because all of the controls are not mounted onto a controller and are spread across the screen making it difficult to use all of the controls at once. So overall in my opinion gaming on mobile is easy but only if you are playing simple games.

Conclusion

To conclude, mobile gaming right now is very popular and come companies believe that this will be the future of gaming, the reason for this is that most of the games that are available on PC and Consoles such as PlayStation are all available on mobiles for a fraction of the price. On mobiles you are paying prices under £10 whereas on consoles prices vary. However, the main issue with mobile gaming is the quality, quality lacks on mobiles and if there was another way to control the games (like maybe a controller) then it would boost the mobile gaming section immensely.