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[Opinions Wanted] Why are joystick controls so terrible on mobile?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by theANMATOR2b, Sep 16, 2016.

  1. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

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    Hey All. I'm currently performing some research on mobile joystick and action button controls (jump A, fire B).
    Im really interested in coming up with some actionable ideas that could improve this frowned upon control scheme for mobile devices, for all of us in the future.

    Until recently I have only played a couple games that use a virtual joystick (dpad) on screen, and as of this writing I have not developed anything that uses joystick control.

    My impressions from playing are the controls usually work OK however there is no touch feedback that allows the player to feel he is pushing the correct direction or button.
    The only touch feedback usually available to a player is the sides/corners of the mobile device screen which isnt a great reference point for your thumbs because logically, usually the buttons arent set directly into the corners of the screen.

    I've read several posts about how the joystick kinda sucks bad for mobile control, but that opinion really hasnt been explained in detail very often.

    Id like to get as many opinions regarding joystick and action buttons as possible.

    I know some have a very strong point of view about using the common/natural swipe, tap and touch controls for mobile because they are basically the natural controls for those devices - and designing for a joystick and action buttons is an unnatural fit for mobile.
    This is a respectable and understandable opinion but like I said, Im curious if there are other reasons why joystick controls are disliked? Im interested in improving this control scheme to make it more acceptable and less avoided.

    Have you experienced similar lack of tactile/haptic feedback when playing a game with joystick and action button controls?

    Are there other reasons Im not yet aware of as to why joystick controls on mobile is disliked so much?

    Disclaimer: I dont know the acceptable defined term for joystick and two button layout (like the NES controller) so I termed it joystick and action buttons.
     
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  2. N1warhead

    N1warhead

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    I highly dislike mobile virtual joysticks... That's partly why I never really got too much into mobile development.
    Virtual Joysticks just don't feel right. At least on a phone. A tablet they are okay. But on a phone, they cover too much of the screen in my opinion. So your thumbs are in the way, etc.

    They should make a phone with a built in joystick and controller that slides out.. Like the only phones where you would slide out the keyboard.. Instead give it 1 or two joysticks and like 4 buttons for actions and a start and select or something. (Similar to the snes controller). only a joystick instead of a D pad.
     
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  3. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Well...

    First, lack of tactile response as you already mentioned, though there's more to it than you mention. On a physical button there's a difference between your finger sitting on the button and your finger actually depressing/actuating the button. On a touch screen there isn't. In a tense moment I can rest my finger on the appropriate physical button in advance without looking, with a touch screen I have to either avert my eyes from whatever is going on and/or just trust that I'm hovering my finger over the appropriate area.

    Also, with joysticks there's both contour and self-centering pressure on a physical stick which help you to know what you're doing with it. These are absent on a touch stick, meaning that players have to rely more on visual cues to get feedback on their input. Which brings us to...

    Latency. A physical button works by being physically moved, which is a first piece of feedback that has no latency. That input is then read in the game's next update loop and applied, for which there is going to be a small, hopefully transparent amount of latency. With touch controls that amount of latency is the minimum for your first round of feedback, that otherwise would have come from your controller's physical nature. Worse, when it's carelessly implemented, the input given to that control might not make its way to the rest of the game until the next update.

    Between the things mentioned so far it's easy to end up with controls that feel loose, sloppy, or imprecise.

    Next, there's the fact that you're taking up screen real estate on a device where that's already at a premium. It also has a flow-on effect on your UI design because to touch the buttons your fingers/thumbs have to cover a part of the screen, which practically limits what you can do with your layouts.
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2016
  4. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    It may help to look at this backwards. What advantages does a joystick give on other platforms?

    On a PC a joystick gave high precision movement with easy access to key buttons. On a console controller a duel joystick set up does the same thing.

    On a mobile you don't get any of the advantages that a joystick provides on PC or console. Precision is lower then other input methods. Access to key buttons is impaired.

    So I'll put it back on you, what do you hope to bring to mobile with a joystick?
     
  5. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

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    I just had a random thought while reading a couple Made With Unity writeups.
    I thought - what if there was some type of tactile feedback joystick overlay that had raised nubs to represent center left/right & up/down.
    That could provide a little bit more feedback to the players to feel the directional buttons better.

    Precision is lower than other methods BUT feels better when controlling a 1st or 3rd person game.
    What kind of touch/swipe control is better than a joystick for these types of games on mobile?
    Off the top of my head - I say none.
     
  6. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    Touch to move works pretty well.

    You can do better then that. Feeling is for players, not game designers. Why does it feel better?
     
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  7. bart_the_13th

    bart_the_13th

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    Floating joystick? The difference is that floating joystick doesn't have a fixed position like virtual joystick, so you don't have to remember/look where is the joystick position. The position of the beginning of the touch will be the zero position for the joystick.
    The advantage is that you can touch anywhere in the touch area, and since it will be the zero position, as long as you dont drag anywhere your player wont do any movement too. Now in the virtual joystick, you have to position your finger exactly at the center of the joystick to do that, or else, the character will start to move in unexpected direction, or worse, you can just miss the joystick entirely.
    Plus, floating joystick usually wont appear when no touch detected, so it wont cover/block your gameplay area..
     
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  8. Billy4184

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    I think it would be interesting to explore an interface that used some sort of electrostatic response or something to simulate a physical button or even a sort of 'flat' joystick. The idea being that this response field can be felt and dragged by your finger and moved around, and perhaps even incorporates a springy 'return to center' resistance.

    I think that joysticks would be useful particularly for those sorts of games where the action being simulated is physically heavy and response-laden, such as driving vehicles (cars, planes etc). It wouldn't feel very nice to steer a 747 in some game with touch, there's too much of a disconnect between what you feel as you interact with the screen, and what is going on on the screen (hundreds of tons of stuff shifting around). You would be totally removed from the visceral enjoyment of it. Whereas with a joystick you have all sorts of feedback possibilities.

    ps I agree that for fps games, joysticks are still the best so far - you want to feel like your character has weight and momentum and being able to flick them around with a swipe isn't very gratifying.

    Sure, I know someone's going to say that these sorts of games are not a good fit for mobile, and to some extent that's true. Still, there are a lot of mobile games out there of this kind that get played for one reason or another.
     
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  9. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Don't forget about jamming/ghosting issues pc keyboards. Some people do not have n-key-rollover keyboards.
     
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  10. zoran404

    zoran404

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    Virtual joysticks: what console game dev wannabes use for their mobile games
     
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  11. Martin_H

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    Thanks, good point. I wasn't fully aware of the issue and had to google what that even means. Do you know what a reasonable assumption on minimum NKRO values for keyboards are? If it's support for pressing 6 keys at once I should be fine. 3 would potentially be an issue.
     
  12. tedthebug

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    There was the Xperia that had a slide out gamepad but I don't know how well it did.

    I agree about the phones being effectively covered by thumbs when using them. On my iPad I used to play a lot of world of tanks & it uses 2 thumbsticks. The controls were pretty good but my thumbs gradually slid over the screen until they were often not on the thumbsticks. Tablets are heavier than gamepads, & not shaped to be comfortably held for periods of time so the hands shift position to try & find new comfortable positions.

    I also have a weird issue where for some reason touch screens aren't as responsive for my fingers as they are for other people. This problem seems to combine with the different joysticks designed in games so that I get erratic performance, some games the joysticks are responsive & others just don't seem to register that I'm touching the screen.
     
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  13. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    On PC you're safe simultaneously pressing 2...3 keys at once max. That does not include Ctrl/Alt/Shift, because they apparently get special treatment. Anything above that and a cheap keyboard may "jam" and start beeping via system speaker.

    If keys are in the same row, higher chance of lockup. That makes PC poorly suitable for fighting games, and poorly suitable for using keyboard as a midi keyboard replacement.

    IIRC jam will occur if you use 3 cursor keys out of four, in combinations like ASDR (pressed at once) and the like.

    My current keyboard has 12 key rollover, honestly I was very annoyed that it isn't FULL-N-rollower, but since I couldn't find any other keyboard I liked in the whole town, I just sorta gave up on it.
     
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  14. passerbycmc

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    its just S***ty trying to bring a concept from a other system to mobile. Mobiles have touch which depending on the type of game can be one of the best input methods. Just like the duel sticks of console is very good for action or racing games and how the fast and accurate input of the mouse gives PC a edge when it comes to Strategy and Shooters. You dont see many rts games on console for a reason, and you see many pc gamers with gamepads to play certain games for a reason too.

    You should build to the the strengths of your targets input system, or even choose platform based on what input system best suits your game style.
     
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  15. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

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    Darn it! I think because it is common in relation to those types of games on other systems.

    Just knowing that mobile gaming is the future I think it very important to concept improvements for the input feedback for all types of games for that platform.
    Dont want to settle an definitely dont want to ignore a large gamer segment that really would like to have as close to a similar experience as they do on other systems.
    And even though people frown at joystick controls on mobile - there are a LOT of popular games that use that control scheme, so its apparant even though it sucks - players are willing to overlook the negatives to play good games with joystick controls.
     
  16. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Why? Because there is no joystick or joypad. It is just an image and a screen. The game is on the screen. The control pad is on the screen. It is just not good for any kind of action game IMO.
     
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  17. RockoDyne

    RockoDyne

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    No. Mobile will never escape from being for casual games. It's going to be a bitter pill, but core games do not work on mobile. It is not the apex platform of gaming. It exists in its own separate world from what came before it, and the two worlds are not compatible with one another.
     
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  18. Martin_H

    Martin_H

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    And I thought I was a cynical pessimist...
    I don't want to live in that dark future you speak of!
     
  19. imaginaryhuman

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    I didn't mind 'relative movement' too much where it didn't matter where you initially touch but if you essentially drag to the left then the player heads to the left more or move the finder further down from there the player moves down, but you have to scale the input somewhat otherwise your finger is going to go all over the screen, and not so useful for multi-screen games cus you'd have to pick your finger up a lot.

    Lack of physical buttons is a problem cus your fingers keep moving outside the button zone. Also you can't tell if you're in the button zone, so you're constantly having to stop and look at where your fingers are in case you slipped, cus you can't trust it. And then sometimes your fingers do slip outside the zone in the middle of some movement and it sort of makes it seem like the input is ignoring you, which is annoying.

    I don't think there is really any valid way to 'replace' joystick-like button controls on a touch screen. It's a touch screen, accept it, live with it. But you can explore alternative control schemes that are more intuitive or less dependent on where the finger is. Trying to basically 'do a joystick' when there is no physical input is I think just an insane idea that will never work. Hitting a square peg into a round hole.
     
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  20. MV10

    MV10

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    Back when touch-screen smart-phones were new I wondered if it might be possible to design a transparent surface coating that could provide tactile feedback -- at the time I was only thinking about creating raised on-screen keyboard buttons. About a year later Sony patented the idea. To my knowledge they never actually built anything, though.

    There are lots of different add-on physical joysticks for smart-phones. Here's one I just found at random, others attach in different ways but the basic idea is the same:

    https://tenonedesign.com/flingmini.php
     
  21. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Saying mobile gaming is the future is a lot like when people in the early 2000s were talking about how 3D actors were going to replace human actors in movies and we'd only have to pay for voice talent. Of course, that never happened, and all that 3D really replaced was hand drawn animation. Just like with that, the only thing mobile gaming has replaced is the casual gaming market that facebook used to dominate.
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2016
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  22. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    As far as I know, it actually partially happened.

    I remember reading an article where they discussed fx being used by studios. IIRC the idea was to scan the actor in their top shape, and then use that "top shape" in actual movie. Because actors, you know, age. Not sure how much of that was true.

    CG also tend to be used for backgrounds. A lot. And nobody notices it.
    movies-before-after-visual-effects-3.jpg movies-before-after-visual-effects-6.jpg

    Also, there's this:
    552246_v1.gif
    The source says this guy is playing Smaug.
     
  23. Billy4184

    Billy4184

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    It happens a lot with new technology such as AI, that people don't realise difficulties they'll face in implementing it. I hear a lot on these forums (and elsewhere) comments to the effect that a technology's 'time' came and passed and it failed to deliver - it's like, well, that was the end of that. Rarely is that the case, you simply have to wait longer, ten or twenty years longer sometimes. For industries to change, infrastructure to change, and the technology to be adapted around new problems.

    Also what about Avatar?

    But about mobile gaming, I agree that mobile gaming, such as it is, is not really suited to much beyond casual gaming. As I've said previously I think the key to unlocking 'high end' mobile gaming is not in the game itself but in shutting out the rest of the environment (in the bus, train, whatever) in a way that is safe for the user. It's just not worth bringing high end, immersive graphics or sophisticated gameplay to a tiny touch screen in the middle of babbling and jostling on the way to work.

    Ultimately I think VR is the (only) way to go, but this presents another problem, how to immobilise the player while still having them interact with the game. You don't want to go thrashing around on the bus.

    And immobilising them presents another problem. If a player is interacting with something in a way that feels like they're doing a lot of stuff when they're actually not moving, how does this affect their ability to respond quickly to external stuff going on such as a situation developing around them that they don't want to be part of?

    Like a lot of technologies, I'm not sure that the infrastructure (the environment in which mobile gaming usually takes place) is conducive to it at all and would need to change before it became viable. It might mean that VR gaming comes in on the tail end of less 'niche' uses of VR or AR such as checking your email or conducting conference calls, and only when these other uses open up enough of a gap and establish enough social integration of the technology, would gaming in this medium become mainstream.
     
  24. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

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    I definitely mistyped saying mobile is the future, more succinctly mobile has expanded the playing field. There are more gamers - (kids) and casual players - that play games on there mobile devices, than there used to be.

    AND I'm not trying to advocate for joystick controls on mobile, just wondering when/who is going to create that killer app that uses a different scheme for joystick controls on a mobile device, an innovation. It will happen one day - it will. And it might not be a high end game - but it will be something that makes joystick controls on mobile feasible and give better feedback to the players.

    This was something that had crossed my mind. But instead of keyboard, a circular application to place over the joystick and maybe even buttons - with subtle raised surfaces to give feedback to the players they are pushing the left part of the joystick.
     
  25. Jingle-Fett

    Jingle-Fett

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    Actually a lot of what you say is true, it's just that for many years the tech wasn't developed enough so it wasn't used very often. But the tech is catching up so it's going to be a lot more prominent in the coming years. Personally I don't think it will replace traditional actors entirely, similar to how consoles and tablets haven't made desktops obsolete--but it's definitely going to become more common.

    Recent examples that come to mind: Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen. Audrey Hepburn in the Galaxy chocolate ad. Young Arnold in Terminator Genisys. Rumor has it Disney will be bringing back Grand Moff Tarkin in a similar manner too.




    Part of it too is the newer techniques, they've realized you don't need a full body scan because humans have similar bodies and you can get away with instead inserting a CG face onto an existing actor + facial motion capture.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2016
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  26. MV10

    MV10

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    ^^This...and a younger generation to use them.

    A friend of ours worked in a studio that did a lot of the 3D and post FX work for the Battlestar Galactica series. When we visited the studio (season 1) I noticed the 3D team was probably the youngest group in the building, overall. Of course, that was also probably partly a function of their crappy payscale, but I feel sure it probably contributes to large-scale adoption of radically new techniques.
     
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  27. dogzerx2

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    One problem I see with touchscreen joysticks is they have small unforgiving touch areas, so if you slightly miss the button, you don't press it at all, and it can mean to lose a game, not based on difficulty, but bad controls, that can be annoying for players.

    Because you can't feel buttons, and you can't look at them if your fingers are on top, you're bound to miss the button press area very often = annoy the player very often.

    Sometimes I see joysticks that you "touch & slide" to move around. This is nice because you're not required to know where the joystick is, but the joystick goes where you touch, you can't miss this way. But then moving becomes a 2 step action. Literally reduces player quickness by 50%, and some screens are not very slide-friendly (if any truly are). It's kind of a costly compromise.

    I found that the simplest approach is just have buttons that you can press 'outside' of them, and base it on which button is closer to where you touched. And avoid cramming the screen with buttons. This way player doesn't even have to look at the screen, and play fast and surely. If you have two buttons per thumb, chance of missing is close to zero. You can even work a dpad fairly accurately.

    You can even make their position dynamic, so if you press too far from the joystick, its position shifts a bit closer to where you're tapping, but not overdoing this. Though I found this is not so necessary and it can even be confusing for player.
     
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  28. Aiursrage2k

    Aiursrage2k

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    You need a joystick or something to grab onto. The phone is a flat surface you have to drag your finger on the phone and it doesnt feel good.

    You need something like that.
     
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  29. MV10

    MV10

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    So much effort to play games on an underpowered device...
     
  30. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    Ultimately this.

    Nobody is using mobiles as a 'heavy' gaming device. There comes a point where it's less of a hassle to simply go fire up the console/PC.

    Mobile is likely to be stay casual for a long time. Not because it attracts casual players. But because the environment suits casual play.
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2016
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  31. passerbycmc

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    People game on their phones, since it is something they already have on them that they can use to kill time. As such the games on phone should be made to suite that experience. Design for the touch interface, keep in mind things like session time and be sure to keep it short. Consider adding some sort of idle game like systems, and reasons for the user to pick up the game for a few minutes at a time throughout the day.
     
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  32. passerbycmc

    passerbycmc

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    Doesn't that just defeat the purpose, the reason people are playing on their phone in the first place, is so they don't have to buy and lug around additional hardware. Once you start adding extra stuff to the phone that takes up large amounts of physical space like this you have already crossed the point of no return and should be using a dedicated handheld gaming system like a 3ds. Like i don't even know what market this is trying to hit.
     
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  33. RockoDyne

    RockoDyne

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    And to add to that you also need games to support these things, which most won't in all likelihood. Most mobile games are chasing a mainstream audience anyway, so needing something like that is just throwing down into a niche ghetto.
     
  34. Billy4184

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    I'm not sure I agree, considering what kind of games can be pulled off on phones these days. Underpowered for what exactly? Certainly not for a lot of games I can think of that would benefit from a control interface such as joysticks.

    Looking at a number of comments on this thread, I think it's a bit short sighted to declare that the only games that will ever be suited to mobile will be casual 5-minute sesh games such as candy crush. It's true (in fact somewhat of a wearily oft-repeated truism) that it's the optimum use for mobile devices as they currently stand. But what about if a significant amount of people do want to play more sophisticated games on their device? I doubt most mobile gamers have the cash to shell out for a dedicated mobile gaming platform such as the 3DS. It's not an efficient use of money or backpack space to buy two devices that could potentially do the same thing.

    It may be that the failure of mobile gaming to take off on phones is a self-fulfilling prophecy - the devices are simply not suited whatsoever and because of that nobody plays these more sophisticated games, so people think they just don't want it.

    Just imagine to yourself the average gamer taking a 2 hour bus ride to work/school. (Purely hypothetically/naiively) if it was possible for them to take along a 65 inch plasma TV and PS4 (that they could just store away in some other dimension when not using it!) and set it up in a socially acceptable way in front of them on the bus, do you think they would not want it? Of course they would! The desire for more sophisticated and immersive mobile gaming experiences is there, the technology is not.

    Now imagine if that plasma TV was realized with augmented reality, so that this screen hovered in front of you that the game played on. Now, what kind of control scheme would you use for that? Probably not swipe or any other thing that required large-scale movement (which would probably embarass a lot of people who would not want to be that conspicuous in public, or annoy the person beside you). A game controller, why not? And Oculus and Samsung are really pushing mobile VR so it may arrive sooner that you think.

    So we're back to square 1, the good old gaming controller with thumb joysticks.
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2016
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  35. Kiwasi

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    Let's pretend this person does exist. They probably own a laptop or a game boy. They are likely to play that on the long commute.

    In reality the intersection of people who are heavy gamers and people who have long commutes and people who use public transport and people who do not own a laptop or portable gaming device is pretty niche.

    This is not a prophecy. We are not talking about some future hypothetical market. We are talking about what has happened over the last decade. Devs have already released some heavy games on mobile. But yhe top played games continue to be in they style of Flappy Bird or Crossy Road or Pokemon Go or Candy Crush.
     
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  36. Billy4184

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    Why? I think it's much more of a stretch to presume that the average gamer owns a laptop or dedicated mobile gaming device that it is to presume that they simply own a reasonably powerful mobile phone. Almost everyone has a mobile phone of some kind.

    Again, this is an assumption that I just can't agree with. Those using public transport, as far as I know, are by and large high school and university students as well as single (no reason to buy a family car) and are probably more likely as such to be gamers. A laptop is not a very good portable gaming platform - it's big, heavy, hot, doesn't last long and has an interface that takes up a square foot that is pretty much useless for gaming on the go. Taking a laptop and game controller in a backpack (which I used to do as a student) uses up a lot of room that you often can't spare, and adds annoying weight.

    Also, and I think this is very crucial, would more people be mobile gamers if the technology was better designed? Pokemon Go shows that small changes in design can have an enormous impact on perception.

    The last decade is irrelevant, tiny screens could never justify any sort of game complexity. But devices these days are converging around tablets (which can render some pretty demanding games as well as last a long time) as well as possibly mobile VR/AR, which would make it potentially possible, as I mentioned in my previous comment, to lug around a virtual plasma TV with you wherever you go. Then all you need to do is put on your fancy sunglasses and grab a controller and you could be playing Call of Duty on the bus.

    So yes, for now, while mobile gaming experiences continue to occur on the tiny screens of devices that were not designed for it, yes flappy bird will continue to dominate - but everything I've seen about mobile gaming indicates people want more, but the technology isn't able to deliver it to them in an enjoyable way.
     
  37. Aiursrage2k

    Aiursrage2k

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    zi guess if I had an hour long commute everyday on the subway you might want something that actually has tactical feedback then say your phone, but at rock bottom prices (that you wouldnt get from a 3ds game).
     
  38. angrypenguin

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    I still play games on my PS Vita which is less powerful than new mobile devices. Plus, plenty of games don't use even mobile devices to their full capability. Not every game is a graphical powerhouse.

    Also keep in mind that plenty of mobile devices can easily play games of similar or greater computational complexity to last generation's consoles. Stuff that looked great ~3 years ago still looks great now.

    Only tech enthusiasts care about "power". Most people care about the experience produced, and good developers have been making excellent experiences for yonks with devices offering only a fraction of today's available power.
     
  39. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    Fixed that for you. I don't believe it's a stretch at all to presume that the average gamer owns a dedicated mobile gaming device of some description. Dedicated mobile gaming hardware can provide great gaming experiences and for very affordable prices. You don't even have to buy the games brand new in many cases either.

    A refurbished PlayStation Vita is only $130.

    https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Entertainment-PlayStation-Wi-Fi-Certified-Refurbished/dp/B00JFCA6V2/

    At a glance I see some good games for $20 or less.

    https://www.amazon.com/PlayStation-Vita-Games/b/ref=dp_bc_3?ie=UTF8&node=4924899011
     
  40. Billy4184

    Billy4184

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    @Ryiah yeah I guess I meant 'casual gamer' as in anyone who plays games on a mobile phone - I think it's not very useful to divide gamers and non-gamers since everyone is carrying around a device these days that could potentially be used for games (and probably has at some point or other).

    I still think that there's a barrier to people taking two devices along on commutes - it's two devices that need batteries, upgrades, and there's the annoying fact that you can easily imagine one of them doing the work of both. People want less bulk, not more - the more that the gaming experience can be integrated into already existing accessories (glasses, phone) the better - and the more accessible it is to people sitting on the fence about whether they should do it.
     
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  41. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Some people who own cellphones are gamers, not ALL of them.

    For better gamepad experience on mobile people would need screen that can form pressable buttons or a device that already has buttons on it (meaning a portable console)

    There were few experimental phones with tacticle feedback, but nothing widely available.


    Potential gamer is not a gamer. If they got a smartphone, doesn't mean they'll play a game on it.
     
  42. Billy4184

    Billy4184

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    Well I don't think a qwerty keyboard is very useful for games, consoles show that for most mainstream gaming all you need is a gamepad of some kind.

    I think the biggest problem with mobile gaming is the screen size. At the moment, there's just not enough real estate to put in controls with any kind of movement range on a device where you can barely see what is going on anyway - not to mention tactile feedback problems. But even more importantly, regardless of whether you had some kind of controller attachment, it just doesn't make any rational sense to create a game of any sophistication when the screen is a few inches across. If you take into account peripheral vision, that's a miniscule fraction of your visual coverage that's being used by the game, and in a public setting with all sorts of commotion going on any kind of immersion is just not going to happen.

    But what about VR/AR, something where you can put on a headset and experience the game that way. And I'm not even talking about full VR - what about AR that projects a big TV screen in front of you? Then as long as the hardware can deliver, any sort of gaming experience at any level of immersion is possible, and this calls for more sophisticated controls. But since your phone is not being used anymore, maybe you can slip a gamepad 'cover' over it and there you are, just like your living room.

    The point I'm trying to make is that mobile gaming is not necessarily going to be anything like it has been, once VR//AR hits the shelves in a major way. Suddenly the powerful mobile hardware we have already can be used at its full potential, and developers are going to have a much harder time dealing with graphics expectations and so forth - AAA games are going to be as accessible to mobile gamers as they are to consoles now.
     
  43. MV10

    MV10

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    Interesting, that's almost exactly what I was talking about earlier. Looks like Tactus does QWERTY only, I imagined something programmatically-addressable ... and I wasn't expecting the use of a fluid!

    No reason this couldn't assume multiple form-factors. A gamepad is an obvious additional use-case. I'm surprised they haven't done this already. The QWERTY version is relatively cheap, too. They have it as an iPhone case for $50 or for iOS tablets for $99.
     
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  44. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    The problem is not screen size, but control buttons being placing on the screen.
    Which is why people play handheld consoles.
     
  45. MV10

    MV10

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    I've been kind of surprised that screen-casting combined with either Bluetooth or USB controllers hasn't become more popular for making mobile into a sort of console-in-your-pocket. But here again, I suppose it goes back to the type of games most frequently chosen on mobile -- brief interactions for killing time.
     
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  46. Billy4184

    Billy4184

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    I think it's a bit of both actually, although it's definitely got a lot to do with putting buttons on the screen (lack of tactile feedback, unclear demarcation between the buttons and the screen and so on). I just think that generally speaking phone screens are too small for anything requiring a significant amount of precision, especially when using a gamepad attachment or something. Tablets with 10 inch screens would be the minimum for anything beyond very casual games, really - at least that's the way I see it.
     
  47. passerbycmc

    passerbycmc

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    Generally if you got a large screen where it is socially acceptable to play games on. It already has a console or computer attached, ad benefits from multiple controllers so you can play with your friends.
     
  48. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    One reason would simply be due to not wanting their phone to be completely dead by the time their commute finishes. Although cell batteries can last a long time in standby mode or even with simply texting... once you have a game running and the GPU kicking in combined with the CPU handling the continual main game loop the battery drain will increase considerably. 2 hours of playing a game or games I expect most of the average cell batteries would be in the red zone.

    Everything I have read about cell gamers is they do short sessions. Seem to short attention spans as well. Play this game for 10 minutes. Play that game for 20 minutes. And of course breaks in between to spend 10 minutes on FB chatting and text chatting, then maybe watch some YT videos, then maybe taking photos and videos of random things, then maybe playing a game again for 8 minutes then... etc.
     
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  49. passerbycmc

    passerbycmc

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    short session times are important, and something where you don't hit a lose state if you stop paying attention and let it run for a while. Since even at work i sometimes will fire up a mobile game while on a call, or while waiting for a build.
     
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  50. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Oh yeah there are definitely times I can see the reason for the short sessions. Just filling in gaps on time while waiting for something else. However, there are also many times it seems the people making heavy use of cell phone apps just have a short attention span as well. I've seen many people play a game, play a different game, take a photo and upload/send it, chat on FB, play a game, chat via text, watch videos etc all within maybe 20 to 30 minutes. Mainly because they speak out loud or laugh and I ask "what?" and they answer. They died again. I think they are playing the game they played 5 minutes ago and ask about it. Nope this is another game and they already had played yet another in between.

    So I had the impression the tiny sessions were just the norm when it came to cell app usage.
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2016