I have really complex feelings about mobage at this point because while it's hardly the only place you can find it, it seems like most of the aggressive experimental game design out there right now is happening in mobile gacha games. The reason for this is that as long as monetization is working the dev team can do anything they want, but these games have a surprising (to me) amount of confidence in players' ability to understand and master complex mechanics.
A single-player JRPG or action game takes a big risk by making things too complex, because players might be driven away and take advantage of steam's 2 hour refund policy 1. In comparison it's common for mobage to have screen-filling skill descriptions and complex character kits that synergize with each other, and over time they accumulate dozens or even hundreds of characters that all have distinct skill sets with unique theming 2. They constantly iterate on their game design and mechanics while adding new challenges on a monthly or even weekly basis to try and make sure there's always something new for players to do, and it's hard to compete with that!
Sitting down designing mechanics and character kits for my own singleplayer game, I find a lot of my influences end up being games like Punishing Gray Raven, Granblue Fantasy or Arknights even though I don't plan to imitate their monetization or overall structure. There is so much experimentation 3, incremental improvement and razor-sharp design 4 at work in these games. Even the games with serious design flaws can contain some really cool ideas. (Some of them just absolutely suck in almost every regard, though - I previously wrote about one of the worst examples of a big budget being almost completely wasted.)
I really wish I could point to AAA or A/AA PC/console titles as places to find this kind of design, but it feels like it is largely constrained to indies taking big risks or to these mobile games that can fall back on massive revenues to let their designers and artists go wild. It's frustrating that I often can't recommend these games to anyone in good conscience because the monetization is so terrible even though I am constantly fascinated and thrilled by their technical art or the new music that comes out every month or the big swings their stories are taking 5.
The stuff some of these studios burn their money on is also really exciting in a kind of bad way. I'm frequently listening to Arknights or PGR music (I have the Arknights music player open in a pinned tab at this point), far more often than I actually play them. I've been dedicating a few hours a week to each game just checking out whatever new stuff they have to offer or using them as a chance to relax and catch up on podcasts or music. At times it almost feels like I should be spending that time on something else like Midnight Suns (which I have been playing and enjoying), but I find PGR gets my creative juices flowing more and I still regularly have fun swapping strategies or discussing plot/characters with people on Discord.
Seriously fuck the state of the art monetization in this genre though. Some of it feels like it's getting better (mostly driven by Chinese regulations reining it in - imagine if Western regulators, Apple 6 or Google did fucking anything to protect consumers) but it's still so awful. It pisses me off that games like Genshin Impact have incredible production values and some really good writing in there but the rest of the structure and filler content are so bad that I can't stand to play them and would never recommend them to someone at this point 7.
P.S. Signalis fucking owns go play it if you haven't yet
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people rightly give Game Pass a lot of shit for harming the future of game development but FUCK OFF for this, Gabe Newell. Sure it's consumer protection but it's also a no-questions-asked way for people to play short experimental video games without paying for them while also punishing the developer with the equivalent of a credit card chargeback. anyone with less near-monopoly market power than Valve would never have gotten away with this
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Like 'a cat ballerina android who forgets how to use her abilities over time in order to charge her special move' or 'this time traveling AI built a gundam to ride around on for space duels with mechs' or 'this healer parries melee attacks using his sniper rifle', expressed through mechanics instead of just lore and cutscenes
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a boss who STEALS YOUR UI? What is this, Nier?
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a consistent theme in some of these games is that basically every stage or boss can be completed with un-upgraded characters or be cleared without taking any damage if you just practice enough, and it doesn't require being an e-sports pro gamer. I've managed to challenge myself and do it a couple times in a way I've never managed in a Platinum game
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I think Arknights is poorly written in general but the world-building and overall plotting are the work of people who are incredibly passionate about literature and politics. Girls' Frontline is a terrible game with a depressing, thought-provoking and deeply emotional post-apocalyptic story and I stuck with it solely for that despite absolutely hating the gameplay. Many of these games will directly put you in the position of being complicit in war crimes or used as a political tool in a way that is heartbreaking without feeling like it was forced on you. It's great to see the developers empowered to just do these things if they want.
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Sure gacha and gambling games are incredibly harmful to EVERYONE and make filthy, inhumane and evil amounts of money, but if we cracked down on them the App Store would stop making like twenty billion USD in profit a year from the 30% we steal from every app developer. And then how would we fund R&D for our incredibly expensive smartphones that don't allow developers to release politically challenging or queer content?
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Though if you are going to play one it probably should be PGR (as long as you like action games) because you can actually get every character for free and the systems are tuned to be way less abusive. It shows in their considerably lower revenues compared to their competition. Seriously though these games are dangerous