Mobile Marketing

 Guess what guys?

My world of gaming and the world of mobile gaming almost never intersects if I can help it. I mean sure; sometimes I'll end up playing through 'Deus Ex: The Fall' whilst blindly pretending that the game is not just a sub-par port of a crappy mobile adaptation. Sometimes I'll buy a game that was lingering on my wishlist and frown a little once I realise it's control scheme is eerily similar to a mobile games'. (As far as I can tell, Tower of Time was never a mobile game; I guess their UI guy just had very specific tastes.) But when it comes to the trends of development that mobile games are going through, I'm totally unplugged from that world! Maybe that is to my detriment- I mean, I've got no way of proving otherwise! Let me just take a quick lookie at some of their ads... OH GOD, IT's ALL TERRIBLE!

I don't want to be the 'laugh at them because they're not me' kind of guy, but when you look at modern mobile games that are dominating the adverts all over Youtube, is there any other way to really react to them? It's not that they're rudimentary, or that their simple, that would be fine; it's that they're utterly and totally devoid of passion and life. We slam Ubisoft for turning AAA development into as stale of a process as they physically can, well at least they're not literally developing to a corporate written mandate. I'm talking city builder games plus 1. At the very least the big games of today aren't using that same Unity game framework I found for free a while back, but they are putting out the same insanely low quality ads for the small buff in retention rate they earn from viewers who stick around to mock them. And I'm going to be honest; these are the sorts of ads that make the entire industry look bad.

When I see swinging arguments from people who don't know better telling me how gaming is a merit-less and vapid pursuit not even worth being considered in the same breath as real art, I think about these ads and I can't really say much in response, now can I? People who assume that Grand Theft Auto is about running over prostitutes for 'points' feel validated by the barrage of awful mobile ads they skip past everyday online. Ads where we see people running through light gates with random 'rewards' in each gate that feel lifted off some Buzzfeed article about what life objects 'speak to the real you'. Ads where we see brain numbingly simple puzzles being screwed up whilst an awful TTS sounding voice bemoans their own stupidity. And of course, Ads where a cadre of simply manic and unhinged people tell me excitedly about how they've found "tHe ReAl PUll ThE PIn GaMe!'

Can I just say this here, right now, as a personal cleanse of my demons. I hope 'Evony: The King's Return' is thrown to the ghost corridor in Morioh with the grapping hands that rip apart your soul and send you to a purgatory wherein you're doomed to try and atone for unforgivable sins. I cannot accurately convey, without screaming (which doesn't come across very well in text) how sick I am of seeing the Evony ads! I can't be the only one who saw those original ads for the 'pull the pin game' and thought: Wow, this looks like hot trash. But to then, months later, be barraged by insane people telling me "Oh, it's okay! I've found the real game for you!" is just utterly maddening. I don't want to play your awful mindless trash game, I'd rather trap my testicles in a tumble dryer and set it for the hour-long spin. (Phew, got that out of my system.)

But as far as I can tell from the adverts I've seen; the two big mobile games currently dominating the marketing time of Youtube is State of Survival and Rise of Kingdoms; both using two different, yet eerily similar, advert styles. State of Survival used to go around with these very prototypical adverts where attractive female characters from the game would find themselves in sudden peril and have to fight for their lives in their tank tops through overly rushed animations that speed through events nearly quicker than you can process them. And those adverts, don't you know, have no reflection on the base game which is actually just a town builder with some very rudimentary tower defence gameplay slapped on for meat. Which is more than most town builder games do, to be sure, but not really anything to write home about.

I can only assume that their original campaign ended up earning the company a bit of money, because now State of Survival almost exclusively do these terrible live-action ads that portray different actresses (a term I'm using very loosely) acting as executives from the company going around and offering coupons in heavy eastern European accents with genuinely godawful performances.  They've also thrown up an apology ad or two, but only as a ploy to throw more sign-up coupons to desperately grab at new users, because another Mobile Game marketed their own false marketing apology and turned it into a marketing stunt. All of these games spend every last red cent into these marketing stunts, whilst underneath it all their base games are just utterly pathetic. State of Survival isn't worth more than an afternoon of play, and even for a 'free product' there are genuinely worlds better options out there for your time. 

And then there's Rise of Kingdoms, a mobile game so desperate to cement itself as the next 'Clash of Clans' but lacking any of the production talent to come close to where that game was in it's prime. All of Rise of Kingdom's adverts are based around the 'leader' characters of their game role-playing as players who flaunt their in-game successes as real world social currency in predictably banal displays. I've yet to see them hit the lowest common denominator and go for sex appeal, but I did see one advert in which the Jesus-looking character admonished a ratty Cleopatra by saying "I need a wife, not an apprentice" which felt like it was scratching at that door. Oh, and the meat of all these adverts is, again, clearly non-native English speakers badly reading scripts in which they desperately try to pretend their city builder game has the grand strategy depth of a Civilisation game. It doesn't. All they have is a supremely bland zoom-out map that you can have fights in. Other than that, it's exactly the same as every other trash city builder on the market.

Recently I've made the rather grim discovery that there are actually Youtubers who form communities around covering and supporting these digital dumpster fires. Including one man who seems to be a career Rise of Kingdoms player, which is about along the same lines as putting 'professional dumpster diver' as your legal occupation. All this means that within the apparent niche that gaming is still considered, there is a niche even under us of actually dedicated mobile games fans towards which these adverts are their entire gaming world; as utterly morbid as that sounds. But I suppose that is the way of life, the world turns and mobile ads are still, after all this time, utterly pathetic. I suppose it is true what they say, money can't buy taste. Or effort. Or talent. Or worth as artists.

The State of Mobile 2022

 Where are we today?

I make my feelings towards our Mobile overlords very clear during these posts. We share the same sort of relationship that real TV does with reality TV; an aura of one-sided hatred that must be endured because everyone knows that Reality TV brings in the butts to seats, and real TV tries to feed off the scraps to make it's living on the side. It's impressive numbers still, but they would be decidedly less impressive without Reality TV to tee up the crowd. That's pretty much how things are with gaming too. The vacuous, embarrassing wastes of space in the mobile market lowers the bar of gaming all around, and actual games with effort put into them make up the comparative minority of the market. And yeah, there's some bias there. A lot of the time we blame the worst practises of our industry on the example set by the money hungry mobile legion; and a lot of the time that's absolutely warranted, but maybe we hold a little of the blame ourselves for letting it get this bad. Whatever the truth lying at the heart of the swirling whirlwind of blame: one cannot deny that the mobile market makes bank.

In many of the largest consumer bases in the world, the number of mobile players totally outranks console and PC players on their own, entirely combined and multiplied by factors of ten. And this discrepancy is absolutely not due to the superiority of the platform. Gaming is a commitment, a time commitment and a place commitment. And neither are prices that the most fleeting of the casual market, those who make the majority of the population of the earth, are willing to feed into. Additonally much of the older generations still harbour those negative feelings about gaming and the culture around it from the scares of the nineties and the prejudices of the eighties, and thus bawk at the idea of expensive consoles or sitting down to dedicate an hour to a video game. However they still enjoy entertainment, and log into their smartphone app stores, and so they'll kill an hour during the commute crushing candy or with any of the other mindless appgames, and not even equate that spent time to 'gaming minutes'.

I understand this and I'm absolutely fine with it. Play the small time-killer games all you want, that's what they're around for. Not every type of game is created to cater for the whims of everyone, despite what certain TV settings reviewers might obstinately claim, and so if these are the bite-sized experiences that best fit into your daily schedule: then pop off. What I cannot reconcile is the point at which these mobile games start sneaking in ugly and aggressive microtransactions and these people actually buy them! How can you hold no interest in the gaming world, interact in the most basest of levels with it, but somehow decide to spend your money on mobile trash? It seems like a total oxymoron to me; but it's not fiction- this pattern of behaviour is proven and verifiable, and it's keeping the entire mobile industry as leaders of the pack when it comes to income generation in the gaming space.

Gamesindustry.Biz recently published a report which claims that during the year of 2021, $17 billion dollars in global revenue was generated for Anime Mobile games alone. A supposed niche sector of a niche branch of entertainment, soundly eclipsing cinema. Bear in mind that Anime mobile games are themselves a minority in the mobile game space. Altogether, they believe the mobile industry to be responsible for $93.2 billion global revenue. That's 'fly a beloved space-themed TV star to real space only to talk over them during the return party as they undergo a profound breakdown of ego' money. And all of that is being made through tiny MTX bear traps laid to slowly bleed the average Jane and Joe out of a little bit of money here and there. An extra retry here, a forced starter pack there, all inconsequential purchases in the moment with rewards that evaporate just as quickly as they're bought; but in bulk and stretched across billions of mindless swipes, and we near the 100 billion mark. Guess those numbers build up.

Now of course the Pandemic has it's role to play in this trend. As the years of lockdown bought society ever closer to their technology and the ways in which we can wring entertainment out of the jaws of boredom. Streaming services shot through the roof in subscribers (except Quibi) take-out services jumped from a niche luxury into an essential service and time-killer mobile games ingrained themselves further into the lives of ordinary, non-gamer, people. Only it seems that on the tail end of this lockdown, as everything begins to enter a state of relative normality, mobile gaming is not looking to drop off and relinquish this seized stranglehold as some others have, and the crash suddenly dawning upon Netflix isn't looking to spread to their shores anytime soon. This has been a springboard for the mobile market, launching them ever higher in the recognised global space.

But of course, this doesn't mean that traditional gaming is totally in the dust. In fact, 2021 was a fighting year for console revenue, as they reached a record high of $60 billion in revenue, although remember that 2021 was a new console release year, and that number would have been much higher if only the market had risen to meet the demand. Which it absolutely did not. Still, those sorts of numbers are enough to make traditional media look at themselves and wonder what they're doing wrong, whilst simultaneously making console developers look upwards at the mobile market and wonder what they're doing right. Gaming may be the 'now' of the entertainment industry (and maybe the movie industry as well with how SEGA are looking to prostitute out their brands) but with those sorts of numbers, mobile gaming is our sordid future.

And what do I mean by that? I mean that the influence over the norms of game design that mobile platforms enforce will bleed into generally accepted design the industry over. Remember that a lot of old industry heads who propagate the traditions of games that we love started as people playing those rudimentary games from yesteryear and dreaming big, whilst those coming into the market today are funnelling through the mobile space and taking the lessons they've learnt whilst working on those blunt-force money tenderisers. Designing problems to sell the solution? Mobile design 101. Flooding endless currencies and mismatched currency packs in order to confuse the audience? Mobiles games did it! How about the use of psychological manipulation tactics to tip the scales in favour of players buying premium packs? Mobile games should have a patent on that crap!

Of course that also means that all of the positive influences of the mobile market will bleed into console and PC gaming too, such as... the way that they... Okay, I'm drawing a blank: are there any positive practices that the mobile industry has bled onto everyone else? In a rare shade of optimism, I do think there's a slowly building wave of push-back against the worst of this bad adopters, sand it's a wave slowly rolling in with this coming generation of gamers that seem to come up wise to these sorts of schemes and largely unreceptive to mobile machinations. Ubisoft, EA, Square and others are learning this in the past year alone with enough failures to set your head spinning. Maybe that wave will continue onto the mobile market once that generation has settled over there too. Or maybe the trends we're seeing are anomalies and Sonic Origin's flogging of menu animations is our crystal ball glimpse into monetisation a year from now. It's a toss up. 

WTF is Project Makeover?

 A mistake

What is it with me and stumbling across a really weird, borderline perverted, game in the Youtube suggestions and just researching the heck out of it? Why can't I just be a normal person, shake my head and purge this thing from my mind? Where do I get off thinking myself the singular authority on deciding what has a reason to exist and what doesn't through my insipid investigations and judgements? When will the day come that I reach the inner peace to let the fetish games exist in their obscurity, the day that I'll grow to be accepting of all grossly uncomfortable titles. And how can I safety do all the research in this blog without anyone knowing about it? Incognito mode keeps it off my history bar but I don't even want my ISP knowing about this. No one can know what it is that I have done! Phew. Have I got it out of my system? Released all those demons that were building up? Good- now let me introduce to those out there lucky enough to have missed it: The absolute state of modern mobile games.

Now if you're like me than you'll have come from an age where mobile games had only just slipped out of that experimental phase where everyone was trying to squeeze more content out of their flip-phone's OS than a handheld console (and failing miserably) and just graced the days where Smartphones became powerful enough to host real games, but are rarely fortunate enough to have any made for them. That isn't to say that there isn't a stupidly huge selection of games to download onto your phone, just that the number of them with even the slightest amount of original design thought put into their construction equals easily less than a percent of the larger mobile library. When I swore off of mobile games, every game was a kingdom builder pseudo-MMO with the exact same progression trees, building archetypes, 'tactical depth', narrative complexity (or heavy lack thereof) and, of course, store front to offset the obnoxious time gating. I even went online and found the template to make my own of these games, it was on the first page of Google. And it's not even as though this model was unique to mobile games, I remember a cowboy themed browser one I used to play back when I was truly hopeless with my freetime.

Since then I'm happy to say that by-and-large the medium has changed! Has it gotten much better? No. But at least things are different. Nowadays mobile games jump from a mix of poorly copy the trending games of the hour, which means bad Fortnite clones for days, to making games that are the exact same type as the one I've discovered today. Games that are conceptually simple, but disguise that simplicity beneath a simply bonkers and sometimes oddly perverted ad campaign that just demands you pay attention long enough to find out more. Today that game is Project Makeover, tomorrow it will be another name with that exact same premise. They're a dime a dozen and it's something of a winning formula with the frankly gross amounts of money the lucky ones make. Oh, and I've picked one of the least horny ones from this pool of games, because if I'm opening this can of worms I'd rather sample slowly at my own pace, rather than tip it down the ol' gullet, full chug.

Adverts for Project Makeover go like this, invariably. Some big eyed generic animated brunette is faced with some sort of event or situation in which they feel the need to dress up, from rebounding after finding their generic man animated model cheated on them to- surviving the arctic winds blowing through their wood cabin window in the middle of, presumably, Siberia? (I feel there are other potential problems there than just a need to get dressed up, but that's just me.) Also, bizarrely, the lady always starts with just an unreasonable amount of hair, I'm talking Disney princess discount Rapunzel locks, which sometimes gets lopped off during the, usually unsuccessful, makeover period. These ads are always telling a story, one only transiently linked to the act of actually playing a game. That is their strength, you watch the full ad because some primal part of your brain needs the story's conclusion, and then the ad's narrative prematurely cuts short after the makeover and you're left hankering for more. Maybe enough to actually play the damn thing.

Of course, one of the most jarring takeaways from these ads is that they're never consistent. From Mafia City to Lily's Garden, they vary in narrative, visual presentation and sometimes even in telling you what the heck the game even does. Project Makeover seems to be pretty good at that last point, thankfully, making sure you know it's all about picking an assortment of clothes, hair, and 'solution appliances' (Razor for hairy legs etc.) in order to dress up our 3D lady over here, and there are wrong answers. Only... wait a minute; in some of the ads she isn't actually 3D. Yep, at least one of these adverts has a 2D rendition of the same woman. (Did I mention it's the same woman in every ad? She really has a lot of fashion disasters in her day-to-day.) Another demonstrate a simply ugly 3D animated style that pails in comparison to their peak 3D ads. There are presentational inconsistences here, is what I'm trying to say. And you might be left wondering what else it is that this game has been wavy with.

What about with telling you what the game is even about? What these adverts tell you you're getting is a dress-up makeover game, presumably with these high quality 3D model story inserts here and there giving you the lead-in to the problem and results of your solution. Only, if you've played any of these current waves of mobile games before in your life, you know that's not what you're getting. There is some dress-up, the core character model is indeed 3D, although not exactly high quality, and the bulk of the gameplay is a match 3 tile game. Seriously. The core gameplay loop is actively ignored by all of the trailers, and do you want to know why that is? Because half of these stupid ad-bait mobile games are match 3 tiles games. Either that or city builders. If you lack the questionable talent to rip-off the latest big title from the real games industry, you're pumping out one of these two games and hiding their true nature out of what I can only assume is embarrassment.

With titles like these, it's much more interesting to look at the frankly dishonest marketing behind the game and studio who make it. Heck, on the official Apple page, they still fill up the screenshots with their not-in-the-game quality pre-renders until for the very last three pictures where they have to show the actual game. I assume it must be somewhere in the TOS that gameplay must be presented on the game page, otherwise they wouldn't have even presented that. And what of the people actually behind all of this? Magic Tavern are a development studio who seem to have harboured a heart for high fantasy, given their name and proclaimed mission statement to create "Enchanting worlds and stories." But somehow or another that has led to them making Mobile games over and over, as well as one VR title back in 2016. Somehow the formula of 'make a game which is really just a thin veil for a match three tile game' has been with them almost the whole time, and it has shown them just gross levels of success.

Project Makeover is the tip of a development ship that is emblematic of the mobile industry. It's a shallow as a puddle but draped in obfuscations, misleading ads and a glitzy presentation. By their example it's totally okay to go pilfering the game model of one of the single most profitable games in the world, Candy Crush; slap character's nicked from 101 Dalmatians and just call it a day. And the worst part of it all? It works. It works for Magic Tavern and all the countless other mobile developers who set up grifts like this every other month, because the mobile market holds and enforces absolutely no standards. What is Project Makeover? A basic matching game with a money store attached to it, and don't let their silver tongued marketing convince you otherwise.

What the heck is Star Wars: Hunters?

 That's not a hypothetical. Literally: What is this game?

Oh, what a wonderous and magical time it is to be a Star Wars fan! We're being treated to the greatest game ever made in our subgenre, again, and our near future will be graced with a sequel to the surprisingly solid Jedi: Fallen Order, that is confirmed to be in the works. And what's this? I'm hearing that there is another game which recently got a trailer? Huh? I'm hearing that this isn't even an announcement, but an expansion upon a game that was revealed all the way back in February? That doesn't sound right... I don't know any Star Wars game that was kicking around from back then. Let me look up a little bit about his... hmm, it's called 'Hunters', kay, it's coming 2022, kay, and it's for the Nintendo Switch? Like- only on the Switch? No, wait it's coming to Mobile as we- oh, for the love of the force. Is this more licenced mobile trash which is getting ported to the Switch in order to feign legitimacy? (Damn it, Lucasarts, you were doing so well!)

I admit to being a bit sceptical when I first saw the trailer for 'Star Wars: Hunters' swipe across my holofeed, but that has abated slightly after watching the footage. Now it's replaced my genuine confusion, because I have no idea what this game is. Taking place on a planet that looks exactly like Mos Eisley on Tatooine but I'm assured is not, the trailer is a purely cinematic animated affair showcasing a whole slew of brand new unique characters doing nothing more than trying to kill each other whilst showing off their 'stark personalities'. And the problems, as a Star Wars fan, start there; because I can't even identify what era any of this is meant to be in. You've got a Sith lady and a Wookie warrior, which implies Old Republic stuff. (or maybe 'High Republic', I don't know I haven't read any of it) But then you've got some small dude riding around in a Droideka, which is solidly Clone Wars, and then a Stormtrooper, which is Galactic Civil war. I know that to a non-fan it must sound like I'm picking through straws in search of a needle but I'm just trying to convey how confused and non-informative every inch of this trailer was. (I now know it's meant to be set after episode 6, but that was not made clear from the footage at all)

A problem not at all helped by the fact that there was no Gameplay. Something that is totally groan-worthy when we're talking about a proper console or PC game just kicking off it's marketing cycle, but when we're talking about a mobile game, it's downright suspicious. Too many times have Mobile games been fitted with utterly nonsensical or uninformative marketing material that is simply there to dazzle and lure the curious in. Sure, the danger isn't quite as ever-present when we're talking about a licenced Star Wars product, (Lucasarts aren't going to retexture Lily's Garden and feed that to us) but I still sense a set-up to a bait-and-switch and/or disappointment. At the very least, it contributes to keeping the true nature of this game utterly secret which seems bizarre considering the publisher went so far as to commission a decent quality CGI action-fest to achieve nothing more than what the twenty second title drop did a few months back.

And hanging back on that trailer a bit; it really is only average. Footage like this has but a single purpose achieved through a handful of digestible goals, to spark interest through excitement and wow moments, keeping the viewer on the edge of their seat, and dropping them in the narrative of the skit so that they aren't pondering how they're learning nothing about the real game. What we ended up with, however, is just an incredibly basic action narrative with no surprises up it's sleeve, no peril to it's sequences, no memorable 'wow' moments to linger with me and no significant creative passion behind it. The most creative element are the character designs which were probably shipped to this trailer studio to work with, they bought nothing but the bare minimum on their end. Compare this with another Star Wars trailer which was doing the exact same thing, (advertising a game through misleading cinematics that absolutely did not represent the gameplay itself) such as The Old Republic teasers, and there really is no comparison. One set of works had a heart inside of it, this one does not.

You might be looking at everything I've said thusfar and rightly point out: Wait a minute, you haven't spoken about the game yet. And you would be exactly right because I would love to focus on the actual building blocks of this title if they were at all clear to me. From the context clues of the trailer, colourful characters, fighting in an arena, working in teams, being broadcast, predictably squaring up on opposite ends of the screen at the end of the footage, one might deduce this is a MOBA. But a MOBA would surely court a cast of legacy and established characters to draw in crowds, not a team of contextually-confused newbies. Additionally, I feel like the Star Wars universe would make a bad fit for a MOBA, but then I suppose I would have felt the same about the Pokémon brand, and we all now know how wrong I would have been there.

But this is the sort of speculation I shouldn't need to be doing, because one of the key tenets of marketing is giving people a clue what it is that they're buying. How can you play upon their expectations and build a fort of false expectations if they have literally no foundation from which to lay the first bricks? Better question, why are companies now days finding it such an affront to tag a genre to their product?  ('The Wayward Realms' say hello) I've scoured the Internet and trying to pin down some idea of what this game is feels like detective work. One source calls it an 'arena game' (which I guess is snippet of a genre if you think about it), the official website says its third person (which is evidenced in the screenshots, but doesn't really explain what the gameplay is shaped up as) and the whole thing is definitely going to be free-to-play; (to make room for MTX) so is this their very own Overwatch-like game? (If not, then Battleborn proved it could very much still be a MOBA)

The team behind this enigma of a game, Zynga, also happen to be the monsters behind that mythical tragedy of game we call 'Farmville', which means that whatever this game ends up being it'll likely also be a vehicle for microtransactions and addictive loops. That first bullet point is at the very least a guarantee, the latter depends on how solid the game itself ends up once it's constructed. Oh, and before you start wondering if their morals as a company might guide them to respect the venerated Star Wars licence they've been granted and make something worthy of it; these guys created a Game of Thrones themed slot machine game... so don't hold your breath. This will be an arena game that slobbers after your wallet, that we know, the only variable is if they'll do enough to earn it. 

Since the EA stranglehold on Star Wars games has loosened, we're going to be getting more trash like this filling up the airwaves between the real marvels of gaming, as anyone with a half profitable-sounding idea is given the thumbs-up go ahead. But to be honest, I'd much rather be in this state of roulette regarding which new Star Wars project is good, then the dry expanse with years of 'Star-Wars-less' pining like we were in when EA held exclusivity. You've got to take the bad with the good, and the suspiciously obscured with the tantalisingly promising. But hey, maybe 'Star Wars: Hunters' is a really cool and unique idea, worthy of existence and opening up unexplored avenues of the Star Wars mythos, and the team have just decided to advertise none of that because their marketing team is actually insane. (Crazier things have happened, but I'm putting my expectations very low for now.)  

Where is the map of the soul to open the future?

When all our trials seem to be over, despair always awaits us.

Oh, ya'll know I was gonna talk about this! Popular Korean heartthrob boy band BTS have just been announced as the starts of a brand new mobile game published by NetMarble, the company responsible for publishing the first BTS game called: BTS World (Bleagh). It's been a while since I've done one these off-the-cuff rant blogs, but this game just instantly caught my attention from the incredible subject matter; a freaking boy band, to the beautifully pretentious trailer dialogue: "Where is the map of the soul to open the future?" I honestly couldn't be more excited to learn more about a crappy Korean game unless it was going to star BLACKPINK. (Actually, if it was starring BLACKPINK I would definitely play it. Pixellated Lalisa? Take my money.)

First off let me just freak out about something: There was a first BTS game? How on god's green earth did I not know about this? With the tsunami of forgettable trash that floods the mobile world every day, somehow I managed to miss the release of BTS World. And that's not all, this Mobile game was apparently a freakin' VN! I cannot overstate to you, dear reader, how much I absolutely adore delving into awful VNs. My very life essence is sustained through the act of scrolling through poor grammar screens and vomit-inducing cliches. Oh, and the game features exclusively real world photos? Pinch me, I must be dreaming. (Expect my exhaustive review on that at some point.)

But back to the situation at hand. What we have is a big concept reveal trailer, half live action and half animation, that is positively seeped in cheese and melodrama. (Although I will commend them for the production value, but then that should probably be expected by the studio that managed BTS' music videos.) From what little we see of the game it is hard to get a grip of what we can expect, but the animation alone just screams DONTNOD's style to me. Life is Strange: BTS Edition, you heard it here first.

For those unfortunate enough not to have stumbled into the world of K-pop, let me introduce what BTS is, to you. The Bangtan Boys, also known as BTS, are a seven-member South Korean pop group from Seoul. They are inexplicably one of the largest music artists in the world despite relying solely on tired boy band gimmicks from the early 2000's, or perhaps because of it. Subject yourself to any one of their music videos and you'll be met with 60% sensually mugging for the camera and 40% surrealist nonsense that is at least pretty to look at. (I guess that BLACKPINK is hardly any better, so I don't really have any leg to stand on.) The explosion of K-pop groups that has occurred in recent years has partially been fueled by an attempt to capture this one group's success. (And partially because the Korean music industry is scared of losing it's right to legally enslave people.)

I would be lying if I told you that some morbid part of me doesn't love the rampant commercialism that these sorts of bands represent. Something about the kooky insanity of their presentation seems weirdly more wholesome than the majority of music acts that the western world has to offer. I say this whilst acknowledging that K-pop is run by some of the worst companies to ever touch the music industry (And that is some stiff competition!) I talking about the kind of people who work their talent to the absolute bone, to the point where there are some K-pop stars who faint, out of overexertion and dehydration, on stage. We're talking about an industry so abhorrent that they are actively working their talent to death.

I'm sure the Bulletproof Boy Scouts (Christ, they actually call themselves that?) have reached a point of success where they aren't worked as hard as their peers; but that doesn't mean that they aren't being exploited some other way. There are several rumors about big name Idols (The title that is used for this form of celebrity) being essentially prostituted out in order to secure business deals for their talent agencies. Much of it gets swept under the rug and hushed up before it can become a big news story. God knows how Big Bang's scandal made it to national news, but if there is any truth to the stories then that is only the tip of the iceberg. Really puts some of gaming's controversies into perspective, huh.

Cue "What is this a music blog?" You're right. There's a game that is coming out and I hijacked the announcement in order to delve into the seedy world of K-pop, my bad. For what it's worth, I'll put the game on my radar for the next few months, take a look at what comes from the hyper-creativity behind the BTS brand. This may (almost definitely) be just another desperate mobile cash grab preying off of the rampant BTS fandom; but if it comes from the same minds that envision their music videos then it will be one heck of a trip to go through.

This might not be enough to sell me on mobile games as a concept, but it is enough to get me looking. Their agency, Big Hit entertainment, seems to be taking this seriously enough to acquire a small time game developer called 'Superb', so they may actually be willing to deliver something of value. But given the lengths I hear that these companies go to in order to make money (Allegedly) I wouldn't but a mobile cash grab past them. (God, this is all over the place.) I'm going to stop typing now before I conjure up a lawsuit for myself, but if any high ranking K-pop executive is reading this, let me leave you with one request. BLACKPINK: the video game, make it happen.

PS. For what it's worth I haven't heard anything untoward about Big Hit's conduct, so I wouldn't accuse them of any wrong doing. And I'm not just saying that to avoid any future legal hassle, I've literally not heard a peep of dissent about them. They're probably one of the good ones, for the record.

Just why?

Why are we still here, is it just to suffer?

Have you ever had one of those moments when you just stop dead in the middle of the street and shout "No". I did, just now. There I was, walking home with the shopping not a care in life. I was bopping to some music, as I often do, completely ignorant to the travesties happening in the world all around me every second of every day. But I wouldn't stay that way for long, happenstance would have my head turn to face the side of a bus across the road from me. I saw the advert and looked away, thinking nothing of it. But then I stopped, 'That couldn't have said what I thought it said' I thought, incredulity overpowering reason. I literally did a double take in order to absorb the magnitude of what I had just read. The Angry Birds Movie 2.

All of a sudden I was struck with waves of existential dread. How could this happen? How could we let this happen? We're smarter than this! Apparently not, because The Angry Birds Movie 2 had been on Hollywood's slate ever since August 2016. The last movie's body wasn't even cold before they got to work on it's sequel. I shouldn't have been so shocked, we all knew this was would happen. We knew this day would come. But does that make it any better? Doesn't the fact that The Angry Birds Movie 2 is less then a month away speak volumes about where we are as a species? Is this what Boudica defied the Romans for?

And before you start getting onto me about how 'This isn't supposed to be a movie blog', let me remind you of a more innocent time when Angry Birds was just a low-effort high-yield mobile game. Oh, how blessed those times were. Not that I ever played Angry Birds, teenage me was too much of an insufferable hipster to stoop so low, but I always begrudgingly respected it. How could you not respect a game so popular that they managed to get away with a Star Wars Crossover, and that was after the Disney acquisition! Even before the dragon EA managed to curl it's scaly lips open enough to form the words "10 year exclusivity", Rovio Entertainment had their foot in the door to make the first Disney licensed Star Wars Game. So much for quality control.

Yet even with all the money in the world, no one took them seriously when The Angry Birds Movie was first announced. How many times did projects like this get announced, presumably during a coke-fueled office rave, only to be canned after everyone sobered up the next morning."Oh yeah, I'm sure actual human beings sat around a boardroom and decided to greenlight The Angry Birds Movie." We sarcastically thought. "When there are still genuine heartfelt stories left to be told in the world, Hollywood would obviously rather tell the story of the Angry Birds." In hindsight, there was no way this movie wouldn't get made.

For those who haven't subjected themselves to it and may believe that I'm being harsh, let me reassure you. The Angry Birds Movie is cinematic garbage. Oh sure, it might try to get away with itself, marketing that it is 'just a comedy' and also 'a film for kids'. To that, I would like to propose that neither of those labels count as satisfactory excuses and in actuality are even more damning. Firstly, when did it become generally acceptable for comedy movies to be trash? I know that recent comedic ventures may paint the picture that this was always the case, but one merely needs to go back to the classics to see it was not always so. 'Life of Brian' is genius, 'Airplane' is absurd gold, 'This is Spinal Tap' goes to 11. These movies show you that 'comedy' isn't slang for 'low effort'. Comedy is hard to pull off, it requires empathy, wit and timing. Comedy can be crude, highbrow, dark and cheerful. It can open up your audience and make them vulnerable to other emotions. A great comedy can even make you cry.(For the right reasons) Comedy is an artform when handled correctly. The Angry Birds Movie does not handle it correctly.

As for the 'just for kids' excuse. Since when do we not care about the things we show to our kids? Would you let your kids watch a snuff film? How about Game of Thrones? Or >shudder< season eight? Of course not, we curate what we allow children to see so that we can remain watchful over their developing minds. That shouldn't just apply to extreme content but to trash too. Who remembers the Disney renaissance? Disney have always made their movies for kids but rarely do they half ass projects on account of that fact. Just look at Aladdin, Hercules, The Lion King, Pocahontas. (Okay, maybe not that last one.) We also have the movies of Don Bluth to prove to us that children love movies that are allowed to be dark and scary. Just look at 'The Secret of N.I.M.H', 'The Land before Time' and 'All Dogs go to Heaven'. All these movies are remembered, not because they spoke down to kids but because they respected them and treated them like adults. These are the properties that go onto define a generation, not this cynical corporate crap.

But we are no longer in those golden ages. Don Bluth doesn't make movies anymore, half of Monty Python are dead now and Disney is more interested in remaking (ruining) their old movies. What right do I have to call myself an amateur writer when we live in a world so devoid of authenticity that writer and producer John Cohen can win the Jussi Award for best film with Angry Birds. Okay, I'm getting a little bit personal now, I'll admit that. But maybe everyone involved should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Come on Peter Dinklage, you were in Game of Thrones! Have some dignity Josh Gad, you were in Frozen! (You were arguably the worst part, but still!) Stand up for yourself Jason Sudeikis, you were in... huh, literally nothing good. Okay, maybe he deserves it. (Or maybe he deserves to finally be in a good movie.)

The Angry Birds Movie 2 is not the death knell for creativity, that was sounded long ago. It's just a member of the mourning procession, here to carry integrity to it's final resting place. You may think I'm overreacting. And I am. But you would be acting the exact same way if you just saw a giant billboard of reasons why you, and everything you ever try to achieve, is, and will always be, insignificant. Before you've even had a chance to try, you've already lost. Despite thinking so desperately that you're right, you fail nonetheless. It's frightening. Turns the legs to jelly. I ask you to what end? Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the- wait, I'm quoting Thanos, what was I talking about again? Angry Birds? Yeah, screw that movie.

Moblie Games: wide as a lake, shallow as a slip'n'slide

Fishing for wallets

Well, I talked about the insidious practice of microtransactions yesterday, might as well prolong this depressing dive into the cooperate-driven side of games with a new target: Mobile gaming.  Most gamers in the world are, in fact, mobile gamers. Techjury estimates that there around 2.2 billion active Mobile users in the world today. With this in mind, why is it that there are practically no worthwhile games on the mobile marketplace? You'd think someone would have made one on accident by this point! But somehow, even after all this time, all the worst practises in the gaming world stem from the Mobile market, wherein they are called 'feautres'. Microtransactions: Birthed by the Mobile market. Artificial time gates: A literal requirement for any modern mobile game. Lootboxes: They perfected those systems long ago.

Mobile games are characterized most prominently by the way how they are generally lacking in gameplay. That isn't a comment on the restrictions of the mobile platform but rather a condemnation of the apathy of big budget mobile developers. Modern day smart phones are leagues more powerful than many of the consoles back in the day. Last time I checked (Which was 4 years ago) my old smart phone could run a Gameboy, N64 and Gamecube emulator with decent performance allround. (Though things did get a little choppy for some Gamecube games.) With that in mind, where is our high quality mobile game? Where is our Twilight Princess, or Resident Evil? And I'm not talking about ports, I'm taking original high quality properties made for the phone.

It's not that the companies aren't there to make the games. Square Enix have published original mobile games before, Bethesda have done it twice and Epic have now stepped in. However, none of them would ever waste the time to develop a worthwhile original title for the mobile market, because they know they don't need to. Mobile customers are nowhere near as discerning as customers on any other platform, so developers know that they can get away with putting out shallow, structureless wastes of drive space, and make more money than they could ever do with a dedicated project. As a result, the best mobile games on offer are all ports of console and PC titles. All mobile originals are trivialized, 'casual' experiences that are hyper focused around the pursuit of recurrent monetisation.

For clarity's sake, I'll say that I don't hate the mobile market just because it is 'casual', like some do. I like it when a more casual audience have a little gateway into gaming. The way I see it, the more people playing games the better. My umbrage comes from the fact that mobile games are, almost universally, bottom-of-the-barrel exploitative trash blatantly designed with the intention of fleecing as much as humanly possible from its players. It is embarrassing, as a gamer, to think that the face of your hobby, the only example that the public sees, is a platform that features the most ugly, cynical corporate cash grabs that the industry has to offer. What's worse, those same crappy mobile rip-offs account for the lions share of video game revenue! Ever wonder how much money King make off of Candy Crush? Too much money, is the answer.

How does the mobile market manage to make so much money, year after year, whilst distributing nothing but low effort garbage? Through psychological manipulation, obviously. King and it's competitors recently admitted (In a roundabout, deceitful way) to hiring the services of 'Psycology' experts in order to help them design their games with all these tips and tricks to mind. I mentioned something about 'psycology tricks' yesterday when talking about the way that Lootboxes are designed to provide a hit to your dopamine levels. But just so everyone is on the same page, I should likely explain exactly what I mean by that.

Firstly, I'm not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, so I will be using very general language as I go on with this explanation. It's not for your benefit, it's for mine. As I understand it, dopamine is a chemical in your brain that provides pleasurable sensations when it is stimulated. Similar to adrenaline, dopamine levels can rise and fall due to random external stimulus that we go through in our daily lives. Every now and then we conduct actions that get us little hits of dopamine, this makes us feel happy and excited, feelings that most people want to experience more, so we are drawn to seek more experiences that reward us with the same sensations. One way that Dopamine can be stimulated is by completing a hard task, clocking off at the end of a hard days work, hitting 'publish' on a finished blog, or buying a Lootbox. You'll notice, whenever you watch a digital box opening in one of these games, that are often accompanied with a flashy show, sometimes with sparkly animations. They'll hold off on showing you exactly what you've received straight away in favour of a little bit of pageantry that is designed to build anticipation. All of this hits up on your Dopamine levels to get you feeling excited and happy. After a while you start associating that exciting feeling with opening loot boxes so you seek out some more and then you end up hooked.

Of course the topic of dopamine it is a lot more complicated than I make it seem. It would have to be, seeing as how dopamine exploitation is at the heart of gambling and addiction. People pen dissertations on lighter topics then this. I'm just some sleep-deprived fool sitting at desk trying to make sense of the world. But from the little bits I've read and heard on the issue, the process of dopamine exploitation is similar to the training of Pavlov's dogs; positive reinforcement breeds recurrent habits. This may seem like a gross over-simplification but we are, at the end of the day, all still just animals, thus we are still susceptible to many of the primal weakness' of our less evolved brethren. Mobile game's companies know this all too well, and they also know exactly how to exploit this in order to fill their pockets.

Mobile game's companies don't just throw all their eggs into one basket, however. Dopamine can lessen in effect the more you are exposed to it, meaning that the best way to get players coming back again and again to regulate their game time. How do you manage this without literally standing over players with a stopwatch? Digitally standing over players with a stopwatch, of course! Many 'free-to-play' games make use of, the aforementioned, 'artificial time gates' to stop players from experiencing too much and satisfying their dopamine urges. Remember when you play a mobile game and you always end up having to wait for some ridiculous energy bar to fill before you do an action? That isn't just there to annoy you into spending money on a 'skip'. That functions as a timed gate to make sure the player comes back tomorrow, and the next day and so on.

Those are all main tactics of the 'high effort' cash grabs, what about that low-effort garbage that I was talking about earlier. Well, if you've ever gone on the Android/Apple store and done a bit of experimental downloading here and there, chances are you've noticed something. Many of the games on the mobile market are the exact same game with a different skin.You've seen the archetypes: City builders with obnoxious amounts of resource management, amateurish platformers with bright aesthetics and endless darn battle royale games. Now, I'm not going to sit here and lament on the lack of creativity displayed in Mobile stores, (although that is a huge problem) when I can just point to how some of these games feel like they were made from a template. That's because they were.

With a two second google search, you can find a handful of 'City Builder templates' for the enterprising mobile developer. An easy how-to guide that requires little more from the purchaser then to change some assets before slapping it up on the mobile store. Not that there is anything wrong with templates and guides themselves. They are actually great tools for budding developers to figure out how to assemble a game. But they are best utilized as tutorials not easy-build-it kits. After a whilse of searching, I haven't yet found the exact template that a lot of the high-fantasy city builders use, but you can be sure that it exists. As long as both Apple and Google refuse to take their mobile marketplace seriously and start actually regulating it proactively, consumers will continue to be met with this barrage of copy-and-paste time wasters, and all those small indie gems that I am told actually exist will remain buried.

You may have picked up on the fact that I am more than a little passionate about the absolute state of the mobile marketplace. That's because I vividly remember the days when I wanted to play games but was lacking a console. I would browse the mobile game store and find fun little games that I would share with my friends.(Back when I had those.) When I look at the mobile store today, I see none of those cool, imaginative little games that made mobile gaming worthwhile. The store front is dominated by cash grabs, big budget ones and build-a-game ones. Were I a console-less child seeking gaming fun on mobile today, I wouldn't be surprised if child-me went off of games all together; and then went outside and did something active like >shudder< sports!

The case of Pokemon vs Harry Potter

Judge Niantic presiding...

A couple years back a mobile game came out, a little title called: Pokemon GO. You heard of that? Back in 2016 it was something of a killer app. It was a title that managed to amass a respectable $207 million in it's first month and accounted for 45% of play time out of the top 20 android games for its first 3 months. At its peak, Pokemon Go boasted daily worldwide player of 45 million. So it comes to the surprise of no one, that Go's masterminds: Niantic, are oh-so eager to recapture their runaway success with their next project. Which is essentially the exact same idea attached to a different brand. That's the mobile market for you.

In their defense, I would be attempting the same thing in their shoes. Pokemon GO was nothing short of a global cultural phenomena when in launched. All over the world we heard stories surrounding the crazy lengths people would go to in order to get their mitts on the virtual battle beasts. Stories of fan causing stampedes in Taipei, a Go streamer getting mugged at midnight in central park, and even one about a Russian YouTuber who got sentenced to a suspended 3 year sentence for playing the game in a church. The level of proliferation that Pokemon Go reached was unprecedented, even for a franchise known for bleeding into the mainstream more than once before. Even people who would, ideally, never cross paths with Pokemon in their entire lives ended up getting in on the action. Who remembers when Hillary Clinton chanted "Pokemon Go-to-the-polls" In the middle of her election campaign or when Donald Trump commented about how he would like to play the game but just didn't have the time. It was like the entire world went mad.

Nowadays, things have settled down and mobile app stats are being led by King's: Candy Crush Saga, once again. Balance had been restored to the universe. However, Niantic are not done yet. They want to have a second shot at capturing a bottleful of lightning. 'Harry Potter: Wizards Unite' is their next big venture, leaning off another popular young adult franchise in order to sink in it's appeal. It is a sound business move for Warner Bros too, as they are still in the middle of their 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' series and have started trying to drum up interest for a potential Harry Potter TV series. It only makes sense for them to try their hand at roping in fans from the world's most profitable entertainment medium, doesn't it. But will a Harry Potter-Pokemon Go clone really strike the world by storm as much as Niantic's first outing?

CEO John Hanke seems to think so. Although, I couldn't find the interview myself, I watched Alex, from YouTube's AngryJoeShow, claim that Hanke said "Harry Potter is a bigger franchise in terms of global awareness and fan base to Pokemon". Perhaps this is why Niantic thought that this would be their next ARG mobile best seller? I do find such an assumption interesting because, even if he was just paying lip service for the interview, it remains the most insight we have into the thought process of Niantic. I, for one, have to disagree with him on this particular quote. I believe that, despite the inherent difficulty with comparing movie and book fans beside video game and TV fans, Pokemon is still by and large a much bigger franchise in just about every way. But lets take a closer look just to make sure.

The sure-fire, investor approved, method for testing franchise viability is a taking a look at how much total revenue that brand has amassed. This can be a helpful statistic in establishing how many people care enough to spend money on your products alongside how savvy your team is at wringing them dry. In this department, it seems that things are pretty much cut and dry. According to Wikipedia, Harry Potter is the third largest media franchise in the world with a total revenue of $25 billion since inception in 1997; unfortunately for Potter fans, the number one franchise in the world is still Pokemon with an eye watering, $55 billion total revenue. Pokemon easily surpasses Harry Potter in money making potential, whilst having only been around for one year more. Also neither franchise appears to be slowing down, Pokemon is in good standing in the world of gaming as has been for over 2 decades now; and as I've said before, gaming is the most lucrative form of entertainment. J.K. Rowling's series can't really compare in that department.

Now lets look at reception. I think it is safe to say that Pokemon is beloved with its fan base, new and old. How else would they be able to get away with the same cheap, two-game game, marketing ploy that they've been pushing for the last 20 years. Fans respect Pokemon and, despite some recent discontent, will continue to do so, going forward. Pokemon is just too big and integrated with such vertically that no single disappointment from one of it's releases is going to sully the larger brand. Harry Potter is different. Starting off as solely a book series before becoming solely a movie series,(There was a little period of crossover somewhere) Harry Potter has never had as many eggs in the basket as Pokemon does. Kind of impressive if you think about it in terms of how successful it has become, but provably risky. Fans have grown tired over the past few years with the comments Rowling as made as well the general milking of the franchise. So far, 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' has seemed a little aimless and shaky. Heck, 30 minutes of the first movie was dedicated to chasing around CGI monsters. (Which, on a side note, where really poorly designed. Someone on Warner Bros. design department needs to give the guys who work on Monster Hunter a call.) 'Crimes of Grindlewald' really reflected the lack of audience interest when it generated a franchise low domestic take of $62.2 million on it's opening. Does this mean the Harry Potter is trending downwards. Yes, statistically. We'll have to wait and see if an in-universe TV series helps to shake things up.

Then there is the difficult to measure statistic of cultural impact. I could lay down a ton of incidental evidence on this subject, like how Harry Potter never had it own trading card game or never caused seizures throughout japan (allegedly.) But the truth is that I just don't keep enough tabs on Harry Potter news to provide an impartial prospective. What is impartial, however, are numbers. And just like Shakira's 2005 hips; they don't lie. Google trends seems to show that; as of the release of Pokemon go, 'Pokemon' has been a more popular search term than 'Harry Potter', despite 'Crimes of Grindlewald' being released in 2018. I may be a tad biased for the fuzzy electric rodent and his friends but It's hard to deny, Harry Potter does not ring with the same resonance that Pokemon does. It makes you wonder just what on earth John Hanke is talking about.

Don't misconstrue this to think that I hate Harry Potter or anything, Harry Potter was a huge part of my childhood. The only thing I've ever won, was a school competition for which the reward was a collection of the first five potter books, and since then I have been a fan of the wizarding world. However, since then I have also discovered so many other fantastic, well designed fictional worlds, and I can see just how weak Harry Potter's world building is by comparison. Don't believe me? Name one wizarding job that graduates can move onto that is neither school related or a ministry official. Quidditch star? Quidditch star announcer? Quidditch Cheerleader? Harry Potter lacks the depth to support deep dives into its lore, which is why Fantastic Beasts feels so shallow and why Niantic's 'Harry Potter: Wizards Unite' only bought in $1 million in it's opening weekend.

For me I suppose I grew out of Harry Potter after 'The Deathly Hallows'. And before the movies finished, seeing as how I still haven't seen 'The Deathly Hallows Part 2'. I approached the prequels with some interest but after the mess that was 'The Crimes of Grindlewald', I feel I've gone off that too. Pokemon is just so much easier to love and weirdly timeless. It's games are simple and fun, it's show is watchable and the card game is... hopelessly broken, but 2/3 ain't bad. Niantic are naive if they truly believe they can recapture the success of Pokemon Go; and honestly, they shouldn't even try. A lot of amazing things sprung from the days of Pokemon Go but a lot of negativity has too. Remember that mugging I mentioned, or that arrest? There are so many others. One man quit his job to 'Go' full time and another's infidelity was discovered due to the game's GPS feature. My favourite is a man who nearly lost his job when he was caught playing it and the company assumed he was selling company secrets. Whenever anything reaches that level of proliferating into the mainstream it is bound to track a lot of feces behind it. Niantic doesn't need that kind of heat coming down on them again. They're a small (Or rather were small) mobile development company who struck gold but ,for some reason, are still digging. My unsolicited advice, be happy with what you have and careful not to choke on your aspirations.