Imagine how much innovation and creativity could have come to mobile gaming if we didn’t let shitty exploitive business people turn it into slot machines and abusive drugs.
We had this entirely new type of device get put into every single person’s pocket on earth who could afford one and… it didn’t even meaningfully affect the future of gaming except for making it more toxic and predatory. It is a stunning failure if you take a step back and think about it. Surely even if the big players mucked it up, the narrative we constantly tell and retelll about capitalism is that smaller nimbler companies would step in to the void, make good mobile games and force the genre forward….
…..but nope it’s just a fucking void
There isn’t even really a reliable community of critics and curators to help point players to the best games, which is crazy when everybody with a smartphone is a potential new gamer.