iOS Gaming is Bringing Me Back to My Gaming Roots…

I’ve been a gamer for going on 20 years. I’ve played everything from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo Entertainment System to the Playstation 3, and don’t even get me started on the any of the handhelds (looking at you, spinach-colored-screen Game Boy). One of the reasons I’ve been a gamer for so long is that video games can take you to another time and place, and you can just lose yourself in the experience. That word “experience” is a key phrase for me.

The issue that I have with many of the newer games that are coming out is that they’re all about realism. Now, when I play a game, I want to be about as far away from reality as I can get; I just want something that I can sit in front of for either a few minutes or a few hours and still enjoy what I’m seeing and doing. The thing I really loved about gaming in the 80s and the 90s was that games, at that point, were more experimental—there weren’t dollar signs in companies’ eyes 24/7. Sure, game companies wanted to make money, but in those days, the technology didn’t exist to make an experience like Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare; the technology, however, did exist to create games like Super Mario World or, to be even more obscure, Another World. Considering how games are put together now, to me, it feels like it’s more about the tech than it is about the experience.

Now handheld gaming is a whole different breed of animal. Handhelds, up until now, never had the horsepower to be able to create the same experience that one could have with a home console. This was something that I loved, as consoles had graphics and gameplay that was much more realistic; handhelds had much less to work with, and therefore, I feel that games were more imaginative as a result. With less in terms of technology to work with, gaming companies pretty much had to put their minds to work when developing handheld games.

What’s really funny about games today, especially indie games, is that, in a sense, the creators are going back to their retro gaming roots. Games like Braid, Super Meat Boy and Limbo all bring something different to the table in terms of an experience. This is something that companies like Nintendo have had in their back pocket for many, many years, especially in the handheld market. But then when the App Store rolled out in 2007, Nintendo suddenly had competition. The name however, wasn’t a familiar one.

The early stages of the App Store’s life were pretty rough. There were a few games out there, but none of them were really worth wasting a breath on. Sure, they were new, and they sort of took advantage of new technology, but none of them really made you feel as though you couldn’t play these games anywhere else. Around this time, I had a Nintendo DS and a Sony PSP, and I, like many others in the gaming community, scoffed at the idea that an iPhone or an iPod touch could give hardcore gamers the experience that they wanted. Of course in 2011, it’s getting harder and harder to tell what that is specifically.

In 2008, a game called Rolando was released by a company called ngmoco; it was a game where the player directed these little blobs to an exit within the stage while avoiding all sorts of obstacles. It sounds pretty generic, but that’s not the point. The point is that the game took advantage of the iPod. You could tap the screen and use the accelerometer within the iPod to move the characters around—everything just had a nice flow to it.

The other point worth mentioning was that Rolando was built with the iPod in mind; it wasn’t a port of another game that was built for a system with physical buttons. I wasn’t really sure what to think: Could an original game that was created for the iPod, and sold for $4.99, really compete with a Sony or a Nintendo handheld experience? After all, Apple never considered any of their computers, let alone any of their iPod family, to be gaming machines. It was never something they cared too much about.

Even though Rolando wasn’t a runaway success, it did make me think that if some developers (indie or otherwise) created an experience that was actually made for the device a consumer was playing on, then gaming on these devices could be very successful. Not only that, but an avenue Apple had never been a part of before is now one of the very things that is a major selling point behind the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Once developers finally were able to wrap their heads around what these iOS devices could do, the floodgates opened up. Suddenly, not only did you have original games created by smaller indie teams—such as Angry Birds, Flight Control and Sword and Sworcery, to name a few—but many of the big name developers—Rockstar Games (Grand Theft Auto), Square Enix (Final Fantasy) and Electronic Arts (Dead Space) for example—also had games that were making appearances in the App Store. As a gamer, this really surprises me, because there’s a nice mixture of everything. There are casual games, and then there are those that you can really lose yourself in for hours. There are now just so many games to choose from, and I, for one, couldn’t be happier.