Kinda, Balatro is still largely a more traditional card game which couldve come out just as easily 30 years ago at least from a mechanical perspective. I feel like the easiest way is just to cut out a seperate area for phone games since theres minimal market overlap with consoles and PCs. Like ive only met one dude who seriously gamed on a “phone” and a PC, the phone was a Frankenstein monster that shared more DNA with a Steam deck but ill count it. Also most good phone games are either ports from more traditional formats or puzzle games of some type, I cant think of many phone games that jumped over to PC and console.
My point is that its not necessarily a difference in mechanics or even complexity but moreso one of market and culture.
Kinda, Balatro is still largely a more traditional card game which couldve come out just as easily 30 years ago at least from a mechanical perspective
Yeah, that part feels irrelevant to me. Sid Meier’s Civilization VII just launched.
And really, Balatro has as much to do with Slay the Spire and other deckbuilders as traditional card games.
I don’t understand separating puzzle games from gaming, either. Tetris was a huge part of why the Gameboy became a thing, and it keeps being more or less reinvented today. Back then, someone playing Tetris or even just chess on a computer was playing video games, period. And that was almost enough to call them nerds. That was “only” 40 years ago, compare that with any other medium.
What I am saying, is that this separation is blurry. Also look at the vast majority of games on any current platform, including Steam, and tell me it’s not full of poorly made barely interactive piece of shit on the level of the worst phone “games”.
The problem is that phone games seem either unwilling or incapable of evolving past puzzle games. Within 10 years of the gameboys release ya had simple rpgs like pokemon let alone platformers and other genre. Combine that with the minimal overlap in games between phones and consoles/PC and ya get two notably different groupings.
Like I said this is an issue of culture and markets, slop will always exist in the entertainment industy just look at books. No the problem is how folks are interacting with them and how the market changes and grows. Note in 1998 id have seperated out different consoles from eachother let alone PC from console, but the market overlap is practically a circle now. Both because they had different markets and the fact that the types of games reflected how folks were interacting with the medium MGS, Super Mario 64, and Daggerfall probably had minimal overlap for example.
Plus I aint denying that phone games are games, my point is that grouping them up with more traditional game mediums can be misleading. If we’re talking about women in gaming culture and their prevalence as a whole for example I dont really think Sharon the 55 year old nurse in Loma Linda California really factors in just because she plays bejeweled on her phone. Alice from Ipswich England who is actively doing an inbreeding contest in CK3 with her friends may actually be a factor.
My point is for data and how to best interpret it, not what counts as a whole. Seperating things out by market interconnection is probably the cleanest way of doing things. And Phone gaming is practically an independent market.
Where do you draw the line?
I passed the Balatro virus to my mother, she plays on a tablet. Is Balatro casual?
Kinda, Balatro is still largely a more traditional card game which couldve come out just as easily 30 years ago at least from a mechanical perspective. I feel like the easiest way is just to cut out a seperate area for phone games since theres minimal market overlap with consoles and PCs. Like ive only met one dude who seriously gamed on a “phone” and a PC, the phone was a Frankenstein monster that shared more DNA with a Steam deck but ill count it. Also most good phone games are either ports from more traditional formats or puzzle games of some type, I cant think of many phone games that jumped over to PC and console.
My point is that its not necessarily a difference in mechanics or even complexity but moreso one of market and culture.
Yeah, that part feels irrelevant to me. Sid Meier’s Civilization VII just launched.
And really, Balatro has as much to do with Slay the Spire and other deckbuilders as traditional card games.
I don’t understand separating puzzle games from gaming, either. Tetris was a huge part of why the Gameboy became a thing, and it keeps being more or less reinvented today. Back then, someone playing Tetris or even just chess on a computer was playing video games, period. And that was almost enough to call them nerds. That was “only” 40 years ago, compare that with any other medium.
What I am saying, is that this separation is blurry. Also look at the vast majority of games on any current platform, including Steam, and tell me it’s not full of poorly made barely interactive piece of shit on the level of the worst phone “games”.
The problem is that phone games seem either unwilling or incapable of evolving past puzzle games. Within 10 years of the gameboys release ya had simple rpgs like pokemon let alone platformers and other genre. Combine that with the minimal overlap in games between phones and consoles/PC and ya get two notably different groupings.
Like I said this is an issue of culture and markets, slop will always exist in the entertainment industy just look at books. No the problem is how folks are interacting with them and how the market changes and grows. Note in 1998 id have seperated out different consoles from eachother let alone PC from console, but the market overlap is practically a circle now. Both because they had different markets and the fact that the types of games reflected how folks were interacting with the medium MGS, Super Mario 64, and Daggerfall probably had minimal overlap for example.
Plus I aint denying that phone games are games, my point is that grouping them up with more traditional game mediums can be misleading. If we’re talking about women in gaming culture and their prevalence as a whole for example I dont really think Sharon the 55 year old nurse in Loma Linda California really factors in just because she plays bejeweled on her phone. Alice from Ipswich England who is actively doing an inbreeding contest in CK3 with her friends may actually be a factor.
My point is for data and how to best interpret it, not what counts as a whole. Seperating things out by market interconnection is probably the cleanest way of doing things. And Phone gaming is practically an independent market.