Why do people hate mobile games?

Other Games
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This has been going around the internet for a while now, that there are constant people complaining about how much mobile games suck how a lot of people don’t like them, and all of this kind of stuff mainly in the wake of the Diablo Immortal scandal, but here is what I am curious about…

The main complaint about mobile games from a lot of people isn’t that the screen is small, but it’s the word “micro-transaction” is this the main reason?

It’s just that…let’s be honest, world of warcraft has made micro transactions from years, your sub gives you what you need to play the game but if you want every single cool mount you have to buy things off the store…personally, I get mounts gifted to me and have gifted mounts and pets to others as Christmas gifts and so on, and I actually don’t mind because believe me it makes my Christmas shopping much, much easier…

So I don’t hate micro-transactions they do have their benefits, they aren’t the worst thing in the world…I suppose if it becomes mandatory to win the game to do the micro-transactions that would be a bit annoying. I mean personally I don’t like mobile phones that much, the only time I’d ever play games on it is if I was waiting at the doctors surgery, but unfortunately my Android phone didn’t come with free games like my old Nokia phone did. So I just use my phone to scan the internet when bored and nothing else to do.

What are your thoughts?

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Taking a page out of Yahtzees book:

There are broadly speaking two types of games. Games that make you feel, and games that make you numb. And mobile games, unfortunately, exist predominantly in the latter category.

Many mobile games are derivatives of one another. They are designed to be, and succeed amazingly at, hitting our skinnerbox addiction receptors. They are made to make us numb, so that whatever reward they then throw at us seems like excitement. This can come in a multitude of ways (timewalls, grinding, finally getting through the last ad) but always work to walk the balance of reward and boredom in waiting for the next reward.

This is, I believe, why microtransactions on many mobile games are lambasted the way they are. Because the game is made to hook you, hit your addiction reflex, and then bore and exhaust you until you pay up. You then get reward, keep playing, and the cycle continues. The purpose is to numb you.

Also, let’s not speculate on how many articles are headlined by “My child spent X000 dollars on this game from hell”. Scary stories like these have leveled some stigma to the entire mobile gaming scene.

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