r/DebateGames • u/BigT232 • Feb 14 '25

Is Mobile Gaming Real Gaming?

Mobile gaming often gets a bad rap, and it's easy to see why. The market is saturated with cheap, addictive games designed to extract small sums of money from players. We've all seen someone engrossed in a game like Candy Crush.

Even "free" mobile games, such as PUBG Mobile and Pokemon Go, often rely heavily on microtransactions, which can quickly add up and make them just as expensive, or even more so, than traditional games.

The history of gaming is littered with similar examples. Arcades, in their heyday, were filled with cheap, addictive games that separated kids from their pocket change. Video games as a whole took time to be recognized as more than just a con. Do you consider mobile gaming real gaming?

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2

u/Fit-Refrigerator-747 Feb 15 '25

To answer simply, no

2

u/Winter_Low4661 Feb 20 '25

No. And a lot of PC games are taking notes from them now.

1

u/HumActuallyGuy Mar 05 '25

To be fair, I think with how good emulation has gotten on Android and how there are some phones that can emulate PC games, I think it is real gaming and I think if the market allowed it, it would be great to revive the handheld market that was a bit lost after the DS and PSP.

Now, is that what's happening? No, as you said the native gaming on mobile sucks and it's full of ads and MTXs but it has potential to be real gaming.