Gaming
How gaming on mobile phones evolved over the last 20 years
Mobile phones are now an absolutely core part of the lives of most people and during the last 20 years they have undergone rapid technological advances that enable them to be used for multiple purposes. Instead of just being efficient devices for communicating on the move, mobiles now allow us to listen to music, watch videos and play games; making them entertainment centres. It is the gaming aspect that this article will look into, examining how this has changed during that period.
Mobile gaming really began back in the 1990s, even though the mobile phones that existed back then were a great deal more primitive than the ones we are used to today. During this time, retro games with simple graphics such as Snake and Pong became available to play on mobiles that had the Symbian operating system developed by Nokia. This was a period when Nokia was the market leader and major innovator and it essentially brought gaming to users of mobile phones. The most popular games that were available for 1990s Nokia phones were Snake, where you had to prevent a lengthening line from touching the sides of the screen, and space action game Space Impact. Nokia continued to be the mobile manufacturer that was pioneering new possibilities in mobile gaming when it launched the N-Gage phone in 2002. This was a direct bid to persuade console gamers to abandon them in favour of mobile, although it proved flawed due to issues with the controls and with the overall design – with the latter seeing it gain the unflattering nickname of ‘Taco phone’ due to its shape. Despite this, it was still a bold move by the company and indicated that gaming on mobile phones was a concept being taken seriously.
It was when the smartphone appeared on the scene that this really took off though, simply because it meant that there were finally phones with the technical specs to make gaming on them enjoyable. Smartphones are now used by 80 percent of those who also use the internet, with a large number of them being gamers. The internet connectivity has led to the rise of things like mobile casino websites such as those you can find on gamblinginsider.ca, which are spin-offs of standard online casinos, but with graphics that adjust to mobile browsers. These developments have made mobile gaming dependent on wi-fi connectivity in a way that it wasn’t in the past, but it has also led to the development of things like wireless controllers that are intended to enhance the mobile gaming experience. It has also seen sales of games apps go through the roof, with women now the dominant ones in terms of time spent playing them and money spent on in-app purchases.
As this piece has shown, mobile gaming has undergone a rapid evolution that few could have predicted back in the 1990s. Furthermore, with emergent tech such as virtual reality now moving into the mainstream, it is exciting to see what lies ahead for it.
Gaming
Ubisoft says that future Assassin’s Creed games will need more time to be made
As Assassin’s Creed Shadows is about to sneak up on people in November, Ubisoft says that the time between developing games needs to be longer to find the “right balance.” Shadows has been in development for four years, longer than any other game in the series up to this point. That includes the huge open-world epics Assassin’s Creed Odyssey and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
Shadows lead producer Karl Onnée (thanks, GamesIndustry.biz) says that the latest AC game took 25% longer to make than Valhalla. He says this is necessary to keep the quality of the series that it is known for: “It’s always a balance between time and costs, but the more time you have, the more you can iterate.” You can speed up a project by adding more people to it, but that doesn’t give you more time to make changes.
Onnée says this has as much to do with immersion and aesthetics as it does with fixing bugs and smoothing out pixels. This is because the development team needs time to learn about each new historical setting: “We are trying to make a game that is as real as possible.” We’re proud of it, and the process took a long time. In feudal Japan, building a house is very different from building a house in France or England in the Middle Ages. As an artist, you need to learn where to put things in a feudal Japanese home. For example, food might not belong there. Get all the information you need and learn it. That process takes a long time.”
You’ll have to wait a little longer for Ubisoft to work on each game. Are you okay with that? In what part of Shadows are you now? Is it interesting to you? Leave a comment below and let us know.
Gaming
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP on PS5
You can now pre-order Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP, a remaster that Dragami Games and Capcom both created. You can now pre-order the PS5 game on the PS Store for $44.99 or £39.99. If you have PS Plus, you can get an extra 10% off the price.
The company put out a new trailer with about three minutes of gameplay to mark the start of the pre-order period. Lollipop Chainsaw RePOP is a remaster of Grasshopper Manufacture’s crazy action game from 2012. You play as Juliet, a high school student who fights off waves of zombies.
The remaster adds RePOP mode, an alternative mode that swaps out the blood and gore for fun visual effects. It also adds a bunch of other features and improvements that make the game better overall. You can expect the graphics and sound to be better as well.
The game will now come out on September 12, 2024, instead of September 12, 2024. Are you excited to get back to this? Please cheer us on in the section below.
Gaming
This Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 zombies trailer is way too expensive
Is there really anyone who is following the story of Call of Duty’s zombie mode? We’ve known about the story in a vague way for a while, but we couldn’t tell you anything about it. It looks like the “Dark Aether” story will continue in Black Ops 6, but we don’t really know what that means.
For those of you who care, here is the official blurb with some background: “Requiem, led by the CIA, finally closed the last-dimensional portal, sending its inhabitants back to the nightmare world known as the Dark Aether, after two years of fighting zombie outbreaks around the world during the Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War timeline.”
Wait, there’s more! “Agent Samantha Maxis gave her life to seal this weird dimension from the inside out.” Even worse things were to come: senior staff members of Requiem were arrested without a reason by the Project Director, who turned out to be Edward Richtofen.
Black Ops 6 will take place about five years later, and it looks like it will show more about Richtofen’s goals and motivations. The most important thing is that you will probably be shooting an unimaginable number of zombies in the head. This week, on August 8, there will be a full reveal of the gameplay, so keep an eye out for that.
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