Introduction to Video Games

Discuss about the Wide Popularity Of Mobile Video Games.

The wide popularity of video games makes developer realize the necessity to develop more communal platforms for enormous amount of players with less operational cost and ease availably. Mobile games are referred to the games played on the cell phone screen. This essay discuss broad about the mobile games and why this games are frequently denigrated as being “casual”. This essay also widely discuss about the Clash of Clans impact on the social, technical and economical revenue with suitable examples.

Video games can be define as an electronic game that involves interaction with user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. The term “video game” has completely shed its definition and encompass a wide range of technology.  Nowadays, the term “video games” is used for anything that associated with game played on hardware built with electronic logic circuit and displays user feedback on screen.  As the technology around us is evolving rapidly, video games are also evolving dramatically from the typical arcade games to modern RPG, FPS and many more. The desire of intellectual graphics and rich experience evolves the platforms of video games from Pong to PS4 and Xbox ONE.  However, the Platforms for playing video games are not limited to PC and consoles. Usually, for playing high graphics video games such as COD WW2, Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege a dedicated system is necessary that usually cost more than 80 AUD excluding the purchase cost of specific games (Furió et al. 2014). Many people would not spend this amount of money for just killing some time to get over with boredom. The wide popularity of video games makes developer realize the necessity to develop more communal platforms for enormous amount of players with less operational cost and ease availably. This popularity results development of Nintendo and mobile gaming (De Souza e Silva & Hjorth, 2009). According to some survey result conducted on worldwide, the total smartphone user has grown to 2.5 billion that just over 36 percent of world’s population. As the mobile phones became popular the mobile games are also evolved from typical snake to games like Clash of Cans, angry birds and many more. The mobile phones popularity grows very much in this decade with the easy availability of smartphones which can provide user a wide screen and touch access to experience many genres such as action, adventure, role playing, simulation, strategy, and racing.

Evolution of Video Games

Mobile games are referred to the games played on the cell phone screen. The mobile games are frequently denigrated as being “casual”. At early stage of mobile game development, the mobile games were designed simply for lack of pixels and miles of code. Many mobile phone user engaged with the snake, Tetris or Sudoku for a long amount of time. Especially students and employees spend lot of times with those easy interface games for get over with boredom.  Mobile gaming was associated with these three titles as much as Mario was with gaming as a whole. This games were targeted at or used by casual gamers as this are distinguished by simple rules. For playing this type of games not much of skills and on –time demand is required. A surveyed in 2007 stayed that more than 74% of the casual gamers are female (Hwang et al. 2016). Aside the gender involvement in those games this games are easy to play and most of them comes with free full licensed version. Most casual games have similar basic features:

• Familiarity like board game or card game.
• Simple gameplay like puzzle.
• Easy to reach the final stage of the game.
• Allowing gameplay in short bursts, during work breaks or, in the case of portable and cell phone games, on public transportation.

Now the question arise, why they are called casual games and what is the significance of it’s among other games.  As demonstrate earlier, this games does not required any skills to win in contrast to complex hardcore games. Generally, Pc and consoles games required much practice, knowledge and familiarity of the virtual surrounding in order to compete with other players or reach the final stage. Gamers has to spend lot of time daily with this hardcore games just to maintain the eye and hand coordination.  According to some gamers who does not even consider the mobile game players as a gamer, every single of mobile phone game can be considered as casual. Somebody who never played any games in mobile or does not even use mobile before will be able to play the mobile games more or less (Cota, Ishitani & Vieira, 2014). In other platforms there is no chance of winning until user practice or had some skills. Anybody can just pick-up any mobile games from the play store or i-tunes and complete it with no challenges. However, not everybody agree with the statement (Chow, Foo & Manai, 2014). As the technology is evolving the typical mobile games are getting complex. For instance there are many strategy games available now in stores which required optimal decision making skills to compete with other players or win certain stages such as Clash of Clans, clash royal and many more.  There also some popular Pc games which are letter developed or the mobiles such as Grand Theft Auto and Player’s Unknown Battle Ground.  Though the games shares same interface and actions, the way of interaction is differ from each other. The game play is more complex in the console than mobile. However, this games cannot be define as a casual cause some phones even allow external input device like mouse, keyboard and controllers.

Mobile Games: The Emergence of Casual Gaming

When it comes to mobile gaming the supercell must be introduced which is the popular name of the mobile game franchise that powered games like Clash OF clans also known as COC. COC is the most widely popular game that was developed for both IOS and Android in all over the world. It has consecutive rating of 4.6 and 4.5 in play store and i-tunes of the Apple. It is basically a strategy game where players from groups to compete with other groups. COC claims that they have 100 million daily active user. The maker of the Clash of Clans mobile game, Supercell, says its pre-tax profit last year grew more than 60 percent to EUR 838 million ($964 million) while revenue surged a third to 2.1 billion euros (Hsiao & Tsai, 2014). COC uses effective approaches to attract new user and keep their existing user engaged. COC is all about the head to head battle. This player versus player approach attract many player to create their own personalized base and win over other groups. Right now, Clash Royale is only available for iOS in Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, and New Zealand. Like most things in soft launch, Supercell is interested to know how existing hardcore fans of Clash of Clans play Clash Royale. The interaction with many people in all over the world makes it more superior than others. It was globally launched in 2012 in app stores and from then the game is still stealing the thunder from newbie apps, raking in in 1,141,815 U.S. dollars a day. Players has the ability to customize their village in term of defense and attack. They can also assist other team members by providing those troops and other attacking utilities. As it is a strategy game, user needs to apply many different strategies for attack or defense their village from other individuals.

COC is a very addictive game as millions of children are obsessed with their virtual village. They spend lot of their important time just to cook the troops. It is so addictive that they cannot left the game even after crossing their tonnages age (Chou, Hung & Hung 2014). Not only it’s consume time, it also effect mental equilibrium of children. In some cases, children losses their focus on the real world and constantly engage in the game.  Even when doing something else they think about different strategies and what upgrade they should do at a point of time they compromise their daily schedule and may even sleep less just to win over other clans and upgrade the village. Teenagers became more unsocial zed and spend most of their day just playing.  Some physical issues also can be occurred for obsessive gameplay. For lack of physical activity and continuous gazing at screen can impact the body in a negative manner. Pain in neck and shoulders are common issues which are faced by most of them. Other than that, obsessive gameplay can cause finger and thump damage, dry eyes and muscle contraction. Continues gameplay also effect the mobile device as it results fast battery drain, heating and screen damage (Abdullah, Rusli & Ibrahim, 2014). There are cases where children throw away their device in anger that results permanent damage or by trying to use x mod hack by rooting phone which may brick the phone. This type of hacks are widely popular as it provide an extra edge to the players for earning more XP.

Clash of Clans: A Breakthrough in Mobile Gaming

COC is a successful product from SUPERCELL point of view as it’s attract both casual and hardcore gamers and the online multiplayer app  has caught the attention of millions of users who play daily and also bring friends to the platform to play with them in their “clans”. They also provides frequent updates to give the presence of new gaming experience for existing players. They makes lot of revenue by offering optional items through i-tunes and play store. In game currency as known as gems can be bought by real money which are used to advance faster and catch up with other friends that started before them. One can use this gems to upgrade their town hall in no time which usually take weeks to complete (Chen 2015). Users frequently spends 1-2$ to buy this items. This micro transaction process is a brilliant approach to earn more money without even making any crucial adjustment to their investment.   The popularity of the game grown so much that it gains a huge amount of revenue from just external sources which assist them to generate indirect network effects and enhancing the in-game experience for current user. There are several YouTube videos and apps are available just to provide strategies and effective gameplay. They provide useful hints and free gems to user.  A clear example is Chief Pat’s YouTube channel. With over a million subscribed users watching his weekly videos, he earns over $100.000 a year for his content plus “sponsorship” from advertisers to buy in-game items, transferring part of the advertising revenues to Supercell.

The main key of COC is the CLANS. They were successful to develop a clan based architecture where users are psychological inclined to codify themselves into groups for a sense of belonging and defense.  Enabling user to communicate with each other and sharing gaming components has been a great way to increase the platform’s stickiness. For this effective approaches they were able to achieve such strong network effects.  This network effects also allow to generate value for players and also third-parties which in return will capture value from advertisers and transfer part of it to your platform. The main factor is COC is able to achieve a large user base in their six years of life spam (Cata 2017). Though there are other strategy games like COC in the same platform. It is hard to compete with them because it takes lot of time to manage and upgrade town halls. Being a really addicting type of game, users usually only have time to spend on of them and they have already chosen.

Negative Impact of Obsessive Gameplay

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