Ten Years Later, 'Monument Valley' Is a Monument to Mobile Gaming's Bygone Era (opens in new tab)

Interesting bit about the Apple Store redesign. I game on my computer and consoles, but haven't installed a new phone game is probably 5+ years. Usually when I am in an airport I scroll through the App Store, and I am shocked by how similar it looks every time. You have drill down to see anything but Fremium/Gambling/Sports games, and even then the list looks 10 years old.

Flash had a really vibrant games ecosystem. And for a while it seemed like mobile would take up the torch for minigames, but it has really dropped it. It seems next to impossible to self publish, and the cross compilation frameworks never quite got to parity with native. I have seen some Indie PC games publish mobile versions, but they are never as good. And mostly they seem to exist because otherwise someone will straight copy your game and publish it to the app store, assets and all.

But this is indicative of the games industry. It is massive, but you look at the breakdown and most of its gambling with extra steps. So has the games industry grown, or the gambling industry using new media?

Even ustwo can't really manage to bottle that lightning again. Their most recent title, Desta, is about working through your issues over a game of dodgeball. It's cute, but not exactly brilliant. It's hard to control, and worse, it has more of a "tell" than "show" feeling to its message.

Like with hit movies, it's incredibly hard to predict just what's going to attract people's attention. At least Monument Valley was cheap to build, which is one of its biggest wins.