Eurogamer rates Dungeon Keeper for iOS: 1 out of 10
Eurogamer rates Dungeon Keeper for iOS: 1 out of 10
I mention this not to suggest that all recent iOS games are this bad–clearly, this one has struck a chord with people–but because it shows the logical conclusion of the in-app-purchase trends that have become almost impossible to avoid in the games section of the App Store.
It’s particularly notable in that, in the video games press, the lowest score a game is likely to receive, even from a reviewer who found nothing redeeming about it and would not recommend it to anyone, is 5 or 6 out of 10. This author wasn’t just writing a review; he was driving a stake in the ground. It seems that there has been some collective pent-up frustration about the state of the App Store, and this game in particular has become the focal point for it.
So no, not all iOS games are this bad; but this is the one they will all be compared to from now on. EA will ease up a little bit, and be more cautious. They won’t really change–not EA, or any of the other developers–but they’ll make some small concessions. The same cynically exploitative mechanisms will still be there. Comments in reviews will say things like ‘it has all this stuff we hate, but at least it’s not as bad as Dungeon Keeper’, as if that’s somehow deserving of praise1. When you have nothing decent to compare it to, the least-bad thing starts to look pretty good. There was a time when games were evaluated based on how much fun you would have, rather than avoided based on how irritated they would make you.
Gruber likes to say that the best camera is the one you have with you–meaning, an iPhone is superior, in a way, to all other cameras, merely because you’re more likely to actually use it. A corollary, as every kid without rich parents knows implicitly, is that the best game system is the one that you own2. No matter how outdated or underpowered. You make do with what you’ve got, and find a way to squeeze as much enjoyment out of it as possible.
This is what I think a Sony executive might have been getting to when he recently said that the decline of Nintendo would be a bad thing for the entire industry. If certain parents, who know or care nothing about video games, buy their children iOS devices to the exclusion of consoles (or even PCs), then those kids may grow up never knowing what a real video game is, and eventually give up on the idea altogether.