Thread with 9 posts
jump to expanded post
Let me tell you a little story about technology, games, me, and… ridiculous passion projects.
Early in 2008, Apple were about to release the long-awaited iPhone SDK. For the first time, 3rd-party developers would be able to write native apps for the iPhone.
Prior to the launch event, Apple gave a few third-party devs early access to the SDK, to see what they could make in a few weeks. One of those devs was SEGA (or possibly a subcontractor of SEGA), who decided to port Super Monkey Ball from the Nintendo DS:
Amazing demo, right? Despite being based originally on code from the DS game, it was on a completely different planet on every technical level.
A few weeks later, they’d made a finished game: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6hgnrOW5SkA
It was a launch title for the iPhone App Store!
Sometime in late 2008, I saw that game (…and other Apple marketing…), and became convinced that iPhone OS apps were the future of gaming. The difference from the DS was just… night and day. I wanted to play games like that, with smooth high-res graphics and tilt controls!
I was 12 or 13 when all this was happening. In early 2009 I was was lucky enough to be able to buy an iPod touch (2nd generation), and of course, Super Monkey Ball was one of the first things I downloaded. It was fantastic! The music on the first levels stuck with me especially.
Eventually, of course, the iPhone would prove that it was not the future of gaming. The marketplace evolved into a swamp of cynical cash-grabs…
But I remembered those gems. Gems like Super Monkey Ball! Many years later, I got a new iPhone and could re-download it.
@hikari mobile platforms feel so weird. games earn the majority of revenue on them, but the platform holders never seem to be interested in supporting them as works or building communities around them
@rectus it’s a sad case study in the problems with capitalism, isn’t it? encouraging making profit is beneficial up to some point, but at the extreme, it creates literal or metaphorical toxic sludge
@hikari very true, although it feels like there is more to it. seems like apple got in at right time to restart it on a clean slate, without all the culture and expectations of console and pc platforms, and managed to redefine how games are allowed to be structured.
the extremely closed down platform and limited input options have a huge impact on what kind of games are viable to make, and what kind of communities can form around them. there is no natural way of players to meet unless the individual game developers make a huge effort to build meeting spaces for a community.