If indie games are underreported, mobile games must be invisible | Opinion
James Kaye
Monday 25th July 2022
If you're a regular Twitter user and keep up to date with gaming news on the platform, you'll be very aware of the gaming Twitter discourse that happens at least once a month.
At the end of May, indie game coverage (or the lack thereof) was the subject of discourse. The replies from those sharing their thoughts paint a pretty complicated picture, from nuances around the SEO value of indie game coverage to some indie studios lacking the PR resources to get their times out there.
All of this got me thinking about mobile games, which share a lot of the same challenges as indie games when it comes to coverage and representation but have a 60% market share of the global gaming industry, and generate triple the amount of revenue as console and PC/Mac games.
Simon Carless from The GameDiscoverCo pointed out in a recent newsletter that the mobile gaming market is rarely discussed in great detail outside of specialist websites despite its immense size.
When mobile games are covered, that coverage is limited to financial updates on major mobile titles from the likes of Nintendo, news on AAA ports such as Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Mobile, or negative stories on monetisation methods, the most recent example being backlash to Diablo Immortal.
Source: Data.ai and ADC
It's a shame, mainly when negative headlines surround a major release such as Diablo Immortal; it gives the impression the entire industry lacks substance and is nothing more than a giant pool of microtransactions. That couldn't be further from the truth, especially with Diablo Immortal, which you can sink 40 hours and complete without having to spend a single penny. With the added bonus that it's also an excellent game, surely that's good
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