In the last couple of weeks, smartphone
gaming has come to the forefront in spectacular fashion with the sudden and
skyrocketing popularity of the frustrating retro-feel cluster headache that is
Flappy Bird, as well as its catastrophic downfall. There were times at the
height of the mania, when you could literally see people walking down the
street with Super Mario-esque noises coming from their iPhones. Hell, the
creator Dong Nguyen made the claim that Flappy Bird had ‘ruined [his] simple
life’. While it has come under a huge amount of scrutiny and criticism, I still
maintain an incredibly soft spot for the yellow avian demon, and smartphone
gaming as a whole. Even though at times it can almost feel impossible to
maintain a friendship with someone who plays Candy Crush obsessively (the
notifications alone just make me want to delete all of Facebook), mobile gaming
has a way of pervading modern society in a way that just hasn’t been afforded
to gaming in the past.
While the first incarnation of Pong was
released by Atari over 40 years ago, until very recently gaming seemed to live
very much in the domain of geekdom and was considered a waste of time by the
vast majority of the mainstream. However, as smartphones have become more
commonplace, and almost expected, in the last few years, gaming has begun to
reach a larger audience than ever before. By presenting a pastime (which has
the reputation of being somewhat ‘under the radar’) on a platform available to a
much larger proportion of the populace, we are taking the whole culture of
gaming out of the hands of the people who have illegitimately claimed it as
their own.
While it is true that for the last 30 or
so years, gaming has remained a bastion of nerd culture, this may not be the
healthiest place for it to reside. Nerd culture has some fantastic assets, such
as the creation of communities where people who are normally outsiders can feel
comfortable, and arguably nerd culture has helped the internet develop into
what it is today. However, despite the seemingly accepting appearance, there is
still a shockingly large misogynistic proportion of the nerd and gaming
community which treats their valued media and the discussion surrounding it as
an old boy’s club. In order to be ‘allowed’ to be a ‘true’ fan of any of these
jealously guarded manifestations of creativity, you must first fulfil a highly
specific list of criteria that has been created by the other ‘true fans’. It
can surely be argued that anything which takes the ‘ownership’ away from these
sorts of people can only be a good thing.
Despite the fact that women account for
45% of the game playing population, and 31% of the game playing population are
women over 18, gaming is still portrayed in the mainstream media as being
dominated largely by men. Not only does the media perpetuate this stereotype, but
gamers themselves do too. In an environment where an extremely popular source
of entertainment is dominated by a tiny minority of young, often self-entitled,
white males berating others not meeting their criteria as ‘fake’ gamers, the
popularity in smartphone gaming almost seems to be giving them the proverbial
finger. While the aforementioned gamers are engaged in flame wars as to which
next gen console is the best, the silent majority slip by and actually have
fun!
But it’s not just women who will see the
benefits from gaming becoming a more accepted part of the mainstream, it will
open up opportunities for older generations to join in on the action. As I’m
sure any of you with older relatives with Facebook accounts will know, social
games such as the dreaded Candy Crush Saga are a positive hit with the Baby
Boomers. It is understandable why puzzlers such as these with a simple premise
and colourful, friendly-looking graphics would be popular with the
inexperienced gamer. Smartphone games don’t seem anywhere near as daunting or
intimidating as first-person shooters such as Call of Duty, and appear to be a
safe and familiar path into the world of gaming. An added bonus is the relative
cheapness of smartphone video games, rarely more than a few quid and often cost
nothing; they seem relatively risk free when compared with the investment in a
gaming console which may well not agree with you. Coupled with the added simplicity
of using a platform you are already familiar with, not having to learn how to
use any of those fiddly controllers, the accessibility of smartphone games to
the older generation is spelling a success for the gaming world as a whole.
For me, smartphone gaming is almost a
gateway drug into the world of gaming. It is quick, affordable, and accessible
for the uninitiated, and a pleasant and more superficial way to pass time for
the hardcore gamer. It has opened up a whole universe to an unprecedented
amount of people from all walks of life. While the platform is far from
perfect, I’d argue that the addictive and slightly obnoxious nature of
smartphone games will help to bring gaming to the masses even more, and will be
a nail in the coffin of elitist gaming snobbery.
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