beergeek

Fallout Shelter — a mobile game / promotional app gone horribly wrong.

It’s obvious now that I’ve dedicated hours and hours to this game that Bethesda never planned on anyone actually playing this much. Fallout Shelter itself is very unlike Bethesda. It’s very shallow in the story department. And it’s really a bad free-to-play game as there’s nothing new to do after getting so far. After hitting 100 people and unlocking the Nuka Cola room, it’s just breeding these little people like livestock to get to 200. It just wasn’t designed to be a hit — but it became one. Now what?

If Bethesda had any idea that this game was going to be a hit they would surely have added variety, depth, story, and even a little bit of skill to the game. As it stands right now all it took to get to 200 residents was to just check in 3-4 times per day. Oh, and move all the high charisma men to the residence rooms / livestock breeding chambers.

Unlike any other hit free to play game on mobile, there’s no sign of any updates, new storylines, or new features. Not to mention it is in dire need of optimization as it brings my iPhone 6+ to its knees and nearly sets it on fire. Or perhaps that’s the all the heat from the bedrooms in the game?

It’s obvious to me that this was a throwaway — just meant to be a diversion for Fallout fans leading up to the release of Fallout 4 later this year. They had no intention of anyone actually dedicating time to this game. But wow, so many people have taken to it. Maybe now that it is a genuine hit and it’s shown that it’s a real revenue stream, Bethesda will dedicate a little time to it. With proper care it could easily make more money than Fallout 4 will — and certainly outlive the shelf life of Fallout 4.

Winter is Coming! (for gaming)

It seems like every third party console gaming company has decided it’s time to make mobile games now. Unfortunately instead of breathing a little fresh air into the mobile industry by bringing their originality and creativity, they are falling over each other to release the shittiest match-3 possible. And they are doing so while trying to convince the world it has “the fun and the pedigree of our studio.” “No one has ever made a match-3 on a sphere before.”

It’s still a fucking match-3. What happened to the vision of their studio? These studios used to push the limits to the absolute bounds. They would release things that would move gaming in a new direction. But now they just want to try to do the same thing as all the rest, and not nearly as well. There’s nothing wrong with a match-3 — but it’s been done to death.

How degrading must it be for these teams to go from working on a state of the art 3D environmental open world game with real originality and amazing engineering to crapping out a fucking match-3? It’s like they have given up. They have lost their direction, their drive, and their inspiration.

Before it’s too late, bring some of the studio’s insane talent to mobile games and make these match-3 companies run in fear. Show the world that gaming isn’t dead. Embrace the fact that gaming is becoming pervasive and release the next big thing on all platforms at once. Don’t give up the quest for making something original.