Difficulties of playing mobile games

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about my main issues when playing mobile games. These special games mostly implement the device’s touchscreen as input method which frequently results in falsely recognized inputs.

About a month ago, I finally started to play mobile games on a more frequent basis. As mobile games are played on cellphones, they can be used almost anywhere as long as I have my mobilde device with me. Also, the gameplay of those games is designed to be paused at any time and thus allows for quick and short game sessions. This especially is great as I currently do not have much time available to play computer games but still like to continue one of my favorite hobbies.

In contrast to other gaming devices, mobile games mostly implement the cellphone’s touchscreen as the core input method. As a result of this, the interactions have to be designed in a very simple way and be mapped to touch or drag gestures. The functionality of the touchscreen, however, adds another constraint to the interactions. A user can not simply keep a finger placed at a specific position to be ready for an upcoming input as it would be possible with traditional input devices. By keeping a finger on the sensor, the game potentially recognizes wrong inputs and can not be played successfully.

Another problem that can occur is the recognition of wrong inputs. For instance, Fallout Shelter allows a player to change the own perspective by touching the screen and „dragging“ the scenery around. The same interaction, however, needs to be performed to assign one of the virtual inhabitants of the user’s vault to a new task. As a result of this, I occasionally experience issues when I like to assign a dweller to a new task or when I like to change my perspective and accidently grab one of my inhabitants.

Therefore, as some kind of guideline, it is necessary to carefully decide how a user shall interact with the game and how to ensure a good usability of the selected interactions. In addition, it is critical to avoid assigning different interactions to the same gesture that can be performed on the same screen.