Ever since the iPod touch was first released there have been games released taking advantage of it's unique touch screen and accelerometer combination. I got an iPod touch on release of the 1st generation; before there was an App store, and I remember reading online about people who had jailbroken their devices in order to play games. We're going back 3 or so years, before I was man enough to take the plunge into what I believed at the time to be illegal water, and so I thought I would forever have an iPod touch without games. Thinking back I can't actually remember why I wanted one in the first place, especially as a first iPod/MP3 player. Luckily Apple got their act together and released the app store, It wasn't quite what it is now, it was all maze games and papi jump. The big developers didn't know what to do with it at all and the little developers didn't know how to use it to its full potential, spawning endless duplicates of the same game. papi jump met it's match with doodle jump: in the same way that introducing your wife to your more attractive, better dressed and more intelligent co-worker, papi jump was quickly forgotten about and doodle jump slept in it's bed with every iPod/iPhone owner in the world telling it how much better it is.
I've lost my point.
Oh yes, I'll skip a bit of history and take you to where I'm going with this: angry birds.
Angry birds has a simple concept. Use a catapult to fling various birds at fortresses, in those fortresses are pigs and the aim of the game is to kill all the pigs, but you all know that by now. If you haven't played it on your own iDevice you've no doubt played it on your friends. In fact when a friend gets hold of my iPod the first thing they do after hammering at the Facebook icon is hammer at the angry birds icon, in fact I became so frustrated with people wasting my battery in the middle of the day I went and deleted the blasted thing. A sacrifice well made I assure you.
Something about this simple concept is apparently incredibly inviting to EVERYONE. anyone from the younger users who frequently show you how far they've got in the game, the teens who frequently show you how far they've got in the game all the way up to the old folk in their suits drinking their wine showing you how far they've got in the game is enjoying it. If you handed them this on a game boy advance 5 or so years ago they would have humoured you for 10 minutes before becoming irritated with your company and bored of the game, but now it's on their phones and instantly accessible they have fallen in love with it and have to talk about it with their other friends who have it. The whole situation reminds me of an old joke:
"how do you know if someone has an iPhone?"
"they'll tell you."
Yes, angry birds is an example of the casual gaming explosion over the face of the innocent general public schoolgirl, it would have been frowned upon 20 years ago but now everyone's just used to it. Lesser known perhaps is casual indie game 'cut the rope' or casual indie game 'tiny wings' or casual indie game 'street fighter 4'.
Or not as the case may be. Yes street fighter, a game that in the late 80s was so big it had to be played on a box twice the size of the player, and now in 2011 can be played on a small phone sized object that's not only better than the arcades were, but better than the human race, apparently.
It's street fighter alright, you kick and punch, you use a virtual joystick to control your character and the whole thing has a 2.5D perspective that looks like you're playing it on a big console screen, it's smart, very smart. It seems the big developers have turned to the iOS devices, I don't mean to drag an old cliche up from the dead but it really is 'big releases but on a small screen', it's almost becoming a device entirely used for gaming, with the iPad taking over the old functions of an iPod touch such as reading books or comics or watching your weight or updating your twitter or checking your facebook or...other things, the games are becoming the most important part as your other functions are trusted to the bigger brother.
It's certainly more diverse than a console, with an infinitely wider audience, apple should really start marketing it as a gaming device with multimedia capabilities rather than an iPhone that can't call people (yawn), that way they gather in the gamers and amass themselves a hefty collection of money that they can pump into the development of the iDeathRay. A device they will inevitably 'invent' with features that include:
two cameras so you can see the joy on your own face whilst simultaneously seeing the sadness of the race you're enslaving.
A 10 hour battery life, because taking breaks is slave talk.
And it has angry birds too. Yipee.
Max Lowndes Wright
