Yes, Netflix has games. No, that's not bad.
Plus the future of folding phones, and the history of second-screen gaming
Hello there! Welcome to the future because this week we’re talking about Netflix games, folding phones and memory cards with tiny screens in them.
Alice is in America anticipating some new gadget goodness this week, so the newsletter is a little light on Lego and board game talk. To make up for it I thought I’d regale you with something brick-related that’s been on my mind. I love Lego Mario, and the sight of the new Peach’s Castle set hitting shelves has me weighing up whether the kids really need new shoes when they could have $210 worth of regal magic and goomba cake.
But I think I’ve come to terms with the fact that I love the idea of Lego Mario more than the reality. I don’t have room to keep dozens of sets and characters out at all times, and packing them away means hours of rebuilding later. The kids and I also enjoy them in very different ways, which means play is frustrating for all involved. Maybe I’ll stick to digital representations of Peach’s castle.
Give subs a chance
By Tim
Netflix has offered mobile games on iOS and Android to its subscribers for more than half a year now, and while I’ve dipped in and out a few times it’s not something I’ve ever really discussed with anyone. They’ve just been fairly generic apps, and the company hasn’t done much to promote them. Until around a month ago.
When Netflix added Poinpy, an excellent new game from the developer of Downwell, it sent a barely perceptible shiver through the discourse of my more indie-loving circles. And when Netflix added Into the Breach, a sublime game from the creators of FTL, I actually had people reaching out to engage me in conversation about it. And not because they were excited; they were less than pleased.
We’ve been through the same thing with Apple Arcade; when it added a new Shantae game at launch, or a new RPG from Mistwalker. Console gamers seem very resistant to games they like coming to mobile as part of a subscription. But for me, it’s a positive change.
For years mobile platforms have been really unfriendly for traditional gamers and traditional game-makers. It’s saturated with games you can get for free, competing viciously for visibility and only able to make money through often-exploitative in-app purchases.
Sure Into the Breach could have hit the store at $20, but after investing in the mobile port its creators would have been taking a massive risk. Should they have to lower the price? Just hope it doesn’t get completely buried and forgotten? Build in monetisation hooks that compromise the experience?
If you don’t want to subscribe to Netflix but do want to play Into the Breach on mobile, of course the situation sucks, but the alternative could well be the game doesn’t come to mobile at all. Apple and Netflix are pushing a model that’s imperfect but in some ways superior to mobile app stores. Creators of quality games get guaranteed compensation, and players know the games contain no ads, gambling or microtransactions.
What to play
Two Point Campus, the university-themed sequel to management sim Two Point Hospital, is out now and included in Game Pass. In a welcome twist on the kind of thing you’d get in Theme Park or various Tycoon games, the point here is not just to make money but to ensure happy, healthy and high-performing students as well, which is quite the balancing act. Also new on Game Pass is Cooking Simulator, if you’re into that kind of thing (it’s also discounted to $3 on Switch).
Coming up on Apple Arcade this week is virtual pet My Talking Tom, which looks unintentionally terrifying, but also seems to have versions of all the mini-games I (Alice) love in free-to-play games, but get frustrated that they’re paid to win. So, I’m actually really looking forward to playing it when I get back to Australia.
Are folding phones good for gamers? Not yet.
By Alice
Tomorrow, Samsung is probably going to be unveiling a new folding phone. Probably. (That’s what the rumours say, anyway, and it’s a pretty safe bet). While we don’t yet know what it’s going to be like, the concept of folding phones offer the possibility of more exciting, larger gaming experiences.
I say possibility, because currently the aspect ratios of folding phones aren’t standard, which means some games that aren’t optimised for it can look weird, and companies are still working out the kinks and finding a way to make them comfortable to hold and use for hours on end.
So, while the future is unknown, let me put my wish list out there for the perfect folding gamer phone:
The small, unfolded screen is the same aspect ratio as standard phones, so you can play your usual mobile games while on the go, so smaller developers don’t have to optimise for folding phones if they don’t want, but folding phone owners don’t miss out.
The bigger, unfolded screen, has a lighting fast refresh rate and minimal input lag. The crease is more gentle. Maybe the solution to make it more comfortable to hold without making it too thick to fit into a pocket is optional, detachable grips, maybe using magnets (like MagSafe). The screen is more 16:10 than 4:3.
Most importantly, there would be a 3.5mm jack. Not necessarily for gaming, I just like them.
It would be the ultimate beast for Xbox Cloud Streaming. It would truly be the portable, foldable tablet I originally hoped folding phones would be.
I don’t think we’ll get there in tomorrow’s announcement, but I want to put this here as my request for the future. I’ve been using my Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 for gaming more and more as the year has gone by, but every time I play I just wish it were better. The technology is still so new, but it’s nice to be excited by the possibility something like this holds.
Retro Esoterica
by Tim
The Sega Dreamcast was ahead of its time in a number of ways, but something that often gets overlooked is the VMU. This tiny unit served triple duty as a memory card, a secondary display and a Tamogotchi-style virtual pet. It was never fully utilised — my favourite uses were real-time health information in Resident Evil: Code Veronica, and the Chao games from Sonic Adventure — and it obliterated coin batteries, but it was the first step on an exciting quest to make second-screen gaming a thing.
That quest, as you may know, has been more or less abandoned. And it’s sad to think about how many imaginative ideas, and how many great game experiences, may be lost to history as old games are experienced purely as software in emulation.
Something about games being spread across different kinds of devices — especially in a multiplayer context — is very appealing to me, and speaks to an (outdated) idea of game systems as toys rather than homogenous content delivery machines.
After Sega, Nintendo picked up the idea with its Gamecube-GBA link cable. In Pac-Man Vs, players with gamepads control ghosts on the TV, while a Pac-Man player on a GameBoy avoids them. In The Legend of Zelda: Fours Swords Adventures, up to four players control Links to explore together on the big screen, but whenever they enter a house or dungeon or cave their view moves to their own private screen.
And it worked for more traditional designs too. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles used the GBA purely so each player could sort through their own menus without pausing the game. And The Wind Waker has a purely optional (but awesome) item that lets you view and interact with your game from a top-down view in real time.
Unfortunately the idea was taken to its logical conclusion with the Wii U — a system that was entirely based on the premise of having a second screen — and it bombed spectactularly. Sony and Microsoft shelved their own second-screen efforts at around that time.