Pocket Tactics hired a new writer!

#44

TouchArcade mentioned the answer to that question yesterday in their Game of the Year article:

Before we get to that though, I’d just like to take a minute to shout out to everyone who supports us on Patreon and have shopped through our Amazon links this year. When Apple killed the App Store affiliate program earlier this year, that left those two things as the only things still keeping us afloat. If you’re not a Patreon person and/or don’t shop through our Amazon links, we’d really appreciate it if you’d check the above links out, particularly if you feel like you’ve gotten any value out of TouchArcade’s continued existence this year!

I wonder if TouchArcade will survive 2019. Apple cut the affiliate commission rates in 2017, but now they are completely gone, as of October 2018. TouchArcade mainly covers games of little interest to me, but that’s more a function of the games that are popular on the mobile platform now, rather than a decision on their part to ignore what I prefer.

I don’t know how true it still is, but I enjoyed the fact that devs would participate in their forums. I recall that it was there that I learned from the developer of the difficulties in working with Apple’s implementation for sync’ing Guild of Dungeoneering between iOS devices, for instance. That’s one of the reasons that I’m a minor Patreon there, as well as here.

More gloomy info, with a chart, at https://toucharcade.com/2018/12/28/best-iphone-games-of-2018-top-100-ios-games-buyers-guide/

Unfortunately, after ten years of hard work there just doesn’t seem to be a business model that works for third party editorial to survive in the booming economy of mobile games.

#45

Hah, as honoured as I would be, I don’t really like F2P either. I’ve made it no secret that mobile is not my primary gaming platform, but I do game on my phone from time to time. I’m more or less like you guys though. I play premium games (I usually wait to pick up something cheap and never spend more than say £3 on a game). I’ve dabbled in the odd F2P thing, some ok, some largely trash.

I think it can be done well, and PT has covered those games as and when they appear, but they are few and far between because being “done well” in the context of a premium-preferring audience doesn’t seem to be a sustainable model either, otherwise more devs would try it.

As I’ve alluded too in the past, I’m hoping games like Fortnite will lead to a salvation of sorts. That’s one of the most popular, most lucrative games in the world right now, and the primary way it monetises itself is via harmless skins and content passes. You don’t have to like Battle Royale itself, but say if they apply that model to the board game or strategy game genres - say you can buy customised playing pieces or meeples or whatever, it’s probably the best premium audiences can hope for, and it’s not all that intrusive IMO.

As far as editorial goes… losing the Apple revenue was annoying, but not as apocalyptic as TA made it sound for them. Now all we really have is ads and any other applicable affiliate schemes we can try to hitch on to. The sponsored content was helpful though, so like I said we’re going to be open to more if companies feel like they want to target our audiences directly.

I mean we probably weren’t going to cover Langrisser normally, since it’s F2P, but I can label the content as an ad and it can be treated as such, and who knows maybe someone did learn something or felt like checking it out (there are plenty of people who enjoy FE: Heroes and it’s targeting that audience after all). Every little helps and no harm was done from my point of view. It gives us the space to then invest in content on more important things.

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#46

I am glad to hear that! :+1:

Unfortunately, for TA it does sound like 2019 will be a challenge.

Without a serious surge in support I’m not sure how much of a runway we really have left. Apple killing the affiliate program really took us by surprise, likely dealing the final deathblow to the site.
https://toucharcade.com/2018/12/31/elis-2018-in-review/

I feel incredibly lucky to be able to write about video games for a living, but as we detailed in our top 100 post, TouchArcade is really hanging on by a thread nowadays, and I have no idea what will become of us in 2019.
https://toucharcade.com/2018/12/31/jareds-2018-in-review-some-fun-trips-a-lot-of-hard-work-and-of-course-tons-of-fantastic-mobile-games/

While I’m not invested in the type of games that currently dominate the mobile scene, I enjoy reading items such as Eli’s discussion of e-sports and AR spectating … I completely agree that I don’t understand the attraction of jumping around from player to player’s first-person perspective in a first-person shooter.

I find things like The Overwatch League to be borderline unwatchable, as they primarily just rapidly flip between the first person view of different players.

In Guns of Boom , you just load up the AR viewer and you can see the whole map, where all the players are, and you can move around to see other angles of the action. It was real, real weird being at the actual championship event, able to watch the players live, and having the in-app AR experience be better .

#47

About all the bad things and controversies around Toucharcade - the site is good for one thing tough:
Shaun Musgrave is Touch Arcade’s resident RPG-nerd and his dedication to and insights into the RPG-genre are a delight to read.

If the site goes down it may spell bad news for the already aching Premium (or any) mobile gaming market as a whole, but losing the main outlet of his pieces will hurt more (for me at least that is).

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#48

Toucharcade isn’t even on life support at this point. The proverbial plug has already been pulled. Just look at the forum volume. The first page of iPhone/iPad forum goes back 3 1/2 days.

#49

How is their Discord? I’m not a Discord person, personally, Discord seems to me like more of a chat or stream of consciousness type of deal, but I’m an admitted Discord novice and not on their Discord. However, “kids these days” seem to prefer Discord to forums so it’s hard for me to readily know if forum inactivity is due to Discord or not.

#50

No idea. I’m on discord a lot but didn’t even realize they had one.

Note I make the previous comment with considerable sadness. I’m really going to miss it when there’s no real iOS-specific place left.

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#51

Last I checked (middle of 2018), their discord was inside jokes and a few devs but nothing else really. I dropped it pretty quickly.

#52

I wonder if that was before or after that big Fortnite invite code that Eli talked about? :thinking:

From a community perspective, it’s been interesting watching our forums community migrate over to our Discord server. Discord (Free) is turning into the new normal thing for everyone to be on, which I couldn’t be more excited for. I’m an old school chat guy, with IRC channels I’ve been a member of for quite literally decades. (If you’re looking for a modern IRC solution, check out IRC Cloud.) It’s real cool following along with what people are talking about in real time, and this year our Discord server saw a massive explosion of popularity surrounding the Fortnite invite code thing where you needed to get a code to unlock the ability to play the game on your iPhone. We had thousands of new people join, and while most of them bugged out after they got their code, a few have stuck around to grow the community even more.

#53

Discord would be a lousy way to replace their forums, unless they want to make a separate channel for every game. And I LIKE discord,

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#54

I’m with you 100% (well, other than the liking part), which was why I was curious. I recalled that I had read mention of their Discord server being popular, I went back and found where Eli says “it’s been interesting watching our forums community migrate over to our Discord server”.

Which I don’t understand, given that my limited experience with Discord was it was more of a group of chat channels, it seems to me, than a forum with topics.

I don’t mean to sound like I’m against Discord, I’m just not really a chat / stream of consciousness type of person, which is likely one of the reasons I don’t “get” Facebook, either, and I fail hard at social media. :thinking:

#55

Exactly this.

#56

I don’t think I’ve ever deleted or banned anyone. Not sure I know how. (Don’t tempt me, though, JS619…one more TtA win and you’re out of here!)

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#57

https://giphy.com/gifs/1htCJTHSVrwWpRZ71K

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#58

https://i.imgur.com/cZX9eKz.gif(image larger than 4096KB)

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#59

Guess who’s back, back again…

https://www.pockettactics.com/articles/langrisser-mobile-release-sponsored/

Seems they really liked the work we did last time.

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#60

The marketing team of that publisher seems to be going all out here.
I myself find it bad form to compare your (unreleased) product to another successful one just to ride on that game’s coattails into success-sunset (here FE:H) but I will at least test it out. I was able to get past my loathing of F2P to give FE:H a fair chance and I will try to give Langrisser the same chance.

Not that FE:H stayed long in my focus. I was ok with the F2P elements but couldn’t get bothered with the barebones story/gameplay. Same with Terra Battle by Mistwalker I fear the same approach and therefore result here. Terra Battle 2 died in a spectacular plane crash all the same.

Still…rerelease/remaster the TRUE Langrisser games (Edit: in the west)! grumble

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#61

Langrisser 1&2 are getting a re-release on Switch and PS4 this year AFAIK.

Yeah that part of the request was a bit iffy, but I get the impression the two franchises competed a lot back in the 90’s when they both were first released and these guys wanted to revive that rivalry.

I was doing some research for the first sponsored post and Langrisser made it out west before FE did, but FE managed to get that mainstream attention first. I’m guessing because Langrisser petered out after the fifth game where as FE stuck it out.

#62

I’ve tried plenty of these games as well and my issue still boils down to the paid content. FE:H and Terra Battle were both decent for what they were, but when I play a game and wonder what I’m missing out on because I’m unwilling to be nickle and dimed, my interest wanes quickly. When it comes to RPGs - especially replays of old RPGs - I’m a completionist. Knowing that I can’t even attempt to complete a roster, or whatnot, without either paying money, getting lucky in a slot machine mechanic, or grinding as nauseum for nominal rewards is really a game killer.

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#63

As too my knowledge only in Japan. No words of a western release. I, of course, meant a western release since I, unfortunately, cannot read chicken scratch™. I revised my ramblings