5 Suggestions to Make Mobile Games Not Suck

I wanted to call this list the "5 Laws to Make Mobile Games Not Suck", but I realized that calling them laws would make me seem like some sort of "Game-Dictator" in my own little "Game-Country" telling all the other "Game-Countries" that they had to bend to my will. And if I am one thing, it is not a game-fascist. Also, my game-country is like the size of Sealand, so it's unlikely that anyone would listen anyway.

Anyway, this list is a compilation of observations about mobile games, and what needs to be done to make them suck less. Mobile games are not the kings of the market at the moment, partially because they have been traditionally treated as normal video games, just smaller and on less powerful hardware. They also still carry the stigma of being "kids toys", due to their generally lesser difficulty curve. However, with the iPhone, DSi, and Android phones gaining popularity, they are certainly becoming more and more popular. Therefore, with

1. You should be able to pause at any time. Also, whenever you're paused, you can save. This has been a pet peeve of mine ever since elementary school, playing Pokemon on my Game Boy Pocket, getting pissed off that I had to restart a battle just because someone was forcing me to go to a funeral or something. Being able to play games in a mobile setting means that people are going to play them whenever they can. The corollary to being able to play wherever you are is that you might not know when you need to take a quick break to board a plane, deal with a teller, or smack your kids around a little. Should this gamus interruptus invalidate the progress you made, even in the short time you may have had? No, it shouldn't.
2. Make the sections short. This is especially true if you don't follow suggestion #1, but generous even if you do so. It's one of the reasons that tower defense games do so well nowadays. The enemies come in a big, short wave. You kill them all dead. Good job, you stock up on weapons (and save!), and then get ready for the next wave. The gameplay comes at you in short, digestible pieces, so that you can decide whether you just have time for just a can or the whole six pack. One way to kick the childish/loser stigma of mobile games (besides making jokes about higher-class liquor) is to not require gamers to play these games at home. Yeah, if you're playing cell phone games when you're sitting at home while there are perfectly good consoles, PCs, or (heaven forbid) sports equipment available, you probably are a bit of a loser (or just stuck on that damn final boss). Mobile games are thusly named because that's when you should be playing them. When you're mobile.
3. Realize that human fingers are not mice, they do not have pixel-perfect precision, and most of the time, the cell phone keypad (or board) is generally difficult to use, hidden (by a slider or flip), or even nonexistent. Even the DS's famed touch screen can be troublesome sometimes. The action that needs to come from this realization is that mobile games have different requirements from other games. You cannot just assume that they are going to work just as well on the mobile platform as they will on another. Developers need to take advantage of the hardware. The best example I've seen of this so far is am Android game called Abduction, where you're a cow bouncing up to an alien spaceship trying to save your cow friends. The thing that makes this game great is that your left and right movements are controlled by the accelerometer. Tilt the phone left, you go left, and vice versa. This isn't a novel concept in the accelerometer-enhanced arena of cell phone games, but is one salient example of where it is not overkill or gimmicky, but just feels like it was the only way to truly control the game.
4. Give us high-contrast art. Yes, it plays into the "cartoony" look, but you know what, you're playing a game on a screen 6 inches square, so telling between different shades of grey is going to be nearly impossible. My heart truly goes out to anyone who decides to buy the iPhone port of RE4, because you are going to die so frequently because you won't be able to tell what you're shooting at in the sea of browns, tans, and blacks (and eventually reds when that crazy chainsaw dude cuts your head off). When you're already getting eye strain from having to hold your phone inches from your face, it doesn't help if you have to squint to figure out where the freaking exit to the dungeon is. It is in fact possible to make colorful games that do not look like their art director used to make Spongebob Squarepants. The original Final Fantasy Tactics DS (one of my favorite games of all time) is one of the most colorful ones I'd ever seen for the platform, and didn't come of as childish at all (except for when the damn moogles kept saying "kupo!").
5. Stop making crappy ports of old games. This goes for all platforms, but it's particularly bad on the mobile scene. Unless your poker, connect 4, or chess game is going to literally rock faces off, then just leave it as you practice project, don't clutter the stores with another $1 knock-off. Seriously, this point cannot be belabored further. Just stop doing it. I don't even know how these devs are able to get funding to make the same game over and over again, but it needs to stop.

There's a lot of potential in the mobile platform. No one expected the casual game market to ever be worth working in, and now it's practically the main driver for the next generation of games and consoles. US culture in particular has been moving towards total mobility at a quick rate. Those people are the ones who are going to want to be entertained. Would you rather give them something they'll like, or not?