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Calc game popularity oddities

Started by Dream of Omnimaga, March 10, 2015, 09:27:29 PM

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Dream of Omnimaga

The topic on Planète-Casio about the new exam restrictions coming to France in 2018 and the discussion about the declining popularity of calculator gaming that ensued kinda made me realize that there are some oddities in the calculator community, when it comes to popularity of calculator games.

If you take the French community, you will notice that on Casio websites, discussion will be mostly centered around calculator game development. On TI websites, on the other hand, almost only educational discussion will prevail.

But then, if you look at the English community, it's the complete opposite, with Casio gaming discussion being virtually non-existent and most TI discussion being centered around game development.

What isn't odd is that nowadays on ticalc.org, the only games that attract significant attention are color versions of Flappy Bird, 2048, Snake, Tunnel, Mario, Pac-Man, Zelda, Final Fantasy and Pokémon clones. Something inevitable with color models replacing monochrome ones, but also it seems that the people that still plays calculator games will only do so at school and will almost only seek for big franchise names. A decade ago, any monochrome game that made ticalc.org front page could reach at least 500 downloads in a week or higher for a month, no matter the genre. Also, we all know that visitors usually don't bother checking the description and screenshots of file pages, so the crappiest possible Pokémon or Zelda game will usually get more downloads than Steins;Gate 8-bits or TI-Boy CSE.

However, I noticed something strange in my current ticalc profile (which started in April 2013): If you pay attention to my download stats, you will notice that my most downloaded JRPG is Mystique: La Larme du Dragon. Even the Illusiat collection and Reuben BASIC series have fewer downloads. I thought this was strange considering Mystique is my least known release and is an unilingual french game located on a virtually unilingual anglophone website. O.O

Anybody noticed some odd trends in recent years?
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Duke "Tape" Eiyeron

These trends re a result of global trends of today. If indie genre is trying to make its cuts of the cake, it's only because it seems that people are going more and more into the "only buying/playing the main brands". I don't know how these t main brands are done but I don't see much more diversity then before.

For instance phones. In france we had quite a number of known brands : Nokia, Alcatel, Motorola, Sagem, Samsung. Since muti-functionnalities phones to smartphones, lots of them got bought over a bigger one or just got forgotten. As now, we don't hear anymore of Motorola (IIRC Google bought them though), alcatel is merely publishing home phones, Sagem is M.I.A. and we almost hear about iPohnes, Samsungs and (less likely) Nokia. Yeah sometimes Wiko but it's a "cheap brand" and Nexuses are only popular amongs geeks/nerds.

It seems that today's trends diversity is not dwelled more, excpet in mode. In game universe, AAA companies are mainly depending on long running licences (hello CoD, hello AC, one  [mediocre] game/year, are you taking us for cashcows?) and phone gaming industry is trying to keep the same gameplay or ideas and trying to force a new game upon casual gamers (Seriously, what does have Simpsons Tapped Out over late FarmVIlle? It mainly the same gameplay core). People are trying to find "new" games over concepts they are familiar to. That's at least what I'm watching.

(Go for diversity, don't hesitate to try new things guys!)

And heck "LOLZ I HAZ FF ON MY CALCZ" sounds quite epic among class slackers and "OH I LOVEZ FLAPPY BURD, I EVEN HAZ IT ON CALK".
  • Calculators owned: A lot.

Dream of Omnimaga

I would say that Flappy Bird was more popular than Final Fantasy at one point. :P as for your other point I guess that might be another factor why calc gamers only download big namea now. A new Call of Duty and Assassin's Creed game every year and people still buys them even with barely any addition.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

Snektron

Yeah i really hate the mobile gaming industry. On the play store 50% or more is a clone from another app. For example the 9001 minecraft clones, flappy bird clones, etc. Of course there are some really neat gamed (like The Room), but its really hard to find good games <_<. And to top it off King compies its own apps, changes textures and ships it as a "new" game  >:(
  • Calculators owned: TI-84+
Legends say if you spam more than DJ Omnimaga, you will become a walrus...


Dream of Omnimaga

Yeah it's a shame that people try to get recognition only by copying simple work from others. On calcs some people often got popular just by making Phoenix hacks that only changed 1 ship sprite.

Also, back in the days, around 2006-10 there was some sort of craze about only playing games that are small in size or in 1 sub-program, regardless of the quality. Larger, but higher quality games would often get bashed and labeled as worthless only because they were considered too large, and the funny thing is that everyone that complained were TI-84+SE users with 1.5 MB of Flash. Before the 84+SE came out most people just opted for the TI-83+ and they didn't complain about such games. Basically, the only way for your programs to get a positive or at least mixed reception on certain websites was to cut down as many features at as possible, at any cost, until the program shrinks down to about 10 KB or less.
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

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