Launched in 2012, the tile-matching puzzler quickly became ubiquitous on phones. More than 10 years later, 200 million people are still playing. Why? A lot of us were, at one point, in love with our smartphones. In the early days of Android and iPhone, apps seemed designed to delight; throw a few quid at the app store in 2010 and you could be playing some cute game, often involving birds, or messing around with a lightsaber within minutes. Social media apps designed for phones let us post artfully casual photos in a few taps, for our friends to drop hearts on. It was fun, once. But over time, it’s become a toxic relationship. The fun got sucked out of everything. Social media morphed into a hellscape designed to ensnare and enrage us, providing just enough of our friends’ posts to prevent us from actually quitting the platform but prioritising their own ads and algorithmic videos. Twitter used to be jokes and cat memes and now it’s … well, it’s X, and I know I’m not the only one who’s deleted it off their phone entirely. The experience of using apps, phones and the internet more generally has significantly degraded – and the same can be said for mobile games, most of which now give you about 83 seconds of entertainment before trying to extort you for a £7.99 monthly subscription or showing you misleading ads that are so fascinatingly terrible you can’t look away. Continue reading...

In this free-to-play gacha game, Earth’s survivors balance dystopian battles with cute moments helping locals miHoYo/HoYoverse; PC, PS5, smartphones One of the biggest revolutions in the modern video game industry has taken place almost out of sight of your average console gamer. The rise of the free-to-play gacha game, in which you pay either real or in-game money for randomised bundles of characters and weapons, has been meteoric in the Chinese market, dominated by publishers such as miHoYo, NetEase and Yostar. The most successful such games, including Genshin Impact, Arknights and Another Eden, have tens of millions of players, mostly on smartphones, and draw vast incomes from those willing to pay to complete their collections of in-game items. Recently, the genre has been expanding beyond mobile, and Zenless Zone Zero is the latest example. Created by HoYoverse, this is a sprawling anime-styled action role-playing adventure set in a chaotic sci-fi dystopia. Earth has been invaded by interdimensional aliens, and above the ruins of the old civilisation lives a community of human survivors in a neo-city named New Eridu. You can play as either Wise or Belle, a brother-sister duo of hackers who own a video rental store, but also work as proxy agents, sending out teams of warriors to complete missions for clients. Continue reading...

On its 15th anniversary, the creators of FarmVille reflect on the compulsive cartoon farm sim that paved the way for a data-driven world Facebook users of a certain age may remember a particularly forlorn farm animal popping up in their feeds during the platform’s heyday. The lonely cow would wander into FarmVille players’ pastures with its face twisted into a frown and its eyes shimmering with tears. “She feels very sad and needs a new home,” an accompanying caption read, asking you to adopt the cow or message your friends for help. Ignore the cow’s plea and it would presumably be left friendless and foodless. Message your friends about it, and you’d be accelerating the spread of one of the biggest online crazes of the 2010s. Released 15 years ago, FarmVille was nothing short of a phenomenon. More than 18,000 players gave it a go on its first day, rising to 1 million by its fourth. At its peak in 2010, more than 80 million users logged in monthly to plant crops, tend animals and harvest goods for coins to spend on decorations. Celebrities professed their obsession, McDonald’s created a farm for a promotion, and long before artists released music on Fortnite, Lady Gaga debuted songs from her sophomore album through the cartoon farm sim. Not bad for a game that was stitched together in five weeks. Continue reading...