It’s the ones you love that can hurt you the most.

On September 1, 2011, Halfbrick Studios released Jetpack Joyride on the iOS App Store. I was already a fan of Halfbrick thanks to games like Fruit Ninja, Monster Dash, and especially Age of Zombies. But Jetpack Joyride was on a whole other level, immediately becoming my favorite mobile game, my favorite one-button game, and my favorite auto-runner. It might, in some senses, still be all those things.

I bought Jetpack Joyride on iOS when it came out. I loved it so much that I then bought it again for my PlayStation Portable in 2012 and a third time for my PlayStation Vita in 2013. And now, I’m… pretty glad I did that. Because after revisiting the phone version in 2017 in order to finally review it, I found it had changed a lot. The game started as a paid purchase with some microtransactions, but now it was F2P with a lot more microtransactions and a daily reward system. It started adding even more engagement rewards in the form of limited-time events, and then Apple’s rules changed and in order to keep playing it I would have had to explicitly consent to Halfbrick harvesting my data. So I stopped playing it. But the PlayStation versions had been left behind by the updates and still had arguably the superior version of the game. Certainly the less-obnoxious, less-greedy version.

It’s one of the standout examples to me of the failures of the app store model. I bought Jetpack Joyride in 2011. I paid for it. Then it went free to play and made a bunch of changes and became a product I no longer wanted. And on my modern iDevices, I had no recourse. The old version of the app was no longer compatible. (I do still have a first-generation iPad laying around, which does play the old, better version of the game. It also has other quality iOS games that you can’t download anymore, like Mirror’s Edge and Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty.)

So I was - perhaps naively - quite excited when I saw that Jetpack Joyride+ was coming to Apple Arcade. It felt like a poetic example of what I’d hoped Apple Arcade could do for mobile gaming - change the incentives to reduce sleaze. Uncoupled from the need to push microtransactions and prevented from harvesting user data, Jetpack Joyride+ could be a much less obnoxious and more enjoyable experience again.

And, like… it is? Basically? But not how I expected it to be.

On Apple Arcade, a game makes money if people keep playing it - and the relationship is direct through getting a share of those players' subscriptions, not indirect through the IAP to which those players have increased exposure. There’s no way to apply concepts of “fun pain” and “whales,” so you aren’t putting content and quality-of-life improvements behind paywalls. Instead, those are now valuable as more things to earn through play over a longer period of time. They’re ways to keep people playing.

But that’s not the approach that Halfbrick have taken with Jetpack Joyride+. Instead, everything that was tied to IAP or the daily rewards or timed events in the non-Arcade version is just… missing. This is a stripped down version of the already-free game. It’s not Jetpack Joyride+. It’s Jetpack Joyride-.

That’s already sad, but what makes it rude is that it wasn’t even a clean cut. You can still do the daily reward task, and the first time you do it you clearly get the first-day reward, and then it tells you you’ve completed day one of five. The second time you do it… no reward, and you’ve completed day one of five. The third time… no reward, and you’ve completed day one of five. It’s just broken.

It’s still a very good auto-runner and I’m still playing it for now. It’s, what, the fifth time I’ve started the game from zero in the past ten years? But it’s disappointing, and I mourn the loss of the Halfbrick I once loved.

From Apple Cancels Some Arcade Games in Strategy Shift To Keep Subscribers:

“[Apple] scrapped development contracts with multiple game studios earlier this year . . . . [A]n Apple Arcade creative producer told some developers that their upcoming games didn’t have the level of ‘engagement’ Apple is seeking. . . Apple is increasingly interested in titles that will keep users hooked, so subscribers stay beyond the free trial of the service. . .”

I was a little worried things would move in this direction, but was hoping they wouldn’t. As helpful as it is to set up an ecosystem where games can’t rely on IAP and developers don’t have to think about price, the subscription model does easily lend itself to optimizing for engagement, which causes its own problems.

I’m really hoping they’re at least looking for more complex metrics than just daily active users or something.

As excited as I’ve been for Apple Arcade, leading up to launch I noticed that a lot of the most-talked about games were ones I’d rather play on a big screen with a controller. Decently big names like Rayman, Shantae, and Sonic, or indie stuff with plenty of hype like Sayonara Wild Hearts or Assemble With Care. And a lot of emphasis was placed on the idea that these games were new and exclusive (although in many cases the exclusivity only applied to mobile - Sayonara Wild Hearts is also on PS4 and Switch, for example).

It took me a bit to figure out why I was so looking forward to a game subscription service when every game on the service that I’d actually heard of was something I’d rather play on a different platform. But I think I’ve figured it out.

The sort of person who pays attention to Apple Arcade announcements is already a nonrepresentative sample of the population. But even for most people in that slice - when they think of mobile games, I suspect they think of annoying wallet parasites that are maybe good for killing a few minutes in line or whatever. I think most of these folks associate the problems with these games with the mobile platform itself. They see them as just what mobile games are, rather than seeing them as the result of the combination of low-friction micropayments, persistent online connections for metrics gathering, and a race to the bottom enabled by poorly-designed storefronts.

So when they hear about mobile games unshackled (and indeed, actually blocked off) from those particular market pressures and tied instead to a subscription, that’s not enough for them to see the possibilities. For these folks, you also need the legitimacy associated with the names and designs that have earned respect on PC and console - even if those types of games don’t really work well on mobile.

My excitement came from the fact that I’ve seen plenty of evidence that designers know how to make good mobile games if they can just get away from the freemium/gacha bullshit. My optimistic assumption was that beneath the games that were getting all the marketing, the ones that were there to get you to pay attention to Apple Arcade, there would be excellent mobile experiences proving that mobile can be a great gaming platform with its own particular strengths and demonstrating how to make use of them. And once you’re paying for the subscription, you’ll try out those other games because why not, it’s free, and you’ll find something wonderful, and you’ll realize what mobile games can be.

This is how Apple Arcade could be the start of a mobile gaming revolution. This is why it’s more exciting than Google Play Pass, which is arguably a better value in some ways but only bundles games/apps that were already available on Android. That’ll only work on you if you’re already open to those games - it doesn’t open new doors, bring in new players, which a subscription-based platform will need to have to be successful. This is why Apple invested so heavily in flashy exclusives, and it might pay off. I mean, jeez - if it worked on Penny Arcade, it can work on anybody.

Let’s review. What does five bucks a month get you in mobile gaming?

On Apple platforms, five bucks a month gets you Apple Arcade, which is a curated library of games still rolling out but supposed to total over a hundred this fall - and several of the games out so far are well-reviewed. There are no ads, no in-app purchases, and no behavior tracking. Games can be downloaded and played offline, though you can also share your progress between devices via iCloud. Games can be shared between up to six family members and can be played with popular game controllers.

On Android platforms, five bucks a month gets you Google Play Pass, which is a curated library of over 350 games and utility apps that are already out (and apparently more to come each month). Many of these games and apps are quite well-regarded. They also have no ads or in-app purchases and can be shared with up to five other family members.

And in Mario Kart Tour, five bucks a month gets you the Gold Pass, which gives you some in-game items and features in a single game that still also requires a persistent internet connection for its always-on DRM and which still also has a microtransaction-backed gacha-based unlock system.

I think it would have been obvious the Gold Pass was a bad deal anyway, but the timing of the announcements here casts it into really sharp relief. It’s so disappointing to see Nintendo fall to such sleazy depths, and I really hope it stays contained to mobile. I’ve still got Mario Kart 8 on my Switch and I’ll be playing that instead.

I was recently lamenting to a friend the fact that right around when mobile technology was getting powerful enough to deliver console-quality experiences and designers were figuring out how to make good use of touchscreen controls, the horrible exploitative freemium monetization schemes took off, and we missed out on the possibility of a really amazing mobile game ecosystem.

The example that breaks my heart the most is Dynasty Warriors: Unleased which clearly could have presented a great musou-lite experience on the go, but was buried in layers of loot box crap. Similarly, I enjoyed both Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Fire Emblem Heroes a lot as games until their monetization schemes overshadowed the gameplay.

But now, as predicted by John Gruber, Apple is launching a subscription-based game service with access to a bunch of games with offline play, no IAP, no ads, and no data collection without player consent. And there are a bunch of quality devs and high-profile games confirmed for the service.

This is REALLY EXCITING. By lining up the incentives in this way, Apple is finally taking huge steps to fix the damage they’ve caused to the mobile gaming ecosystem. We might finally get some amazing mobile games and I can’t wait to see how it goes.