It's amazing to me that people are acting like mobile games are these great big boogeymen that are going to kill video games when they've barely played any of the recent mobile games at all.
There are so many mobile games with arcade-esque gameplay that I can't help but to play then and the RPGs have been getting better on the platform. I can take it around with me because my phone's usually in my purse or in my car or in my backpack, people can see what I'm playing, and they ask about it. If it's F2P or something, while we're talking about the game, they're downloading it on their phone while we're talking and they start playing right alongside me. Word-of-mouth for mobile games happens quicker than ever before because the games are that readily available. That's why the market penetration seems to be so large. It's that easy to get into a game on mobile.
Controls and game design for mobile games have been improving year after year, with methods of trying to play the games using a controller being proposed, so you're going to have to try to give it a chance sooner or later. It's not all Zynga-esque games on the platform with shitty IAP. It sucks because the games that are getting coverage in the mainstream press are console/handheld-to-mobile ports which can be less-than-stellar (ex: Tales of Phantasia, [insert SE port here], etc), but it isn't that often that original games developed for the mobile platform are covered unless the writer plays it almost obsessively or it gets coverage elsewhere.
A mobile game was almost my game of the year last year and that was because I liked the story and how it used its medium as well as it did. I wouldn't be surprised if the mobile games market made even more strides to take advantage of the all-in-one hardware. I didn't even know about the game until another person brought it up in conversation, so that's how I learned about it. Not via games journalism sites or anything. So I dunno. I guess that might go hand-in-hand with where games journalism is right now.
