Take Two Tablets and Call Me in the Morning

So I've been spending quite a bit of time on my iPad 2, gaming. Before I get called a casual gamer, let me say that, yes, I did play games like Candy Crush and some of the tower defense stuff on my mobile, but these few days were spent with XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Hearthstone. XCOM is pretty much the same game released on PC and the last gen consoles, minus some cinematic and without the expansions, but it works surprisingly well with touch controls. It was recently released on android, though it's a shame it's not compatible with my Nexus 7. As for Hearthstone, some might argue it's a casual CCG, and perhaps it is, but still, for a PC game to translate so well to a tablet is amazing. (Actually, not really. It was obvious right from the start Blizzard designed even the PC version to work with touch controls. Probably so it can be played on those Windows 8 PCs with touch screens.) Oh, and I'm excited to start on FTL for the iPad.

This has actually made me excited to see more games, especially turn-based ones on tablets. Heroes of Might and Magic, Civilisation, Age of Wonders, all these games have the potential to work on mobile or tablets if effort is put in to make it work. The lack of a 'hover over' and 'right click' might take some work, but XCOM could make a good reference, and FTL as well. But you better not take it the way of Dungeon Keeper, and do not make it free-to-play. Keep the games as they are.

Most of the games mentioned require at least an iPad 2 to function, but that's already pretty good. It's a bit harder to develop for Android because of the large number of configurations for Android devices, but hopefully, more of these games and be ported over with more compatible devices. As the specs of these devices get better with each coming year, more already released games will be playable with proper porting.

Despite the possibilities, I'm still conflicted and a bit fearful sometimes. Will all the porting take time away from developing new games, and will devs choose to just throw out a lazy port to make a quick buck, or choose a free-to-play model that totally pisses off the fans? Unfortunately, the possibilities of screwing it up are just as endless...