Remember the days when you could find all sorts of free, casual games all over the web? You didn't need an account. You didn't need to accept cookies. You didn't need to enter your email address. And above all else, there were no ads. At least for a while. Those were the days.
Well like the old Buggles song, Video Killed the Radio Star says, "we can't rewind, we've gone too far."
Smartphone Apps Killed the Free Web Games.
Oh sure, almost all smartphone games can be downloaded for free and installed on your phone, but then you nonchalantly click on the terms and conditions in order to play the game. Ever read those terms and conditions? Basically, in a nutshell, all of them have you giving up your entire contacts list, control of your phone and all of its apps, and all the information within. That's right, you mindlessly click "okay," and you're giving these corporations basically a "key to your house."
And it doesn't stop there. Your supposedly "free" game often times will have built-in obstacles designed to make you click on the option to purchase upgrades or other such amenities to the game in order to "enhance your play." In many cases, without this "contribution" on your part, i.e., you paying for something, you're getting a very watered down and/or frustrating bit of software that anybody with half a mind can figure out was ultimately designed to just remove money from your pocket.
But wait, that's not all! Almost all of them now have either banner ads that you have to tolerate, sometimes obtrusively flashing and distracting you while you're trying to play the game, or other said obstacles similar to the pay-to-play options I mentioned earlier, where now you have the opportunity to view video ads in order to progress in the game. Many times these ads will either glitch out, or perhaps they're intended to close out your game and foil your progress in order for you to be perhaps enticed to actually then pay more attention to the ad or actually go to the sponsors website, not sure of their motivation there since for me it just pisses me off to no end where I usually decide to never play again.
As far as web games, the end of Flash support, the proliferation of ad blockers, and the rise of the smartphone, have slowly but surely made these a thing of the past. Sadly, this has recently affected me in a big way since I had pretty much become addicted to one such web game that was clinging on for dear life, but its smartphone application was definitely the more favored route of its publisher and they make no secret of their desire to have you migrate. Well they finally did it.
8-Ball Pool by Miniclip, which I mentioned in this post from a year ago, had become pretty much a daily ritual. I think I had gotten pretty darn good with it too. I was up to level 45 after months of work and found it a refreshing and mindless way to pass the time without the worry or irritation of ads or info-harvesting. Now as of this week this is the message I get every time I try to log in.
There's no customer service. I haven't even seen posts regarding it from other users since even though this is a multiplayer game, I'm guessing there probably weren't more than a few thousand of us still playing the web version. The smartphone app version though is still widely popular and highly talked about on all kinds of forums. And you know what, I tried, but there's no fucking way I can play 8-Ball Pool, a game which demands extremely precise precision and hand-eye coordination, on a fucking phone. I need a computer, and a mouse. Like a normal person. Or maybe, just an old, obsolete, Radio Star person.