Tag: mobile games

Mobile games are used primarily for killing time

Thought this doesn’t come as too much of a surprise to many, a study has just confirmed this suspicion.

EEDAR, a video and mobile games research firm, has now released the results of a data analysis it has conducted in order to confirm what many people have suspected about game app use for some time now.

Mobile device owners tend to use their gadgets to play games to pass time, not for the challenge or fun of it.

Though it is not entirely surprising, it remains quite interesting, particularly for developers of mobile games and especially for those creating multiplayer experiences. According to the report from EEDAR, about 74 percent of people in North America who play game apps do so in order to kill time. Twelve percent do so in order to interact with other people while 16 percent do so in order to be able to compete with other propel.Mobile Games - Game on Smartphone

This helps to expand on the insight that was offered by Flurry in a mobile games study conducted last year.

Flurry, an analytics company owned by Yahoo, reported that there had been a notable decline in the average amount of time users were spending on mobile game apps. That report was created in 2015. Simon Khalaf, an exec at Flurry, explained that American mobile game players weren’t spending as much time on those mobile apps as they had bumped up the amount of time they were spending watching other people while they played.

This helped to explain why there had simultaneously been a boost in the amount of time spent on sites such as YouTube and Twitch for watching other people playing games on their consoles, computers and their mobile devices as well.

Patrick Walker, an EEDAR exec, discussed this shift in mobile games trends when he spoke at the GDC 2016 with regards to player engagement. Among the subjects on which he focused was the reason people in North American and Japan were playing these game apps. In Japan, only 5 percent had said that they were playing in order to compete with others, less than a third of the North American statistic.

Did mobile games being played by rail dispatcher cause German train crash?

An investigation has revealed that before the collision that killed 11 people, a smartphone game was played.

An investigation is currently underway regarding the head-on rail collision in Germany in which 11 people were killed, and prosecutors have stated that a dispatcher had been playing mobile games on a smartphone shortly before the crash.

The dispatcher has remained unnamed at the time of the writing of this article but has been arrested.

The dispatcher was arrested on suspicion of negligent homicide as it is believed that mobile games may have been distracting the individual who was required to pay attention in order to avoid the collision and the deaths of nearly a dozen people. The crash occurred on February 9, close to the town of Aibling. Both trains had been crowded with commuters when they collided, making this one of the worst railway accidents that have occurred in the history of the country.

Prosecutors assert that the male dispatcher was playing mobile games on his smartphone for “an extended period of time.”

Mobile Games - Image of Train CrashThey stated that this occurred until shortly before the crash occurred. Regulations for rail dispatchers prohibit the use of personal cell phones while on the job. The statement said that “Due to the close timing it must be assumed that the accused was distracted from controlling the cross-traffic of the trains.”

The suggestion is that the mobile game apps were distracting to the dispatcher and led him to send the wrong signals to the trains. Once the dispatcher realized what had happened, he pressed the wrong combination of buttons in order to make the emergency call, failing to properly alert the train drivers.

When questioned, the dispatcher admitted that he had been playing mobile games, but he denied that this caused him to be distracted. So far, investigators have not been able to discover any technical problems that could have either contributed or caused the collision between the two trains, according to the statement from the prosecution. This is only the latest in a growing number of cases accumulating worldwide which have associated mobile gaming with situations of dangerous distraction.