Bungie Founder Calls For Touchscreen Shooter Ports to Stop

Alex Seropian founder of both Bungie Studios and the new mobile studio Industrial Toys argues that developers need to give up on the lazy touchscreen ports of their franchises, especially the shooters.

He took the time to explain himself to gameindustry.biz, and considering he is a part of the mobile game market, his ideas should hold some weight.

“To make a good shooter you have feel like you have a lot of control, you need enough bandwidth in the skill curve so that you feel you can get good at it, that you can master it, Seropian said. “So much work and research went into making sticks feel good for a shooter that to reinterpret that on a device where you can touch any pixel is just brain dead, I don’t get that.”

Seropian went on to explain what his vision of mobile shooters could be.

“Our approach is really built toward the device. Our ambition is to reinvent what a shooter is, with touch as the starting point,” he said. “Some of that methodology trickles down to putting the controls in the game-space, not on the screen space so when you want to interact with the character in the game – to shoot or take cover or snipe – that’s all through interacting with things in the environment rather than through controls.”

Agree or disagree, Seropian makes a good point. Without a doubt, it will now be interesting to see what direction he helps take Industrial Toys.