Editorial: Why We’re Changing AndroGaming.com
AndroGaming.com started as a passion project back in 2011, just a few years after Android arrived on the scene. The early days were genuinely exciting. New games, sometimes clumsy attempts at making them, and studios we were getting to know: Madfinger Games, Glu Mobile and, especially, Gameloft before the Vivendi takeover. A very different era.
Fifteen years later, I barely recognize parts of that scene.
I’ve been going back and forth about writing this for a while. Whether to say it publicly or just quietly change what we cover. But I think it’s time to explain where my head’s been.
We are bombarded with freemium games and ads showing gameplay that looks nothing like what we actually download from Google Play. Sometimes I wonder whether the people making the ad have even seen the game. It’s pathetic.
No, I’m not against advertising. AndroGaming.com itself is funded mainly through AdSense (we heard ya, we’ve already cut back on ads and we’re cutting back further). But there is a limit, and advertising one experience while delivering something completely different crossed it a long time ago.
And the monetization? It isn’t always unbearable. I have a long list of games and studios that have handled it perfectly reasonably. Developers need to get paid, and I’m happy to pay for something worth playing.
But paid random rewards, pressure to spend before an offer disappears, and gambling-like mechanics in games that children can also access have made me question what we’re spending our time covering. At some point, I started wondering whether we should keep following this business or try to find the spark that gave birth to this site in the first place.
Regular readers will know that we’ve had periods when we barely published anything. We’re a small team, as you can see on our About Us page. In practice, there are now two of us actively involved, with a third helping out from time to time.
Keeping up with every update, season, event and reward in the giant gacha games, just as one example, is exhausting. For a team our size, it’s practically impossible. It also takes us further away from the passion project this was supposed to be.
Where we’re heading
So we’ve decided to change direction.
Our priorities will be indie developers, Android ports, emulators, tutorials and interesting apps. Android will remain at the centre of things, but we’ll also cover handheld gaming and the software around it, including projects for OnionOS, PS Vita and other devices we enjoy tinkering with.
AI has become part of everyday life, and “vibe coding” is one of the developments I’ve found interesting. I know people have strong opinions about it, especially when it comes to code. Personally, I’m interested in whether these tools help someone finally try an idea they’ve been sitting on.
That doesn’t mean every new port owes its existence to AI. These communities have people who have been doing the hard work for years. But the amount of activity is exciting. I’ve come across a whole batch of new PS Vita ports in the past couple of weeks alone (granted, some good, some not so good).
And that’s what gets me excited. People experimenting, passion projects appearing, and more things for us to play with.
When I saw Pinball Fantasies (1992) running on Android through a community port, I felt like I was twelve again.
That’s the feeling I want more of here.
We want to help readers understand how these projects work, install games and tools they won’t necessarily find on Google Play, and get more out of the devices they already own. And, somewhere between downloading files and figuring out which folder they belong in, actually have fun.
We’re not abandoning Google Play or everything on it. But we’ll be giving more attention to independent developers whose work deserves a chance to be noticed before it gets buried under the industry machinery.
Being indie won’t automatically earn a glowing review, either. We’ll try things, explain what we liked, and say when something doesn’t work. Giving a project a chance also means taking it seriously enough to be honest about it.
What happens next?
We’ll be reorganizing the site, adding categories and making our tutorials, apps, ports and games easier to find.
One important point: we won’t be deleting our existing articles or downloads. That includes the ridiculously popular BIOS Download section. It’s staying.
I hope these changes give our regular readers more reasons to keep coming back, help a few new people find us, and bring back some of the enthusiasm that got us doing this all those years ago.
Dejan Balalovski & The AndroGaming.com Еditorial team