The DeanBeat: A microcosm of mobile games reveals the coming death of the consoles

On my recent Labor Day holiday weekend, my extended family gathered for a vacation on the beach. It was a moment for me to look into the consumer petri dish and think about the state of modern gaming. At any given moment, parents were yelling at their kids to get off their mobile devices. The kids didn’t listen and had their heads buried in their smartphones at every chance. We didn’t have game consoles at the vacation house, and nobody missed them.

My nephews were laughing at my moribund Clash of Clans base. They took pity on me and offered to redesign it so it would withstand attacks better. Meanwhile, I was fascinated with Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, as I finally started playing Blizzard Entertainment’s addictive fantasy card game on an iPad. My kids were playing Let It Goat, the Flappy Bird clone from SkyVu, as well as Swing Copter, the impossibly difficult game from Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen.