In the past few days, the Gaming industry chatter has been around the acquisition of mobile game developer Zynga by publisher Take-Two Interactive. Take-Two purchased the mobile developers of FarmVille and Words with Friends in the hope of bringing their IPs, such as Grand Theft Auto, to mobile devices in more mobile-focused ways.
Take-Two Games We’d Like to See by Zynga
Take-Two Interactive spent a whopping $12.7 Billion (yes, billion with a capital B) on acquiring Zynga. This has been compared to Xbox’s acquisition of Zenimax last year, which was smaller in comparison at $7.5 Billion. While we have yet to find out what Take-Two hope to bring to mobile, we wanted to bring some ideas to the table about how Take-Two and Zynga could make some of the bigger IPs into fun and interesting games on-the-go.
Grand Theft Auto: Online
It’s hard to ignore the biggest money maker that Take-Two have in their list of existing properties. Every year, Grand Theft Auto V charts, mainly due to the massive GTA: Online multiplayer game mode. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Zynga was asked to focus on bringing a mobile rendition of GTA:O or using the namesake alone already, and it’s likely to start development as soon as possible.
But what would we like to see? There’s plenty of options in terms of a mobile experience, but personally, I’d like to see a Cops VS Robbers type third-person shooter. Think of it like a mix of Call of Duty: Mobile and Battlefield: Hardline, where mobile players are split into two teams of five, where robbers have to successfully rob a bank and the cops have to stop them.
If you bring in the ability to use your existing GTA:O characters from other platforms, add in microtransactions for skins and maybe a Battle Pass, and you’re sure to get a lot of money from the mobile player base. But, there’s so many ways you could explore a GTA mobile game, that this is just one idea out of potentially hundreds.
Red Dead Redemption
Grand Theft Auto’s sister series saw booming success when it released the second game in the main franchise, Red Dead Redemption 2. Combining Rockstar’s incredible story, with a detailed open-world and realistic features made for a game worthy of Game of the Year.
It wouldn’t be a surprise if this IP also entered the mobile games market. One element of RDR2 that didn’t see enough focus was the settlement management. If you take that gameplay mechanic, and change it into a Clash of Clans or Fallout Shelter style game where you manage your settlers, protect them and command them to go on missions, it could be a very interesting way of taking RDR in your pocket.
That’s not to say it’s limited to just that genre of mobile games, there’s plenty of other opportunities. But maximizing on something which is so key to the second game would definitely bring a lot of love from both fans and newcomers alike.
Borderlands
I’d like to preface this part of the list by saying that, yes I know that Gearbox are the overall rights owners of the Borderlands series. But Gearbox and Take-Two have shown a good relationship, so I imagine that if Take-Two wanted a Borderlands game on mobile, they could work something out!
Borderlands is a bit of a wild card. You could pretty much make a completely random game (a match 3 puzzle, a shooter, a Pokémon Go type collecting game) and it would still work within the realms of strangeness. Which makes it hard to specify a good mobile game for Borderlands to have.
However, I think that if a Borderlands mobile game did happen, it would need to focus on the loot aspects. Everyone loves loot, everyone loves seeing legendary weapons drop. Whether that be, as expressed before, a Pokémon Go AR game or a shooter game in the style of Mighty Quest by Ubisoft, make sure there’s lots of loot!
Kerbal Space Program
Is there anything else to really add? Having Kerbal Space Program as a mobile game, whether completely downgraded to be on the platform or a completely standalone project, building rockets and random, whacky tests to reach huge heights would be incredible to play on your phone.
With the release of KSP2 coming up, hopefully soon, this would be a great time to bring a spin-off onto iPhone and Androids everywhere. The community is extremely loyal to this series, and if done right, could really bring in a lot of profits for Take-Two.
BioShock
The BioShock series hasn’t seen a lot of love in recent years, so this one may annoy a lot of fans if they announced a free-to-play, MTX-filled BioShock spin-off for mobile. But hopefully, they will be so pleased with the announcement of a new game in the series, as per the rumours, that they wouldn’t be mad that a BioShock mobile game is being released too!
What type of game would this be? Well, once again, it could be anything so long as it makes sense to the lore and world that BioShock inhabits (or, multiverse?). It could be a great platforming adventure though for mobile. Call it Adventure to Rapture, or BioShock: Rift Apart?
BioShock needs a comeback, it’s one of the gaming franchises which people always point to when they talk about an incredible series. While Infinite may have disappointed some fans, it brought many new ones in (including myself) so bringing back such a beloved series would be amazing to see! Just, don’t hype it up more than it needs to be, or you’ll disappoint fans.
It’s hard to know what exactly Take-Two and Zynga will work on, whether Zynga continues their own games for the first few years or if Take-Two IPs will now take priority. Take-Two have a lot of hope for Zynga, made clear by their large investment, but whether that pays off or not, we won’t know for years.
