Did Valorant Solve the Mobile Shooter Puzzle?
Valorant Mobile has become an enormous Chinese success, and again, I find myself weeping for the West. We cannot miss the boat on mobile shooters, and aside from Fortnite, none are homegrown. And interestingly enough, many of the successes still rely on Western IP, such as Call of Duty and Valorant. PocketGamer.biz's recap of Tencent's latest report is a reminder of just how large the Chinese opportunity has become.
A year ago, I wrote that Call of Duty Mobile posed a puzzle no one else had solved. One franchise made mobile shooters work in the West, while every other serious attempt stalled or failed. At the time, I thought the answer was controls. Call of Duty made it far easier with auto-fire to play with both fingers or thumbs on the dual analog sticks, rather than the "claw" position that many Eastern players take, which requires the phone to rest on a surface. It turns out the Western hold-up in building a monster mobile shooter franchise is labor-based.
China's console ban and firewall-walled Steam Access ended up creating Regional Dr. Perky to our Dr. Pepper. Crossfire is a juggernaut franchise that appeared in the wake of China's lack of CS:GO. But mobile always had stronger roots in China, partly because of the console ban and partly because computer cost relative to wages. As late as 2010, Chinese household disposable income averaged $2,000 per year. Not exactly GTX money! Internet cafes help defray the cost, but are still a significant friction.
In the West, shooter and mobile DNA evolved apart. FPS intuition lived in PC/console studios that treated mobile as a compromise. Mobile expertise lived elsewhere, optimized for UA, but often detached from real shooters. In a real "gamer" sense, FPS players are the core bulwark of Steam. You can bridge that gap with ports or partners (nice try, Netease), but not having a Bungie PM sit on Destiny: Rising doomed the product in the West.
Similarly, Call of Duty Mobile worked because it forced a synthesis: Western shooter product leadership paired with Chinese mobile production discipline. That combination is rare, not because talent is scarce, but because the overlap is. Apex Legends Mobile was on the success track, leveraging the same Western leadership that had subverted itself to mobile, alongside Chinese development prowess that meets content expectations for the platform.
Gen Z will change this equation, but less because of player attitudes than because of labor. Designers who grew up with shooters, mobile, live services, and cross-platform identity don't experience mobile as a downgrade (nor is it!). It's a different service area and a different medium that has different constraints.
EA's VP of Mobile Shooters' real challenge will be assembling the right team of Western product managers and designers and ensuring that they can adapt to mobile expectations while integrating Chinese-style content and progression systems.
The saddest part of all of this is that Vince Zampella would have been the perfect person to learn from and to achieve this mission. His loss is already felt.