A couple of weeks ago, I noticed a new section in my YouTube feed when I loaded it up on my browser. Labelled “Playables”, I realized these were games but somehow hosted on the YouTube site. Looking through the initial list of games, it seemed like some of them were repurposed mobile games. Indeed, I immediately saw an Angry Birds game, along with Cut the Rope.
Curious, I tried a slew of these games to see how fun they could be. After about 30 minutes of playing, I had a few observations. First, I did confirm that many of these games were mobile games in some fashion in another life. Despite being played in a browser, without a separate download, many of the games had a playing area that was taller than it was wider, the aspect ratio for a phone, instead of a monitor. Also, many of the controls you could tell involved swiping or tapping the screen. In a browser, this got converted into mouse dragging and clicking. For some games, I discovered it sometimes didn’t register my clicks or drags, which made for a poor experience.
Second, it was clear YouTube did some work on each game to make it work on their platform. For example, all games have the ability to store high scores and/or progress on a game. This may seem minor in terms of a feature, but it can actually drive a person to play a game again because it can remember which levels you’ve finished and you can just pick up where you left off.
Third, it became clear to me some of these games are genuinely entertaining for what they are. Sometimes, I have five minutes to play something while I wait for my code to compile or if a meeting is starting soon, and I can’t play a full-screen game. These games fit that bill. Now, if you’re thinking mobile games on a phone are exactly what fits this need, you’d be correct. For some reason though, I never got into mobile games. These browser games, however, just are easy to play and they being on the computer, make it appealing to me. By the way, these YouTube Playables can also be played in the YouTube app on the phone, if that’s more your style.
Anyways, two of my favourite games from the current list are Freekick Football and 8 Ball Billiards Classic.