The popular opinion within gaming culture is that mobile gaming is trash. It’s not a minority opinion held by a small audience. Popular voices discuss how bad mobile gaming is, and many popular gaming websites only mention mobile gaming when something happens in Pokemon GO. Mobile gaming isn’t taken seriously, and that’s partly because even indie developers see it as being full of bad games. We’re not here to say that mobile gaming doesn’t have its cheap, derivative titles, because it does. But saying that would diminish the many great titles that mobile gamers enjoy. It’s a matter of perception, because other gaming platforms have a similar mix of bad and great games.

The nature of mobile gaming has made it very different from other platforms. Ever since the App Store era of gaming began, mobile has always been about having one central storefront, like a Walmart or Target, where you can buy cheap or expensive goods in the same store. While Android is a little different in that users can install non-Google app stores, iOS users are for all practical purposes tied to the App Store. The problem is that mobile has not fostered a market for high-quality, premium games in particular. Even big indie games released on mobile tend to be priced the same. And that’s a big reason why the platform has such a flawed reputation.

But just because you see some low-quality work when you search for a game on mobile, that doesn’t take away from the quality of everything else that’s good on the store. Mobile is full of good games, many of which are smaller than games on other platforms but still full of them. And there are also the occasional PC game that comes out cheaper on mobile. It’s just that everything is lumped into one store and it’s easier to be exposed to bad products.

The thing is, mobile isn’t all that different from PC. It has a similar spectrum of games, from quick time-wasters to more involved experiences. Oh, and there are both paid and free-to-play games. It’s just that PC games are more clearly divided into tiers. There’s Steam and other marketplaces for large-scale games that appeal to traditional gamers. Meanwhile, it’s easy for those gamers to avoid Facebook and social gaming. And Flash games, while they might appeal to gamers looking for more casual experiences, are still separated from other platforms with other categories of games.