GameBench captures this in the form of our “Median FPS” metric.

30 frames per second (fps) is widely accepted as the minimum for playable animation, while 60fps is generally the optimum on mobile.

Fast and fluid animation is essential in order to bring battle arenas and heroes to life.

This formula immediately creates a conflict between three competing requirements, all of which can readily be measured and compared using GameBench: If you want to skip all the analysis and just see raw frame rate and power consumption figures, then you can head straight to Reference Data pages for these two products:Ī good MOBA will throw at least six players into a lush, atmospheric battle arena and then encourage them to use a mix of strategy, reflexes and cooperation to win. ( Arena actually happens to be a Westernised spin-off from Honor of Kings.) As we’ll see, there are big differences between these two titles in how effective they are at striking the right balance of performance and power. In this article, we’ll use GameBench to objectively compare the optimisation of two popular mobile MOBAs: Vainglory by Super Evil Megacorp and Arena of Valor by Tencent. Game studios have to be innovative in optimising for these requirements on mobile chipsets if they’re to achieve the same quality of experience and commercial longevity as renowned PC-grade MOBAs like League of Legends and DOTA 2. Where other genres have failed, MOBAs (Multiplayer Online Battle Arenas) are succeeding in attracting millions of depth-seeking, not-so-casual strategy gamers who have traditionally been neglected on iOS and Android.īut there’s a catch: the progress of mobile MOBA gaming is at risk of being held back due to the genre’s typically huge computational, connectivity and power requirements. Few could have predicted the huge surge in popularity of MOBA games on mobile platforms, culminating in Tencent’s Honor of Kings becoming the world’s top-grossing mobile game this summer (with an estimated monthly revenue of $150 million).

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