Quit the game instead of suspending on Android?

[mkody]

Hi! I wanted to ask something about the osu! framework on Android, which brings a behavior I'm finding not very intuitive for a game.

When we press or gesture back from the main menu, on the osu! logo, the game just suspends and goes into the background. For games, it's most common nowadays to have the game quit or ask to quit at this point.
If I would rather not quit the game for now, I'd use the home gesture/button or use the multitasker, not go all the way back to the first screen and press back.

I went into osu.Framework.Android and removed CanExit and CanSuspendToBackground just to test and got what I'd expect more: doesn't suspend and I have the quit button now visible.

Could this be something that would be good to change or is there a reason for suspending?

I also tried to see if I could quickly add that the last "back" action would bring up the popup asking if we want to quit (like when we click the window's close button on desktop), but I'm not used to the codebase to figure it out properly, lol.

[Joehuu]

I think the reason is that the devs develop mostly based on iOS behavior, and that platform doesn't have a back button/gesture so the behavior is overlooked on Android and the Android back button is just made consistent with the home button for now. Or they were just following non-game behavior (i.e. Chrome, Discord, etc.).

I have compiled a list of Android games that have this exit dialog behavior:

• BanG Dream
• Bistro Heroes
• Bloons TD 6
• Geometry Dash
• Rotaeno

There are some games that do something else:

• Monument Valley (does nothing, which is worse than what osu!'s doing)
• Muse Dash (same behavior as osu!, just suspends)

These are basically all the games I have downloaded on my phone at the time. Maybe you can list some games too, but your statement that the behavior is common is valid based on what I've seen.

[mkody]

It seems fair and not wrong, which is why I went for a discussion and not directly to an issue. But it's become unusual and it makes you unsure whether you've clearly and cleanly exited the game or not.

Checking a few from my phone, those have an exit dialog:

• Rotaeno
• Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage! (from the main menu it goes directly to the title screen (logout), then you get the exit dialog)
• Pokémon Masters EX (same as above but with a confirmation to go to the title screen)
• Umamusume
• (click to see more)

  • Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
  • Arknights
  • Blue Archive
  • Honkai Impact 3rd
  • Honkai: Star Rail
  • Neural Cloud (uses a native popup)
  • Stella Sora

Back neither exits nor suspends:

• Zenless Zone Zero
  "Back" does nothing and is not supported on any screens.
  Exit is hidden in the main menu > "More" > Log out (with confirmation) > "power off" button > then we have an exit dialog.
• Girls' Frontline 2: Exilium
  "Back" switches between settings and the main screen.
  Exit is hidden in settings > "Settings" page > red "power off" button > then we have an exit dialog.
• Blue Protocol: Star Resonance
  "Back" opens/closes the main menu.
  There's a logout button in there (with confirmation), and then "back" does nothing on the title screen. No exit option.
• Balatro
  "Back" opens/closes the main menu, no exit option.

I apparently don't have a game that suspends when trying to leave.

[Susko3]

What different does it make to you if the game is closed versus suspended?

[mkody]

From a "regular day-to-day" use, I would say it clears up resources, as even suspended apps will still reserve some memory (or "swapped" memory, depending on the OS/phone/configuration) which can be quite limited on certain devices. But it's still low enough that it won't bother many people.
From a more technical level, it seems more common to stop/destroy the main activity for games when the user expects to quit.

It should also be worthwhile to check how things are handled in a certain "edge" case: multi-window environments like on external monitors (or something like DeX, but I don't have a Samsung phone for this) and in ChromeOS, as I'm not sure if suspending has the same behavior.

In a more UX/practical sense as a side effect in osu!, the exit button isn't visible, like on desktop. Considering how the game is easy to navigate with clicks/taps, not having to gesture back and then back AGAIN (since there's a protection for accidental gestures) is quite a convenience. But that's just a nice-to-have, yet that only requires to toggle one boolean.

[Susko3]

1. Clearing up resources is irrelevant, the OS will kill the suspended app when it needs the resources. In recent Android versions, the default action when pressing the back button is to suspennd the app, exactly like pressing home.
2. It's too niche to bother about, I'm sure the users are used to wonkyness. You can always press the 'X' button or Alt-F4.
3. That makes a lot of sense. Normal phone apps are usually portrait and don't hide the navigation bar, so it's easy to gesture home. Games are landscape and fullscreen, so you need to gesture twice. I'd be curious to see if official UX guidance has anything on this. I would prefer a "Suspend" or "Minimise" button over "Exit". Or perhaps a back button that goes to the osu! cookie + show the navigation bar on that screen.