Casual games have certainly received their fair share of attention recently. The Casual Game Association recently published their 2007 study on casual games — where they projected casual games to be a $2.25 billion a year industry and found that men and women play casual games in roughly the same numbers (although women make up 74% of those actually paying for these games). And on Gamasutra, casual games were likened to the proverbial one-night stand (see: Persuasive Games: Casual as in Sex, Not Friday).
According the Casual Game Special Interest Group, casual games are defined as: “Games that generally involve less complicated game controls and overall complexity in terms of gameplay or investment required to get through game.
The casual game experience has often been compared to “snacking” (David Gosen of I-Play used this phrase in a 2005 Gamsutra interview). Like a snack, one can pick up a casual game quickly. There’s no need to clear out the day’s schedule like you would before sitting down to a four-course meal. There’s no lengthy preparation time. And there’s not the same impact on the wallet.
However, while casual games don’t demand the same time commitment as their “hard-core” counterparts, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the casual game experience must be short and fleeting. After all, the snack industry would not survive at its gargantuan levels if we all just ate one or two chips at a time, then neatly closed the bag and tucked it away. So-called “casual” gamers can be easily sucked into the electronic black hole of the casual game — and soon find that their three-minute game has turned into a three-hour session. And “casual” gamers can become obsessively passionate about their high scores and statistics.
Accommodating both heads of the coin, and making games that provide an equally compelling experience whether the participant only has three minutes or ends up playing for three hours, offers an exciting challenge for game designers.
First, casual games require minimal directions. Computer Space, the first computerized video game from Atari’s co-founder Nolan Bushnell failed to reach mass production. Why? In Scott Cohen’s Zap! The Rise and Fall of Atari, Bushnell explains, “You had to read the instructions before you could play, people didn’t want to read instructions.”
But that just addresses on side of the coin. The box for the cult two-player board game reads: a minute to learn, but a lifetime to master. And while the “Easy to learn, hard to master” mantra has become a little cliché in the game design world, the message is critical: casual games need to be fun from the start without becoming boring no matter how many times they’re played.
Related posts
Tags: casual games, game snack, mobile games, mobile gaming, mobile snack
No comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link
http://blog.playyoo.com/2007/snacking-on-casual-games/75/trackback/