Thirty-five years ago, Nolan Bushnell and Atari brought us the world’s first successful video arcade game: Pong. I came across a short radio interview (PONG: The Ping Heard Round the World) with Bushnell where he talks about the “rebirth of casual games,” likening it those early days.
“The rebirth of the casual game structure is very reminiscent of the early days of pong where pong really was every man’s game and then it went to Street Fighter where you had to push 13 buttons with all 13 of your fingers and rip the spine out of somebody. Violent games lost the women; and the complexity lost the casual gamer. Now we’re coming back full circle to games that are casual that can be played over the Internet.”(and over mobile phones, of course)
Leaving aside any social comentary on violence in games… At Playyoo, we wholeheartedly support the rebirth of the casual game- and renewed interest in developing high quality games that anyone can pick up, play, and enjoy. Simple doesn’t have to be boring.
But where I might deviate from Bushnell (at least how Bushnell was portrayed in this interview) is that the resurgence of casual games does not have to be at the expense of their complex counterparts. It’s not an either-or situation. People have diverse preferences and ideas for entertainment. And individuals themselves are too complex to play one game type day in and day out. If I pull out a deck of cards to play solitaire, it doesn’t mean I don’t like playing Risk (I haven’t actually played Risk in years, but that’s not because of any card playing).
In short, the world is big enough to accommodate strong markets for casual, complex, and any other genre of games. The key is to make sure there are high quality games of all types to meet the wide range of preferences.
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