mobile gaming

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So, just who exactly is playing A Cat’s Life? Well, according to a recent study by the Casual Games Association, those who play “simpler games involving shiny gems or lines of colored balls” are equally split among the species — that’s 50-50. The report found that women buy more casual games, but men are just as likely to play them.

“Everyone always thought that casual games were something that only appeal to women,” said Jessica Tams, managing director of the association. “We knew these guys were playing these games, but the hardcore gamer who is playing Halo with his buddies isn’t going to brag that he just beat the next level of Zuma.”

Much to the dismay of machismo, interactive entertainment is unconditional. In other words, task a human with a compelling on-screen objective, and they’ll oblige.

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.

We sat down with Kars Alfrink-interaction designer, teacher, and consultant for Playyoo-to learn a little about his thoughts on social participation, casual games, and the mobile platform.

What do you think is the significance of bringing the social or participatory aspect into mobile games?

Well, I’d say for one, it adds an extra dimension to play. Traditionally, if you look at games outside the digital world, most games are social by nature-like board games or playground games. It’s a weird situation with digital games: for a long time they were mostly focused on the single player. And that’s fine, but from a game design perspective, there’s nothing more interesting than playing with or against another human being. After all, they exhibit the most interesting behaviors.

Now when it comes to Playyoo, we’re targeting a very broad audience. And people have very different needs and motivations-and their ideas of fun are different as well. We want to have multiple levels of engagement. So at the beginning level, users can just casually play a game, or snack on a game, where they might play a game for a few minutes and then put it away. These users just want to play a game, and have fun for a few minutes. The social aspect becomes interesting for people who want to engage with Playyoo at a more intense level. You have people who are into competing; you have people who are into socializing, etc. And we want to cater to these different interests.

Can you give us some examples of how participation is going to enter Playyoo?

Sure, I’m working on something right now that I call the meta-game-which will essentially be an umbrella for the mobile games in Playyoo and will let users compete and collaborate on a different level within the community. For example, users can submit their high scores for a game and check on how their friends are doing. We’ll also be creating rewards for various achievements, and let people team up and compete against other teams. And our game creation tool is going to let users participate in the game design experience on a whole new level. And again, if people don’t want to participate in these extra activities, that’s fine. They’ll hopefully still have an enjoyable time playing the mobile games themselves.

What does the term ‘casual game’ mean to you?

‘Casual,’ to me, says something about the level of attention and engagement that a player has (or is required to have) with the game. For me as a designer, casual games provide interesting challenges. It might seem simple to create these casual games, but they’re actually quite tricky to pull off, or pull off well, that is. From a game design perspective, I think it’s more challenging to pull off a high quality causal game than yet another first-person shooter game.

Do you think the mobile game experience needs to stay casual?

I definitely would never say that you can only do casual games on the mobile phone. Certainly, there have been efforts to replicate the experience of the console game on the mobile phone. But I don’t think that makes a whole lot of sense, because they’re such different platforms. However, you can do all kinds of games-any kind of activity can be turned into a mobile casual game. And it certainly doesn’t have to be limited to the games we already know, like parlor games or arcade classics. There can be original development on the mobile phone, and I think that’s one of the most interesting areas at the moment

You mentioned the difference between the mobile and console platform. What are some of the unique aspects of mobile gaming?

Well, for one, designers can play with the context of use with the mobile phone. Location is the most obvious example of this-and we’ve already seen this in alternate reality games, where for instance players have to be at a certain place at a certain time to get a message needed to unravel a puzzle or get to the next stage.

I’ve been teaching a class on mobile game design at the Utrecht School of Arts and I challenge my students to think of interesting things on a mobile phone that you couldn’t do anywhere else. And they come up with very interesting examples. For example, in one game, distance traveled becomes a factor. Players try to grow an exotic plant, and the food for that plant is travel. So, the distance-and direction-that players travel feeds back into the game. That might sound kind of conceptual and artsy, but it’s a nice example of what you can do with the mobile platform.

Mobile games are often defined as games you can play anywhere, and while traveling, but on another level, I’d say in mobile games, you have to be traveling and be physically in motion. That puts a whole new twist on mobile.

Photo credits: Alper Çuğun / http://alper.nl

The Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles acts as the videogame industry’s lodestar. Major publishers present the next year’s worth of games to the world’s media representatives. Mainstream publications, from CNN to Reuters to Newsweek use the event as a showcase for what is next in the game industry. And this year, they all said the same thing: Games are for everyone.

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Computerworld on Thursday published an article that examines Adobe’s aspirations to infiltrate mobile phones. Much like it has on desktop PCs, the web-app maker hopes mobile phone users will freely adopt their Flash Lite plug in. From the article:

 

Having conquered PCs, Adobe is turning its attention to mobile phones. By 2010, it wants to see a total of 1 billion phones shipped with Flash Lite, a cut-down version of Flash Player that runs small apps and games, and, with an update released earlier this month at its annual MAX conference, plays Web video.

 

But getting Flash Lite on has its challenges. The most popular mobile application platform currently is Java installed on about 500 million phones or 16 percent penetration. By comparison, Flash Lite has been installed on 300 million phones or 8-10 percent penetration, although Adobe expects to double that number in the coming year. And while Flash Lite attempts to reach higher adoption levels in the U.S. it’s already a hit in Japan — literally every phone in the land of the rising sun supports downloadable Flash content.

 

There’s good reason (actually 3 billion reasons) for Adobe to propagate Flash Lite as a mobile standard. According to IDC, there are 3 billion mobile phones in use today compared to 1 billion PCs. That’s three times the size of the original pie they dominated.

 

When it comes to the world of mobile casual games, Flash Lite’s benefits are beyond compare. Development and deployment costs are greatly lowered. And Flash Lite’s “create once and deploy everywhere” approach brings a new level of scalability to game development and distribution – so we’re ready and waiting for them to cross that 1 billion mark by 2010.