[casual_games] Price as Signal

[Robert Gordon]

BUT - If a game will be played for dozens of hours, doesn¹t that mean that
it really has dozens of hours of Œgameplay¹, and not 10-30 minutes? Would
you say that backgammon has 5 minutes of gameplay (estimated), because
that¹s the average length of a single game? Personally, I believe this is
the secret sauce of many (but certainly not all) casual games ­ monster
amounts of replay value. Most movies I see once. Some two or three times.
The best ones, maybe as many as twenty times. I¹ve literally played
thousands (if not 10s of thousands) of games of backgammon (for example).
Dunno to what extent that makes me a Œhardcore-casual-gamer¹...

As far as pricing goes, I still believe we¹re operating in the (increasingly
distant) wake of the Œeverything-digital-must-be-free¹ vibe of the late 90s,
early 00s. Some people will never pay anything for a casual game, Œcause
they simply don¹t Œfeel¹ that they should (same folks who felt paying
$30/month to an isp should grant them access to every last piece of content
on the Internet). I think many of these gamers will come around eventually.
They¹ll move a little, we¹ll move a little.

PS. This was my first post to this list. Howdy y¹all!

r o b


| Robert Gordon
| The Article 19 Group Inc.
| phone: 514.938.8512
| email: rob at article19.com
| http://www.article19.com

> 
> From: Joe Pantuso <jpantuso at traygames.com>
> Reply-To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List <casual_games at igda.org>
> Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 12:19:49 -0500
> To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List <casual_games at igda.org>
> Subject: Re: [casual_games] Price as Signal
> 
> The reason I don't totally buy into that premise is it doesn't apply to casual
> games the way it does to more hardcore games.  A casual game may only have
> 10-30 minutes of 'gameplay' in it, but will be played for dozens of hours by
> many users. 


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