[casual_games] The Making of Casual Games

[Wade Tinney]

Hi Dora-

There are a lot of questions wrapped up in this one, but I'll bite off a
little piece of it to start the discussion going. 

One fundamental difference in making a casual, downloadable game (such
as those my company produces) is that players can try the game before
they decide whether or not to purchase it. So, unlike the typical retail
experience, players are not financially invested in the game when they
are playing it. They haven't shelled out their hard-earned cash. I
believe that that financial investment (in a retail game) makes players
give that game more of a chance; they *want* to like the thing they just
paid money for. They don't want to be disappointed or to have to go
through the rigamarole of returning the game. They'll slog their way up
a steep learning curve, or attempt a badly tuned early level dozens of
times, or put up with a frustrating control scheme for MUCH longer than
someone with no financial investment. 

Players of casual, downloadable games have little to no investment of
the sort. If a game is frustrating in any way, they will simply close it
and download one of the other hundreds of free game demos that are just
a click away. 

As a result, I think that polishing, tuning, and managing the player
learning curve are much more critical in this type of game. My sense is
that these things take up a much longer relative portion of the
development cycle than they do a larger console or PC title. I'd
thumbnail it at about 30% of the total production time for most
successful titles.

Anyway, that's just one difference that springs to mind. I'm interested
to hear what others think. 

For more discussion about production issues involved in making casual,
downloadable games, I'd encourage you to check out the Casual Games
Quarterly, which has interviews with folks from some of the leading
developers in this space. 

http://www.igda.org/casual


Wade




-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org
[mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Dora Cheng
Sent: Thursday, July 14, 2005 1:54 AM
To: casual_games at igda.org
Subject: [casual_games] The Making of Casual Games


Hey Everyone!

My first post to the list... Been a very lively discussion so far and
I'm just wondering about what you all think about the actual making of
casual games:

How is making a casual game different from making those that are of a
much bigger scale, like World of Warcraft, CS, Zelda, Halo, and
countless others? What are some of the unique challenges in making a
casual game? How would the design, planning, scheduling, budgeting,
development, testing, marketing, etc. be different?

Looking forward to your comments!

Cheers,
Dora
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