What's Casual, was RE: [casual_games] Aztec

[Juan Gril]

You are right Daniel. I'll take the blame for having written initially a
"download-centric" opinion on what works or what doesn't visually on casual
games. It was not my intention to do so.

Having said that, from the design point of view at some point you have to
draw a line on what is a casual game and what it's not. 

There are two different things that I guess you were talking about: the
types of casual games, and its monetization.

In terms of the types, a lot of people may disagree with me, but I believe
that most Korean multiplayer games are not casual games. You cannot consider
a game to be a casual game just because of its short time span. If I play
Big Shot or Kart Ryder (two popular korean games, for those without korean
friends who can lend you their soc sec number) I'm not able to set the pace
of the game myself, it's not forgiving at all, and the rewards take forever.
These three design rules are the opposite of what casual game design is. 

At the same time, we will never expand the audience if we don't provide
content for the rest of the not 40 year old moms. So what do we do? There is
a part of the video game industry that have been creating short-span, hard
to play and extremely rewarding once mastered experiences. It's called the
"Arcade" industry, and we should be taking cues from them (Microsoft, it
seems, has taken the lead on that).  

There is always the question if a casual game designer can actually design a
good arcade game (in the same way a good tv show director may or may not do
a good movie), and that could define the extent of what we do.

And in terms of the monetization, I think that it's hard to tell how much
different business models will influence on the basic game design rules for
casual games. I look at casual web games supported by advertising, I look to
downloadable single-player games, and I look to casual games supported by a
subscription (like in Club Pogo) and all of them share the same basic design
elements. In Korea, the "webboard" games in Hangame seems to me to be
similar to the US ones, even though they monetize their games through
micro-transactions. Then again, this may change.
 
Cheers,

Juan


-----Original Message-----
From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Daniel James
Sent: Thursday, April 27, 2006 11:32 AM
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: RE: [casual_games] Aztec

On Thu, 27 Apr 2006, Juan Gril wrote:

> 'Casual Games players get put off by "cute" characters or visual 
> elements that make the sensation of watching a Saturday morning 
> cartoon.'

Neopets looks a lot like a Saturday morning cartoon to me (well, it's 
cuter and arguably slightly less polished), and is unquestionably one of 
the better examples of a casual game website. Indeed, as a site that's 
grown organically to ~20M uniques, I'd say it's a much better example 
than any of the offerings of most major portals that are fed by fairly 
consistent traffic pipes unrelated to the quality of their offerings. 

Likewise most of the Korean 'casual' games are super-cute, even though 
they appeal to very wide demographics. Of course cultural tastes vary, 
but...

That is to say, I agree that we're way too early in the game to know 
what works for casual games as a whole. Statements can be made about 
what works for a $20 downloadable game distributed via the major US/EU 
portals, but given ~2% (purchasers) of ~30% (downloads compared to play 
online) for hit game monetization rates, I don't think that that tells 
us all that much about what the other 99% of the (US/EU) audience might 
be willing to spend money on...

Another way of putting this is to say that it's a bad idea for the 
casual games 'industry' to categorise themselves as 'downloadlable games 
for the older, majority female demographic that predominantly buys 
downloadable games via the major portals'. If we do that then some of us 
will have to find another industry categorisation for that other 99%, 
along with associated additional conferences and so forth. Save us!

- Daniel
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