[casual_games] Just when you thought match-3 had been doneinevery way...

[Sean Fannon]

Hey, all. New to the community, having just joined up with FreshGames as
their Communications Director (and sometime writer/designer). I come from
the tabletop RPG marketplace, with some PC game dev in my history as well.
The casual space is absolutely fascinating to me for many reasons, but one
of those reasons is precisely what we are discussing here.

The extraordinarily broad appeal range of these games.

Puzzle Quest was raved about, at length, by one of the core market's most
vocal bloggers - "Tycho" of Penny Arcade (www.penny-arcade.com). Those guys
are practically rock stars in the core gamer world, and he made a big deal
out of how addicting Puzzle Quest was for him. I'd bet a paycheck PQ got
some mad hits after his postings.

My point is this - there is absolutely value in serving the needs of our
existing market, creating games that use the comfortable language most
casual gamers know and love.

There is also value in shaking the foundations here and there and drawing
"core gamers" into our sandbox. I think it's a very fair assumption that
many of the early generations of core gamers are drifting away from the
explosion-fests and are finding out that a fun, easy-access game can be very
relaxing and entertaining for a while. As we draw more and more of those
guys over (and, yes, the gender reference is intentional), I think
Light-RPGs and Light-Sims are going to be very important to keeping them
hovering around the portals and such.

The best part is that our collective range of titles can expand, which means
we'll all have more diverse experiences in design and marketing.

Cheers!

-- 
Sean Patrick Fannon
Communications Director, FreshGames
Writer, Designer, Gamer Geek
www.freshgames.com

On 5/10/07, Nalin Sharma <nalin at puzzlekings.com> wrote:

>

>  Hi Jonas

>

> I think this is a fascinating discussion that covers both the value of

> innovation and how it is perceived by different sides of the media.

>

> For me the bigger picture is that the "Casual" in casual games refers to

> the "casualisation of consumption", which implies that almost any genre can

> be "casualised", such that a time-starved audience can consume it.

> Consequently innovation can come at many levels and everyone will have a

> different view of what being "innovative" actually means.  This makes it

> almost impossible to please everyone, so the only thing you can do as a

> designer is try and stay true to your original vision.

>

> >From my viewpoint this is interesting as we are trying to innovate in

> terms of the root mechanic of match 3 games with our forthcoming game.  This

> was born out of thinking "wouldn't it be nice if you could make combos and

> plan strategically" while playing Bejweled, so we put a drag and drop

> feature in as well as a few other new features.  When I showed the game in

> Amsterdam, seasoned gamers "got it" straight away, whereas those publishers

> fixated on 45 year old women were more conservative.  Long term my goals for

> this game are to migrate and evolve on to mobile and console, as we did with

> our first game - the key being that each platform will need some degree of

> evolution and innovation to address the new potential audience, all built on

> top of the new mechanic.

>

> Finally, the current business model and distribution method polarises the

> market and dictates what works well - this can lead to stagnation which can

> filter out innovation.  The encouraging thing about Casual Games is that we

> as an industry have found out how to sell to a market other than teenage

> boys playing console games.  However we need to extend that beyond the 45

> year old female and then we can see the industry really grow...

>

>

> Nalin Sharma

> www.puzzlekings.com

>

> ...

>

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