[casual_games] New here *waves*

[Andrea Fryer]

Greetings folks,

About time I join this mailing list, seeing as I make casual games for a
living. :-) Been on the Women in game development, Sex in Games, Online
games and ARG lists for several years, but ironically the very list which
concerned my work the most (this one!), has gone unnoticed up till now.
Don't know how I missed it before!

I work as a senior game artist at the Helsinki studio of Digital Chocolate
and am currently working as lead artist in our first game for the Xbox
platform. The company has been famous for it's casual mobile games for years
and good things seem to be happening now that we've entered the iPhone arena
as well. I have yet to make a iPhone game but looking forward to it after
this XBLA game is done.

Creating casual games is definately it's own genre and the challenging
psychology behind the usability and visual design should not be
underestimated. Just because casual games appear simple, does not mean they
were simple to make! As game developers and as human beings, we tend to have
ambitions to create things which are new, innovative, exciting, cool and
mind blowing, but tend to forget that many of these attributes can actually
eat away from the casual aspect and create an overhwhelming, even stressful
experience for the player. I find that we need to be constantly wary of
nurturing a "no brainer" type of usability, keeping shapes, forms and colors
gentle and "good-feel" and lastly, keeping things simple. It's so easy to
get completely carried away when everyone wants to create something never
before seen and mind blasting! :-) Words such as "rounded, gentle, slow,
simple, chunky and readable" tend to be part of my weekly, if not daily
vocabulary.

Anyhow, looking forward to reading and taking part in the discussions. Nice
to meet you all!

- Andrea
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