[casual_games] Hey Everyone... Sound Off will ya? ^_^

[Adam Martin]

Hi, I'm Adam, I'm an MMO consultant (ex MMO developer and ex MMO
publisher), and when I'm not consulting, I'm building a set of
services for online and MMO iPhone games (particularly: viral
marketing, PR, scores, datamining, anti-cheating, multiplayer, social
networking, etc). Some of it is in closed alpha (looking for more devs
who want to try it out :), and/or partners), but no apps have shipped
with our stuff yet. We're (kind of) turning into an iPhone publisher -
but without taking any IP ownership.

I joined the list because (a long time ago) I was the CTO for a
marketing / online games company doing ARGs - and we wanted to embed
an entire casual-gaming portal inside one of our upcoming games. So I
threw myself into the casual gaming scene.

I got to know a lot of people and products, got addicted to a whole
slew of games, ended up a high-level player on Kongregate (although
I've been too busy to play much the past year, and I'm now languishing
down somewhere around level 30).

I've taken a lot of lessons from the casual gaming scene and applied
them in web, online community, and even in MMO design and development.

>From 2007, I was a regional CTO for one of the big MMO publishers, and

was surprised how little most people in that multinational corporate
knew about the standard practices in casual gaming and casual game
development - there was a lot useful I was able to bring. In the past
year, I've even found some of it folding back directly into VW
development (as most VW stuff is done in Flash these days).

Thought for the day: I've played a couple of thousand computer games
that I could still relate the design and pros/cons of. I've found that
has made me better educated in a lot of gameplay, design, UI, and
level design issues than most coders and artists, and even many of the
designers, I've worked with. In particular, it's made me a lot better
at my job (better able to interface with and understand the designers
and the design). Of those thousands, at first most were from the 8-bit
and 16-bit computing days, when games were shorter and much cheaper -
but ... casual gaming has allowed me to get back to racking up 50-100
new games a year that I've played and completed (or played as far as
hating and giving up on).

So ... Shouldn't everyone in mainstream game development be playing
casual games every week?

Adam