I beta-test for Popcap (I'm one of the 'army of moms' they talk about in interviews) and one of the most interesting things about the process is that it turns out that 'casual gamers' are no more casual about their gaming than 'hardcore gamers'. The 'simplicity' of casual games is about the ease of getting into the game; it's not at all about the depth of strategy that can be deployed. Popcap do understand this and their games are better than most of the opposition because of a pretty complex risk/reward balancing system.

Peggle (which I don't much like, to be honest), is a special case; it is both more and less skillful than it initially appears. More skillful because you can do huge amounts to control where the ball goes; far more than you think you can. Less skillful because the programming's dead clever; the game adjusts your shots imperceptibly to make them better than they are. So you are more likely to make a 'lucky' shot than if it were pure ball physics. Popcap games are full of these sorts of things; for example, in Bookworm Adventures the letters that fall down often 'just happen' to spell words that are relevant to the scene you're in.

I've been meaning, for ages, to write about all this for Plokta.

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Ooh - I got the last Plokta and enjoyed it. I'd love to see a write up on "casual" games!

When I think of casual games I think of ones that you don't have to devote hours to. You can play Bejewelled for 10 minutes and then go do something else, whereas doing that with most hardcore games is much harder - they require that you spend half an hour to get anything back out of them. Not always true, but it seems like the best dividing point I've seen.

Also, less shooting demons in the face.

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Two things: casual games are ones that you can theoretically drop at any moment -- though in practice people play them for just as long as 'hardcore' games. But they're certainly more amenable to being interrupted, often repeatedly. I'm hugely enjoying Civilization: Revolution at the moment, which is a casualised version of Civ. Nice and short, wildly interruptable, full of win; but at heart I don't think I will ever have the time for planned four hour strategy gaming sessions again.

And you are right about shooting demons in the face; lots of FPS are plenty trivial enough to be casual games, but the casual game market finds them offensive; 'moms' again. A couple of Popcap games have skirted that line -- Heavy Weapon is a good example. My personal line is drawn somewhere between Fate and Diablo; the former is fine to play around my tiny children, and the latter isn't.

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Dammit - I just got round to looking at Civ:Revolutions, and it looks like great fun, if it wasn't console only I'd buy it. My problem with Civ has always been that I stare at the 1500 different options and give up before I start. A nice simple version sounds like exactly my cup of tea!

I agree that casual games are generally aimed at people with less time, and more family. Which makes it likely that they'll want less offensive content, and gameplay that, at least initially, demands less of them.

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Thanks as always for the links!

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Glad to be of service :->

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*snorfl* BEST fan-fiction site ever! *lol*

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From How Not To Be Insane When Accused Of Racism:

3) Don’t make it about you. Usually the thing to do is apologize for what you said and move on. Especially if you’re in a meeting or something, resist your desire to turn the meeting into a seminar on How Against Racism You Are. The subject of the conversation is probably not “your many close Black friends, and your sincere longstanding and deep abhorrence of racism.”

I think it's a great site, and some great points there, but having read some of what's been bandied about the interweb in recent weeks, I think that this bit is slightly unfair. There are plenty of cases (and not just in regards to racism) where someone says something, means it in a particular way (which is utterly innocent), and then is pulled up for being racist/sexist/etc by someone who is making a mountain out of a molehill/is overly sensitive. It goes both ways, and I don't think that it's always the case that someone should apologise for what they've said if it has been utterly misinterpreted. And that applies to both sides of the giant debate that's ongoing.

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Megapixel article is spot-on. I find that anything higher than 3, for me, usually just means more computer resources required to manipulate the images later.

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I already have Bejeweled and Chuzzle. Reading that article about casual vs hardcore gamers resulted in me downloading the demo for Peggle. Then buying it. £2.55. Can't argue with that.

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