The Rise of Casual and Mobile Gaming

HardcoreGamer writes "The New York Times has a lengthy article about the simple pleasures and growth of casual mobile gaming. Trends show that 'more and more people are playing simpler, quieter types of electronic games on the Web, cellphones and hand-helds.' The growth in lighter, less time- and resource-intensive games (like those by GameLoft, Jamdat, and WildTangent) is spurred by the ability to play anytime, anywhere, as much as the rising development costs and production times for a traditional game. A wireless game can cost $40,000 and take a few months to develop, while full-fledged PC and console games can cost $5 million to $10 million and take years to deliver."

Comments

May the good 'ol days come back!

[Da VinMan]

Personally, I relish games produced on constrictive hardware by a bunch of rowdy upstarts! I think that is where the PDA game market is right now too. The hardware isn't good enough to support elaborate studio style software, so they have to innovate with the gameplay instead of the video and audio. IMO, the best game designs have come from this model. Yeah, I like UT/Q3/GTA:VC as much as the next geek, but I'm just as enamored with Tetris, SameGame, and Bejeweled.

Can't wait to finally get a PDA+PCS cell phone device! I'm cooomming precious! :+)

Part of the culture now

[agendi]

It's interesting, at my last place of work (which hopefully is dying a painful death) you had the tech types coming in (about 10 a.m) hot brew in hand spending the next 15 minutes catching up on mail, slashdot, web comics and so on (maybe it's more like 40 mins after spam now) and shooting the breeze about counter strike. More often than not on my travels through the office, the admin staff would come in for the morning with juice in hand and settle into a session of bejewelled!

Lunch time comes around and you can hear the happy tones of popcap games in the hallowed halls of the business world.

Long live work-place recreation.

Re:Casual Gaming

[Zork the Almighty]

I prefer simpler, well done "retro" style games. Games don't have to be the biggest, most elaborate technical juggernaut to be good. Interesting gameplay, solid graphics, and polished sound has always been a sure thing. BTW, I love Frozen Bubble on Linux, and I'm considering Space Tripper. Can anyone suggest other great games for Linux ?

Re:Simple Games are Fun

[nickgrieve]

You know the secret to space invaders?

I was shown this by a guy that had a real life coin op machine. (you probably know this already, but its not often one gets to talk about classic game strategy)

--Spoiler warning-- :-)

Shoot them from the left to right in columns rather than rows. They have to move farther and farther across the screen and advance downwards slower.

It'll be intresting to see how the market evolves

[mlk]

When things like JSR 184 "come of age". The "classic" games of 2006 could a quick game of network Quake while you wait for your bus.

More innovation in smaller games.

[Dr. Bent]

Smaller scale games also provide a better platform for innovative games because they can be the product of a single person or a very close knit team. On huge budget games for PC's or Consoles, it's not uncommon for graphic artists and programmers to meet each other for the first time at the release party. On small budget games, a single person can closely watch over the game as it develops (or just do everything themselves) to make sure it turns out exactly like they wanted and not "Like Diablo, but in space!"

This is similar to the innovation that occured back in the first few years of gaming (Atari, Nintendo, etc...), where the systems were simple enough that one or two people could make a game with a fairly limited budget and still have it be really good.

Pros and Cons

[SmartGamer]

Both forms of games- quick "coffee break" arcade-ish uncomplex games, and deep RPGs or involved, epic adventures- have their place, and neither is likely to go away.

I'm a "Wario Ware" addict. It's a Game Boy Advance collection of no fewer than 210 (actually more) little tiny games with little tiny five-second time limits. The goal is to see how many you can get through before you lose four times, as the games get faster and faster.

As you can imagine, they're not particularly complex. However, the fast pace of the game (a full set in Red Pig Mode only takes five minutes or so) and utter lack of depth make the game perfect for those little breaks between classes.

When I actually have time, however, I prefer the more complex games. Advance Wars is one of my favorites; Golden Sun is also up there. But they take a time dedication I don't usually have.

It's simple why the minigames are taking off: video games have become more accepted among the adult population. (Just ask my Dr. Mario addict mother.) But that adult population generally doesn't have time to get truly involved in a game- so the simple-but-still fun games, so perfect for coffee breaks, are getting played because that's what people have time for.

I prefer the more complex games, but I rarely have time to actually play them.

Re:Pros and Cons

[Babbster]

It's simple why the minigames are taking off: video games have become more accepted among the adult population. (Just ask my Dr. Mario addict mother.) But that adult population generally doesn't have time to get truly involved in a game- so the simple-but-still fun games, so perfect for coffee breaks, are getting played because that's what people have time for.

I think for many it's less a question of time and more one of inclination.

For example, I'm 31 years old and cut my gaming teeth on the Atari 2600. Most of the games on that machine were simple, like the ones on cell phones. Over time, as systems advanced and I aged with them, games became more and more complex in gameplay [if not themes]. For adults who never got into videogaming while it was still for kids and "gamers," it's a lot harder to jump in and try out the hottest new games for the current consoles. There are not only more buttons (remember when we just had one?) but the designs of many modern games make assumptions about fundamental gaming skills that only a well-designed tutorial mode can overcome. These assumptions are either true in the case of long-time gamers or undaunting to a young person who still assumes that s/he can learn and be good at anything, including any video game.

A perfect example of this is Neverwinter Nights. I can't imagine someone unfamiliar with RPGs trying to sit down and play that game without reading the manual at least a couple times and probably referring to it constantly while trying to play. On the other hand, people with RPG experience can [just about always] play it right out of the box and really only need to refer to the manual for specific character attributes/skills. While someone might indeed be interested in sitting down and playing NWN for an hour or two a couple times a week, the learning curve is such that busy non-gamers would probably quit rather quickly because their first 10 or more sessions would be spent just trying to get a handle on how to play the game.

Pac-Man, on the other hand, is understood easily within the first five minutes of play.

My mother, too, is a puzzle fan. I bought her a Gameboy way back in the day so that she could try Tetris. She loved it and I've been replacing/upgrading her Nintendo handheld ever since. She likes Dr. Mario, Columns Crown and the like but even Chu Chu Rocket is presenting her with some difficulty because it takes a little more time to learn and gain skill. On the Atari 2600, my grandmother liked to play...but only Casino because, again, the learning curve was small since she already knew about card games.

I'm rambling now, so on to what I think might be my point: As the population that has been playing videogames for years continues to age, there will actually be a decline in the popularity of the more simple games. I think they're experiencing a surge now due simply to the fact that such a large percentage of the population has access to PCs and cell phones where playing videogames for most is a by-product of having equipment that is by and large being used for other purposes. In 20 years, I can envision nearly everyone waiting in an airport terminal playing the future equivalent of a Gameboy and playing all kinds of complex videogames due simply to the fact that those people will be more likely to have grown up with videogames...whether or not that's a good thing is another issue entirely. :)

reinterpreting the classics

[tenzig_112]

some of the funniest and most fun stuff I've played recently have been hacks of old SNES ROMS or flash ditties that take modern gaming sensibilities and apply them to arcade classics.

This BREAKOUT clone is pretty funny. It's got a shot clock so if the game goes too slowly, weird things start happening.

I know a guy working on something he calls "Grand Theft Wagon: Oregon Trail" complete with squirrel killing side missions.

Wildtangent == Spyware

[Anonymous Coward]

lets hope they can make a profit with phones instead of abusing other peoples computers with popups,installing more spyware,stealing email,config etc

report on tangent here

can a leopard change its spots ? lets hope so

Re:Casual Gaming

[Pxtl]

I have one problem with this: while the games are simple to learn, they tend to be designed as simple timewasters. Things like Tetris, or some level-uppage RPG games.

Games can be simple and quick and episodic but still have depth in their play. I've been waiting for a handheld version of Z (yes, it is planned). Most often the "handheld fun" games are extremely repetitive and mind-numbing. I like a game to be simple and easy to grasp, but still mentally-challenging and preferably multiplayer. Yes, they do exist. C64, NES, and SNES are full of those. Remember Spy Vs. Spy? Star Control 1? Simple, easy, but deep games - and games you can challeng another player in - which is the true test of a game (IMHO) - its easy to make a game where you jump a single player through hoops - making it both fun and balance for two players is a real trick.

play chess over phone?

[Chad E Dirks]

Are there any chess applications available for mobile or pda/mobile combo that allow you to play a game of chess against someone on his or her own mobile? That is, with a visual representation of the current state of the game on an on-screen chess board, rather than just relaying the moves to one another.

Allow no time play to have a game go over the course of the day. The opponent is dialed up and sent the move you've decided to make (e.g. Nc3).

Allow a quick timed game to be played, for example, over break.

Allow an individual to keep several games going at once, that is, the state of several games at once which can be switched between on the on-screen chess board. Have three minutes? Tab through and make a move on each of the five games you have going.

If something like this isn't available, then it should be.

Re:Casual Gaming

[Heartz]

BzFlag We've been having tonnes of fun with it in the department!

hardware reality

[mattite]

Cellphone and PDA games are nice, but if you could play (insert favorite 3d game) on your handheld, wouldn't you? Of course people defer to simpler games on the go! It's not as if mobile phones have the computing power necessary to render Quake III, and most laptops do not come with top of the line video. At the current point in off-the-shelf technology, mobile devices simply aren't designed for demanding, 3d capable games. Maybe in the future. Who knows?

C64 games on mobile devices...

[dameron]

http://www.c64.com/detail.php?gameid=100207

Wizard, by S.A. Moore and Steven Luedders, and release (eventually) by EA in the mid 1980's is one of the best climbing games ever. It runs like a dream on my 300Mhz Axim with Pocket 64 from clickgamer.com. It's 171K in D64 format and the developers would probably -LOVE- getting a single dollar from this "property". In general C64 games run very well on modern mobile devices and fit the screen dimensions nicely too.

To be honest, I'd rather play a well crafted C64 game (like Wizard's Crown or the abovementioned Wizard, or any text adventure) on my Axim than even think about a modern game that'd use a great deal more memory and resources to battle nicely rendered gorillas...

It's just amazing, really, how much the C64 programmers got out of the hardware, and how effectively the emulator folk have translated that to the mobile market.

Druid:
http://www.c64.com/detail.php?gameid=105 1

Is a fantastic game.

Trust me, if you can find a C64 emulator for your platform then by all means explore some of the forgotten gems of the past.

-dameron

Re:Simple Games are Fun

[giblfiz]

See I always thought that the secret was that they used a piss poor randomization algorithm in the arcade game, and that if you shot the bonus ship on a shot mod 34 you got the max random bonus score

So it's not just in Japan

[apetime]

It sort of surprises me that cell phone games are becoming popular in North America, but I suppose it all just comes down to how advanced cell phones are becoming.

Here in Japan, games on cell phones have been around since before the first Java enabled phones came out two years ago, but they've really exploded since then. It used to be that before, when you saw a high school kid on the train mashing the buttons on their phone, they were entering a mail with their super fast thumb-typing . Now, it's more likely that their playing a game of Tetris. It never occurred to me that it would catch on in North America though, cos the average Tokyoite spends 2 hours a day on the train, sleeping or staring off into space, but Americans mostly commute by car, which requires both eyes and at least one hand to do safely. I think it'd be interesting to see how usage patterns differ between North Americans, Japanese, and Europeans.

Doom

[Cackmobile]

I remember a while ago someone ported doom to a phone. I think this would be the besst. Imagine sitting on a train/bus playing multiplayer doom with random people. Your phone could send out a broadcast via bluetooth or somesuch, asking people if they wanna play. Then wooshka fragging that guy in the pinstripe suit. Can't wait.