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

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: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.

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.