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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."
Damn I was too busy playing Ms. Pacman on my phone to realize that I just missed first post.
Maybe next time.
I totally understand the move towards casual gaming. After working a long day I can't devote the hours to a time-intensive game (e.g. Resident Evil). Now I find myself playing retro shooters and suchlike, games that can be crammed in between work and endless bloody domestic chores.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Just look at the popularity of Tetris.
I have friends that only play simple puzzle/breakout style games, flash ones generally.
They are perfect time killers, no in-depth tactics or plot to worry about. Beating a high score is about as deep as they get, and then you can just walkway from them when your bus arrives.
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.
I just can't be bothered.
And development of a TI-8x game can take several study halls to develop and cost six cans of mountain dew and a bag of skittles.
The game I like to play didn't cost anybody a dime to develop, has been passed down from generation to generation, and when finished, provides ample amounts of satisfaction.
It's called... Spank The Monkey
"Son! Don't do that, you'll go blind!"
"Dad...I'm over here..."
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.
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.
I think you can compare this to non-interactive media, like TV and movies. Movies are expensive and time consuming to produce, but are long, in depth, and have generally have a polished look, while TV shows cost less time and money to produce, lack the polish of movies, and aren't as in depth.
Compare this to video games. Half-Life 2 or Doom 3 (will) have considerable polish, cost millions (i think), and are longer and in depth. Tetris is cheap to produce, lacks polish, but is short and fun anyway.
The point is, if TV and movies are any indication, complex and simple games will both become popular, just filling different niches.
"The Rise of Casual and Mobile Gaming"
Oh yes... I play casual games all the time. I play lots of different games as they're all the same to me. I get everything I want out of one, "finishing" it, then I move on to the next. Sometimes I play a couple games at once over a certain period of time, trying to get a feel of which one I want to play more.
Not only that, but I just got into "group gaming," where I get to meet a bunch of other gamers like me and we play each other in groups of 3 or more. You should have seen this one time when we all played the same game, like 3 of us at once. We were logged in at different consoles but it was fun nonetheless.
If I ever find the right game, I want to try tantric gaming, so I can get more of a lasting and satisfying and "close" experience when I play. But that demands I find the right game that I can trust and stay with for a longer time than I'm used to. I just don't know if I have that kind of time and patience.
And to other casual gamers, make sure you are careful. Don't buy games that aren't shrink-wrapped or you might infect your system with a nasty virus!
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. :)
http://www.c64.com/detail.php?gameid=100207
5 1
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=10
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
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.
This is where all those classics will show up in the next two or three years. This is good and bad news. Good news: you may actually be able to find your old favorites and play them for a quarter on your cell phone. Bad news: these games are ecnimically viable again so there is no way you can make an argument that those ROMS you downloaded are for "historical preservation purposes". Worse yet, if comanies start making real money on these cell phone arcades with retro games, you can expect a crackdown on all those ROM sites.