PopCap On Casual Gaming

Gamasutra has an article on the ever-burgeoning market for casual gamers, with commentary by the people who know the most about it. James Gwertzman is the Director of Business Development at PopCap Games, and he talks about the business side of the non-hardcore market. From the article: "One, of course, is to raise the quality bar - but there are risks there. No one wants to go the path of traditional $30 million games. And second, we are continuing to try to maintain our high level of reputation. Making clones of existing games isn't as profitable as it used to be. We're trying hard to continue innovating."

Comments

Pricing

[duncangough]

There's a big thread about Casual Game pricing on the Casual Games mailing list that's well worth a read:

http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/casual_games/2 005-December/000570.html

The whole $20 price point seems pretty fixed but I don't know how long for. As a gamer, I hope it becomes more dynamic. As a developer, I'm not so sure.

For anyone wanting to get into Casual Games, as a developer or as a gamer, there are worse places to start that then review of 2005 on GameTunnel:

http://www.gametunnel.com/

And, of course, to be a part of the Casual Games blogosphere you could do worse than help me out with CasualGameDev.com:

http://www.casualgamedev.com/