That's the official Casual Games definition. It's not applicable to gaming casually, to blowing off steam on the Xbox360 or to playing old-school classics using MAME. Casual Gamers are a very tighly defined bunch and Casual Games are almost exclusively aimed at Windows downloaded, try-before-you-buy, 2D pick-up-and-go style games.
Tables are for laying out tabular data. Use them where they're meant to be used and that's fine. It's just that tables got a bad name for being full of spacer.gif's and nested tables. Stay away from that, mark up your tables with relevant CSS and you'll end up with a semantically useful design.
EVE is casual in the sense that it's addictive, but other than that it's probably even more immersive and even more of a time sink that most other MMOs. Casual MMOs, MCOs can still work, but in much more of a pick-up-and-go manner. Persistent worlds aren't the ideal place for MCOs, but they can work. Puzzle Pirates is probably the best example of that.
Or there's Passive Gaming, where Casual Games could really excel. I don't know of anyone who's created a true hybrid MMO, MCO, Passive Game but I'm pretty sure it won't be long before they start to turn. The whole Korean Gaming scene has been exposed over here and those MMOs that were ported over to Western audiences haven't really taken off. The business model of free to play, pay for items, is going to work, so that's another string to the bow.
Fucking guess what... If they were creating an app to handle bank accounts they wouldn't have used MySQL.
Why is it so hard for people to grasp this idea? The right tool for the job. MySQL is great for 99% of what it is used for, warts and all. The sad fact of the matter is that you've forgotten what it's like to learn about data integrity and consistency.
Pygame is well worth a look, especially since the site got revamped and activity has picked up again.
I wrote two games using Pygame, Slider and WordSlider which were pretty painless to do, going from a standing start of knowing nothing about Pygame to knowing enough to finish a game.
Sure, SDL might not be fast enough for any kind of 3D FPS but if you wanted to write one of those you'd be learning C++ or picking up some middleware like the Torque engine. Honestly, though, everyone in here should stop whining about how scripting languages aren't 'fast enough' for games - they're easily fast enough for puzzle and adventure games, just not *every* game.
Couldn't it be dynamic? Couldn't the submission itself be subject to moderation just like the comments are?
That way, if a submission is judged to be on-topic and worth, then the links are treated as such. If the story is judged off-topic or a Slashad, then the links get nofollow tags applied (maybe start that way and remove the nofollow tags if it warrants it).
Want to know the worst thing about this? The Casual Game of the Year award. It's full of match-three puzzles and very little else.
I'm pretty sure that there were more exciting casual games than that out there last year, starting with Jewel Thief, for example.
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:
But isn't that what next-gen games should be capable of dealing with? I'd rather NPCs and AI that can handle co-op play than fluff like being able watching a basketball player sweat towards the end of a game.
A lot of next-gen ideals really seem to be a poorly hidden excuse to shift more units of periphery stock, rather than advancing gameplay in any real shape or form. I know that economics plays a huge role in this but I still don't see the balance between selling games and making games fun.
Co-op play is a *lot* of fun, it's also a really simple way to add some emergent gameplay since you've got twice the number of humans invovled. It really is mind-boggling that more games aren't exploring this area.
Beat me to it, of course he's going to say that PHP is catching up on Java in the enterprise since that's where they want to take it and that's where the next pot of gold is.
Sadly, PHP has hit a brick wall recently. There are backward compatibilty problems with PHP4 (not helped by the developers telling the community to stfu, noobs), PHP5 is not being picked up at any rate of knots and now people are look to PHP6 to fix all their problems. Ruby looks better by the day, to be honest.
Feel free to take the code and extend it - I got the bare bones up and running and then work came calling. I'd love it if someone else could find a use for it!
If you like Python, then there's LuPy from divmod, which is a python port of Lucene.
And if you've ever wanted to create a personal proxy server that gives you a searchable database of your history and bookmarks, then you can do that too, just like I did:
http://www.suttree.com/code/pps/
Little Fluffy is the best, especially now that they're back.
If it's 15 minute web games you want though - you can't beat Playaholics though. Free to play and/or join, scoreboards, stats, decent forums. Oh yeh, shameless plug but who cares about a little thing like that eh?
That the Guardian Gamesblog really has a vested interest in making such outlandish claims. Ending up on games.slashdot.org really is its' own reward. There's been a large explosion in these games blogs lately, hence the surprising 'explosion' in 'hardcode gamers' when, in reality, it speaks much more of a dejected and bored workforce too embarrased to go into GAME to pick up a copy of The Sims.
If there really was such a huge explosion in casual gaming then why isn't the *print* version of The Guardian full to the brim of game reviews, website reviews and developer interviews?
Slashdot Mirror
Runt is a great library, I'm surprised it doesn't get more support. I wrote a short how-to for getting Runt up and running with Ruby on Rails: http://suttree.com/2006/08/14/runt-on-ruby-on-rail s/
Me too!
http://suttree.com/2006/06/29/the-item-model/
Play for perks is a nice name, too. I've been using the Item Model to describe it.
"Easy to learn, difficult to master".
That's the official Casual Games definition. It's not applicable to gaming casually, to blowing off steam on the Xbox360 or to playing old-school classics using MAME. Casual Gamers are a very tighly defined bunch and Casual Games are almost exclusively aimed at Windows downloaded, try-before-you-buy, 2D pick-up-and-go style games.
Personally, I find actually 'looking at' what consititues a Casual Gamer makes it easier to define them as a bunch.
Tables are for laying out tabular data. Use them where they're meant to be used and that's fine. It's just that tables got a bad name for being full of spacer.gif's and nested tables. Stay away from that, mark up your tables with relevant CSS and you'll end up with a semantically useful design.
http://ecolocal.co.uk/ - Green news and views in the UK
EVE is casual in the sense that it's addictive, but other than that it's probably even more immersive and even more of a time sink that most other MMOs. Casual MMOs, MCOs can still work, but in much more of a pick-up-and-go manner. Persistent worlds aren't the ideal place for MCOs, but they can work. Puzzle Pirates is probably the best example of that.
Or there's Passive Gaming, where Casual Games could really excel. I don't know of anyone who's created a true hybrid MMO, MCO, Passive Game but I'm pretty sure it won't be long before they start to turn. The whole Korean Gaming scene has been exposed over here and those MMOs that were ported over to Western audiences haven't really taken off. The business model of free to play, pay for items, is going to work, so that's another string to the bow.
Fucking guess what... If they were creating an app to handle bank accounts they wouldn't have used MySQL. Why is it so hard for people to grasp this idea? The right tool for the job. MySQL is great for 99% of what it is used for, warts and all. The sad fact of the matter is that you've forgotten what it's like to learn about data integrity and consistency.
It's going to get much worse, I'm afraid. That's right, they're removing Solitaire too.
Pygame is well worth a look, especially since the site got revamped and activity has picked up again.
I wrote two games using Pygame, Slider and WordSlider which were pretty painless to do, going from a standing start of knowing nothing about Pygame to knowing enough to finish a game.
Sure, SDL might not be fast enough for any kind of 3D FPS but if you wanted to write one of those you'd be learning C++ or picking up some middleware like the Torque engine. Honestly, though, everyone in here should stop whining about how scripting languages aren't 'fast enough' for games - they're easily fast enough for puzzle and adventure games, just not *every* game.
The right tool for the job? Of course!
All I know is that no-one has even come close to creating a better football (soccer) game than Sensible Soccer.
Couldn't it be dynamic? Couldn't the submission itself be subject to moderation just like the comments are?
That way, if a submission is judged to be on-topic and worth, then the links are treated as such. If the story is judged off-topic or a Slashad, then the links get nofollow tags applied (maybe start that way and remove the nofollow tags if it warrants it).
Want to know the worst thing about this? The Casual Game of the Year award. It's full of match-three puzzles and very little else. I'm pretty sure that there were more exciting casual games than that out there last year, starting with Jewel Thief, for example.
There's a big thread about Casual Game pricing on the Casual Games mailing list that's well worth a read:
2 005-December/000570.html
http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/casual_games/
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/
But isn't that what next-gen games should be capable of dealing with? I'd rather NPCs and AI that can handle co-op play than fluff like being able watching a basketball player sweat towards the end of a game.
A lot of next-gen ideals really seem to be a poorly hidden excuse to shift more units of periphery stock, rather than advancing gameplay in any real shape or form. I know that economics plays a huge role in this but I still don't see the balance between selling games and making games fun.
Co-op play is a *lot* of fun, it's also a really simple way to add some emergent gameplay since you've got twice the number of humans invovled. It really is mind-boggling that more games aren't exploring this area.
Beat me to it, of course he's going to say that PHP is catching up on Java in the enterprise since that's where they want to take it and that's where the next pot of gold is.
Sadly, PHP has hit a brick wall recently. There are backward compatibilty problems with PHP4 (not helped by the developers telling the community to stfu, noobs), PHP5 is not being picked up at any rate of knots and now people are look to PHP6 to fix all their problems. Ruby looks better by the day, to be honest.
--
Millionsofgames!
But also spot on:
p hone-games-any-good-yet.html
http://www.ukresistance.co.uk/2005/06/are-mobile-
MOG IT!
Shit, time to start picking up RoR then.. http://nwc.linuxpipeline.com/showArticle.jhtml?art icleID=171201940
Fair point, but there are plenty of other games on the site too:
Card games
Puzzle games
Word games
Why not join up and start adding games that you like, then tagging then as 'can play in my office really quietly'?
Since July 19, 2005.
You win! That's like Top Trumps with domain names.
Then keep an eye on my homepage:
Millionsofgame - suttree
I'll be posting plenty of games there and tagging them accordingly. Jewel Thief, for starters, is a great little game.
Feel free to take the code and extend it - I got the bare bones up and running and then work came calling. I'd love it if someone else could find a use for it!
If you like Python, then there's LuPy from divmod, which is a python port of Lucene.
And if you've ever wanted to create a personal proxy server that gives you a searchable database of your history and bookmarks, then you can do that too, just like I did: http://www.suttree.com/code/pps/
Little Fluffy is the best, especially now that they're back.
If it's 15 minute web games you want though - you can't beat Playaholics though. Free to play and/or join, scoreboards, stats, decent forums. Oh yeh, shameless plug but who cares about a little thing like that eh?
capatcha baby!
That the Guardian Gamesblog really has a vested interest in making such outlandish claims. Ending up on games.slashdot.org really is its' own reward. There's been a large explosion in these games blogs lately, hence the surprising 'explosion' in 'hardcode gamers' when, in reality, it speaks much more of a dejected and bored workforce too embarrased to go into GAME to pick up a copy of The Sims.
If there really was such a huge explosion in casual gaming then why isn't the *print* version of The Guardian full to the brim of game reviews, website reviews and developer interviews?
Lighting Break - Online pool
capatcha baby!
All this Cell based/3 CPU business is just the console equivalent of 'Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades!'