Casual Observations… Games: Casual VS. BIG

As of late I have come to the strong conviction that the future of games is indeed tilting in favor of casual.
Casual games have been around for some years now and are known for their quantity instead of quality. Their popularity is largely credited to their noncommittal nature. This fits into everyone’s lives (normal people simply do not have 40+ hours to commit to games where “gaming” has become a lifestyle), but perhaps there are far more factors to credit their popularity to, and perhaps the gems found in this scene are being highly underestimated.
Note that my point isn’t that an epic story and lengthy game is bad (I’m a sucker for epic and elaborate) but the poor execution in mainstream titles often seems to be the cause of failure to truly capture the “everybody and their uncle” audience. Save points, long load screens, non-skip-able intros, and a complex control scheme often do not contribute to the fun factor but take away from it. The casual game scene seems to be getting something right if you have everybody from the college student to the bored office worker playing “casual games”, and if casual developers where to start taking themselves more seriously you’d have a very successful new-competitor on the market. And by “seriously” I don’t mean to loose the casual aspects of it but to take the out-of-the-box creative thinking, methodologies, and philosophy of “casual” and apply it to “big”. Nintendo does get this right in many cases. Although many hard-core gamers that where looking forward the the Wii when it was announced where disappointed in the system because of it’s “recycled” content, but it seems to have caught the attention of “everybody else”. Nevertheless, I believe merging both worlds (everybody else as well as the hard-core gamer) is perfectly possible. Most would credit the success of the system to the current control scheme but I think this is missing the point. The fact is that you can throw in a game, play it, and leave, then come back to it at your own will. I remember back during the SNES era saying things like; “Hey, we have 20 minutes, want to play a bit?”, and having fun for the entire 20 minutes. Today 20 minutes would involve powering up the system, waiting through a slew of intros (often non-skip-able) then maybe having 5 minutes of playing before you have to quit and loose your progress because you didn’t make it to the “save point”. PC Games at that time often followed a similar pattern, where you could open up your latest save, play a bit, save, then close, without loosing progress because you didn’t make it to the next save point. That’s when it seems we really remember enjoying playing through something.
Today “frustrating” seems to have become more common than “fun”. Take Grand Theft Auto, for example. It went from a game that was loaded with comical gore in an absurd “dark comedy” insane world, which at the time, people wouldn’t stop talking about, to one that became so over-realistic that you’re stuck commuting for 10 minutes in a traffic jam… I love making fun of GTA4, it’s like the iPad. It has a big “kick me” sign on the back, you just can’t help yourself because it’s such a great example of how things can get out of hand.
The fact that the gamer can’t play the way the gamer wants to and has to wait to get to the meat of something means that a terminal fail is amiss.
It is interesting to note that games which follow a more casual and simple nature have a higher success rate. For example Counter Strike Source is still at the top of the Steam charts after years, and all my friends are still playing the hell out of Left For Dead. These games (and many other team-based shooters) are very simple. Two teams, one simple goal. Heavy Rain, for example, was really just a bunch of quick-time events and it’s become a viral phenomena on the web (everyone was making references to it). Garry’s Mod has become a cult icon, but there appears to be no goal, or plot to it at all. All you do is just goof off with your friends.
The pattern all these share in common is that the mechanic is very basic, and it appears that success can be largely credited to the designers ability to focus on the basics. Nothing detracts from you having fun. Not that I’m saying a great story can’t be thrown into the mix (Heavy Rain, for example, reportedly had some people crying), but the process of making something good in the “big” industry has become so complicated and compartmentalized focusing on one thing seems to be rarely pulled off.
So taking the topic back to casual web games…
We are seeing a movement of people making games, that are making games just because they love games (much like the demo scene). The majority of the casual games out there have some very fascinating, if not genius mechanics. Sound toys, web toys, the puzzle games, for example, can be very imaginative, and you only wish that these people were around in the days when the “platformer” was a new concept, because, if that where the case, we’d have hundreds of genres today.
Not only that, but “game humor” seems to still be kept alive in this scene. Take classics like Alien Hominid or Domo Kun Smashfest (as two common examples). Alien Hominid’s success can largely be credited to the exaggerated gore. My impression, when I first played it years ago, along with the reactions I observed in others was; “lol, you chomped his head clear off! wtf!?”. It was unexpected of an adorable little character to cause carnage and mayhem. Domo Kun Smashfest is a great example of a casual game that took off just because it was loaded with so much game humor. Both of these, and there are many others, where casual games that went viral and eventually mainstream because of their humor and focus on having fun.
The best example, where you could use the phrase “casual vs. big” in one sentence, is Bionic Commando Rearmed in contrast to the actual Bionic Commando. Everyone I know that played Rearmed loved it. They played it more than once and often to death. Rearmed was filled with unique bosses at the end of every level, tons of weapons that had a unique “personality”, the game humor, and wacky characters that everyone missed, that they where filled with anticipation for the actual game it was advertising. When the actual game came out it was like an extended tech demo where avoiding the enemies was more fun than engaging in confrontation with them. In short; even while you where playing it not playing it was funner.
Another good thing to point out is Capcom’s approach to creating the new Mega Man. They have gone all out retro where absolutely no modifications are being made to it. Most people credit this to the fact that retro has become so popular and that the crowd just love those low-res pixels… but is “retro” really why these are successful?
Nothing is getting in the way of the game. There are no massive intros, and impossible control schemes, or moments where you ask yourself “why the hell am I doing this?”, to get in the way of the game. It is casual in nature and perhaps this is why people are loving it so much.
Yet another illustration of how people love “epic” mixed with humor is the work of Paul Robertson. His are simply animations in the theme of a game, but they are done so epically over-the-top the common reception of it is that “I wish this where a game”, and “we really need games like this”. His Pirate Baby is a good example. It is interesting to note that games that where humorously over the top are still played and remembered today. Not that I’m saying all games must resort back to pixels to be fun, which would be like saying horse-drawn carriages are better than cars because they emit less fossil fuels, but gamers seem to miss “over-the-top” and quick satisfaction. Games that play the “over-the-top card” right appear to be genuinely well-received. The reception to the sequel to Drakes Fortune I found very unexpected. Most people loved it because it played out like a really intense adventure movie and even had “game humor” in it. The “Marco-Polo” easter egg pleasantly surprised many gamers. Not to forget God of War III, the best summary of the game would be this.
In many cases I believe that the big game industry is coming to a point where it will have to revert back to indie to come up with anything good, the same way that Hollywood started going to the indie crowd at Sundance to get their ideas/talent because the consumer was getting tired of repetitive summer flicks and “garbage”, as many put it (the industry suffered enough financially and this caused a shift towards better quality).
The casual scene is often looked down upon or mocked for the lack of quality. For example; crappy illustrations, bad animation, and boring visuals are common reasons given. Not only this but methods of generating revenue often only stop with offering “add space” before the game starts. Perhaps these approaches are too outdated? Perhaps pay-per-click is not doing the casual developer justice? Casual game developers have lots going for them and maybe it’s time for the scene to start taking itself seriously.

Some sites, worth keeping an eye on, of quality casual games are:

Jay is Games
The Games List, from the makers of Stackopolis.
Lazylaces
GamesChart

For more Casual Observations click here.