Casual Games Harmony

The Eurovision 2008 European song contest is nearing and as always it’s making me unreasonably happy. Anyway what I came to realize is that the contest resembles the casual games market in some limited ways.

Basically some countries try to write good songs (and they don’t stand a chance), while others try to butter up to the lowest instincts and make their songs as catchy as possible (casual developers think in the terms of the upcoming time management title Jane’s Pride Purrfect Paradise Pet Saloon-Hotel with Shop, Spa and More!™).

Anyway, below is my personal top 4 of this year’s Eurovision. Please note you’re watching at your own risk…

I really hope not, since I have just started this blog. But one might argue that casual games are repeating all of the mistakes after the mainstream game industry. No, this won’t be another rant about clones. Casual game cloning has already been discussed many times. Too many times, in fact. In a similar fashion much has been said (or rather lamented) about the unfair strategies of game distribution portals and their exploitation of game developers.

Both cloning and portals are an integral part of the casual gaming landscape nowadays. If you have problems with it better stay away, because you can do nothing about it. A smarter approach is to use portals and cloning to your advantage, but this is a topic for a story of its own. I would like to stress another thing which is a much greater threat for the casual games market in my opinion.

Each month we can see a new wave of about 50 new casual games. The problem I see is that with passing time these games are getting less and less casual!

For me the main reason behind the unparalleled success of casual games is their accessibility. The simple fact that just about anyone can download your game and enjoy playing it like a pro within minutes is nothing but mind blowing. Loosing this property would surely mean problems to casual games in the long term, but in my opinion the process has already started. And you don’t have to look far to notice it, because as usual the darkest place is under the candlestick.

Continue reading “Are casual games doomed?”

Todays date marks the launch of my Casual Games Harmony blog. Please look at the about page to see if the topics about to be covered are matching your interest. If they are, remember that you can always subscribe to the rss feed.

Writing a blog is a new experience for me, but nevertheless I will try to post only interesting and valuable things. As you probably have noticed the blog is hosted on the Codeminion server, which means that most of the articles will revolve around my work. Hopefully you will be reading interesting things about casual game development and running an independent game development company real soon. I will be encouraging other people from Codeminion (most notably Konrad, my business partner) to create blogs of their own, so you can have a better picture of our approach towards casual games.

If you have any questions or just want to contact me, feel free to comment on any of the recent posts.