Hey Sean,
Friend at worked threw me this link, thought you might be interested in it.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28808/Opinion_Where_Have_All_The_Good_PC_Casual_Games_Gone.php
It’s interesting how business models, the baby boomer generation and even digital distribution get brought up in it, but there are some bright spots like the need for quality games vs. falling into the copycat syndrome.
When an entertainment is in trouble, be it a TV show to a movie to a video game, the problem is almost always the content. Content! Content! Content!
People play video games for the content. They buy a racing game not because of ‘racing gameplay’ but because they want the experience of racing. They buy a flight simulator not because of ‘flying gameplay’ but because they want the experience of flying around in an airplane (and they will spend big bugs on insane joysticks to achieve this). People will buy badly made games with famous licenses, base on movies or something, because they want that content.
When you cannot put down a good novel because you want to keep reading, it is your desire to see the content that is pushing you forward. Same way with video games and ‘one more turn’ or ‘I can’t wait to beat this level to see the next one!’. Even a game like Tetris has the content that is the feeling of the Soviet Union… something we have never seen before in a video game at that point. Taking the Russia love out of Tetris is taking away the game’s soul.
The skills necessary to make a video game are not going to be enough. The video game maker also needs content creation skills. In a similar way, a novelist needs to be able to do more than be able to ‘write a book’ and have dashing and addictive prose. People do not read books for the prose and how the words are arranged. They read them for the content. So the novelist’s true challenge is to create the content, the fictional universe, and need to muster all their skills and talent to communicate that content to the reader. No writer is ever truly satisfied with how they’ve portrayed their little universe.
What is your video game about? They don’t know. Just some oddball gameplay. There is no point to it.
Now, let me ask you what do you think about when you think of Shigeru Miyamoto as a young video game designer? Immediately, you think about Miyamoto incorporating his hobbies and childhood experiences into his games. You think about how Miyamoto said he took a trip to a mountain and, to his astonishment, found a vast lake up there and so he put that same ‘vast lake in a mountain’ in Legend of Zelda complete with the long, long bridge. You think about Miyamoto’s time exploring. All of this is content. In order to make exploration fun in a video game, the game world needs to be detailed and fleshed out. Where does that cave lead to? The content drives the player.
What they call ‘casual games’ are very much games with little to mediocre content. The reason why they have mediocre content goes to the heart of what ‘casual games’ means in the first place.
The belief is simple: that time is finite. Therefore, games must be made short and placed in areas that are incorporated into people’s daily lives. If someone is stuck in a doctor’s office, they will play a game on their iPhone. But I believe the big mistake is assuming people will gravitate to a game just because they have free time. Sure, even a ‘casual game’ is more entertaining to someone in a doctor’s office than just staring at the wall. But consider its competition: obsolete magazines such as Newsweek. When given the choice of reading Newsweek or staring at the wall, I would prefer to stare at the wall.
Entertainment must be compelling enough to draw people in from other things they could be doing. What I am seeing from the so-called ‘casual games’ is that they are merely migrating to areas where there is much less competition… such as a doctor’s office or on a train or on an airplane.
In other words, gaming continues its death spiral. Video games used to be so compelling that people would stop what they were doing and play them. “Time is finite!” No! People will MAKE time to play a video game if it is compelling enough to them. Riddle me this:
Have you ever played a video game when you should have been doing something else? Such as studying for a test? Such as going outside and playing? Such as spending time with the spouse? Such as doing more work for your job?
Have you ever put off sleep to continue to play a video game? Have you ever put off eating to play a video game? Have you ever taken off work to play a video game?
Many people have. The experience was compelling enough for them to MAKE THE TIME to play them. People would make the time to play Ocarina of Time. People would make the time to play Chrono Trigger. People would make the time to play the games we, today, call classics.
’Casual’ games are not interested in doing this. Instead of improving the content of the game, they wander further and further to areas of less competition. How much competition for entertainment or time is there on a train or in the doctor’s office?
I believe gaming’s general decline is that it is in a content crisis. There is very little ‘new’ in new games. I have seen all this content before. In order for gaming to reverse its decline, it needs to be more aggressive in creating new content propositions, new worlds for us to see, new experiences we haven’t seen before. ‘Casual’ game is gaming in retreat from the armies of disinterest.
So you want to make a cell phone game. Fine. But consider the customer doesn’t have nearly as much competition on in an entertainment standpoint where he carries his cell phone. The poor husband whose wife drags him around while she does shopping will love his cell phone games not because of the games, themselves, but because they are more entertaining than watching his wife spend his money on clothes she doesn’t need. When the husband gets home, does he continue to play the cell phone games? No! He flops down on the couch and turns on the football game. He only plays cell phone games when he is cornered outside with no other options.
Consider the DS and its rise. You knew something special was going on when people were playing their DS in their homes despite all the other options of entertainment they could be doing. People were playing their DS systems in front of their Wii and Xbox 360s and would admit at the time it felt funny doing so. “I am at home. Shouldn’t I be playing my home console?” But the games on the DS, at the time, were so compelling that he didn’t care.
There are many problems with ‘casual games’. Most of them are made by smaller devs who ‘want to get into the Games Industry’ (because EVERYONE wants to get into the Games Industry). They are made with the thinking the players are retarded. There is the copycat syndrome. But ultimately, I think ‘casual’ games fail because they have no interest whatsoever in providing compelling content. The content, what little there is, is derivative and dull.
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