I am giving a talk at the IT University in Copenhagen today.
The Sun Always Shines in Casual Games:
Cloning and Innovation in a Brand New Field
Time and Place:
Thursday April 12th, 16:15-17:30. Auditorium 1, ITU. Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 Copenhagen S.
About the talk:
During the past 5 or 6 years, casual games have emerged as an important factor within video games. These are small games, easily learned, and usually distributed over the internet. The corresponding appearance of a new casual game audience demonstrates that video games for a long time have failed to speak to a large part of the population. In this talk, I will discuss how casual games differentiate themselves from other game types, and in perspective, show how “hardcore games” have acquired a set of codes and conventions that requires a level of gaming literacy to navigate.
Consequently, the field of casual games put strong conflicting pressures on game developers: Innovate enough to differentiate, but make the game sufficiently like other games that players find it easy to pick up and play. By illustrating the history of matching tile games, and by discussing games likes Zuma, Bejeweled, and Diner Dash, I will show when and how innovation does happen in casual games, and how developers try to assert their original contribution in a field of clones.
Good to hear that Jesper Juul is taking on the casual games.
There are some problems connected with the use of the term “casual” in computer games.
There are these games which we are calling “Casual Games” with properties like “small games, easily learned, and usually distributed over the internet” and so on (Zuma, Beeweled and Diner Dash being examples).
But then there is also the way how you play. You can play any game in a casual manner. You can play a quick “casual” Quake session. And you can try for hours “hardcore style” to compete with a highscore in Bejeweled.
On the Gamers in Society Seminar in Tampere last week Jussi Kuittinen, Annakaisa Kultima, Johannes Niemel? and Janne Paavilainen from the Game Research Lab presented a paper proposing a stricter use of the term Casual-in-Games. Probably you should exchange ideas (and keep me in the loop ;). Their paper is not published yet. If Kopenhagen an Tampere would come up with a casual games terminology together it would not only be industry interests forging the “casual” terms.
I have written some posts in my blog about casual games definitions: http://casual-game-studies.blogspot.com/search/label/definition
I look forward to reading the paper you are referring to, thanks for pointing that out.
Currently I am not too worried about defining casual games – it is a commonly used concept, and as such not clearly defined.
I completely agree that there are several dimensions to it, such as casual games as a type of game design, casual games as a distribution channel, and casual games as a way of playing. At the same time, I believe we experience these things as something of a packaged deal: To say, “I enjoy playing Counter-strike” refers to both the game design itself, the culture around the game, and the way I personally play Counter-strike.
In that perspective, trying to divorce the game design from the game playing (as the sociological approach is wont to do) is quite artificial. I think it is a bit more useful to say that a game design can encourage or support specific ways of playing, and that there may be a specific playing culture or set of user expectations in relation to a specific game, game genre, or even to something as ill defined as “casual games”.
Users that go to a site selling casual games will usually do so with a specific set of expectations towards what games will be on the site and how they should be played.