TechStuff Plays Games Casually

his senior writer, Jonathan Strickland. In the last years of the seventeenth century, there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee houses one rangy gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cook, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends and Volley, all of whom we're supposed to be educating at Oxford at Cambridge, had found the sound of mother English more fun to gain than her since to labor over, and so,

rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying and ground out choirs of couplets after the fashion of the day. A froth with joves and Jupiter's acclang with jarring rhymes and sting taught with similar stretched to the snapping point. Well, I think this is the first time where the quote took up

two thirds of the podcast and we're done today. We are going to talk about casual games, yes, um, which is funny because you know, you know, I grew up with um grandparents and parents who like doing things like crossword puzzles and uh, you know, word search and stuff like that. And as a kid, I used to love those and I thought, I'm sure I'm probably the only one of my friends who really enjoys doing these puzzles

and games and things. You know. I As I got older, I started to uh and especially when video games became sophisticated enough where they were they were common, um, started playing things like the Majong tile games and Solitaire and stuff like that. And still I thought, you know, I'm a big weenie because I'm not playing uh call of Duty, um duty. Um, good grief. I should have just gone with Halo. And even that, even then, if I had gone with Halo, all the all the hard core gamers

all there be like Halo. Come on. Editors, note, we're recording this is the flip side of the day that we record the nuclear weapons podcasts, which on which we were pretty sober. So the fact that we're talking about gaming. Uh, and the fact that we're very very stayed in the first podcast, probably we're probably gonna be a little goofy full of beans anyway. Um No, as it turns out,

I'm hardly alone. Um. Casual gaming is especially now that there are platforms available like Facebook where millions and millions of people come together to play socially. Um, casual gaming is huge. So let's start to define some stuff, shall we. So in general, we tend to break up games into one of two very broad categories, each of which has subcategories within it. Yes, and this has done I would

say primarily for marketing purposes. I know people who play all these kinds of games and and and don't like being put into a box. Sure, so it's more it's more for a marketing There's a spectrum of games out there, and and most people I would say, fall in the middle of the spectrum, and that they like some games from one category and other games from another. There may be a few who they only like a couple of games that fall into one and then all the rest

are in the other category. And then there might be a few extremists out there who believe that the game type of games they play are the only ones worth playing. Well, you know, there's that kind of person on pretty much everything. If you don't drive the car and a kind of car I drive, then you stink, right. So anyway, those two types of games I'm trying so hard to just get to my point here, sorry, is the hardcore games

and the casual games. Now, hardcore games, when we talk about that, what we're really talking about is the level of complexity of the gameplay itself, all right, the how deep that game goes, how much time you need to dedicate to really play that game at a decent level, and whether or not you can just pick up and

drop off in that game casually throughout the day. The hardcore game, a really hardcore game, is one of those things where you're gonna have to dedicate a good amount of time each playing session, where you're not interrupting in anyway, and that it's not just pick up and play, and that the controls themselves are really really complex and there's

a there's a learning curve to really getting to know them. Uh. A good example of this is a typical first person shooter on say the the Xbox three sixty that uses the controller to its full extent, because let's let's think about the controller for a second. Okay, so the Xbox controller. You've got the two thumbsticks, both of which can also click in to act as a button. You've got four

shoulder buttons to trigger buttons into bumper buttons. You've got the four buttons that are that are in a diamond pattern on the on the right side where your right thumb can touch them. And you've got a direction pad as well. Plus you've got the start in back buttons,

which in some games also plays a part. So you've got all these different buttons, all these different that potentially could make a game incredibly complex and intimidating for someone to learn if they're just picking up gaming for the first time. Now, let's contrast that with casual games. Casual games have simple gameplay. It does not mean that the game itself is easy. It just means that the game

mechanics are simple. So it could be a puzzle game that actually is pretty complex, but the the the way you play the puzzle game is easy, then you've got uh usually will allow you to play the game in just really short bursts so whenever you have time to play, you can just log on or you know, access it. However you're accessing this game, play a little bit, and then you can pop right back out and you're fine.

You don't have to dedicate a lot of time to it. Uh, there's usually a way where you very quickly progress through the game, or you very quickly unlock other elements in the game. And a lot of them also have a method where they let you try the game in some format before you purchase it, or they will support the game with advertising, so that you know. They might have two different versions of the same game, right, they have one that has ads, so every so often you are

subjected to an ad while you play this game. And then they might have a paid version where if you buy it, you no longer have ads in your game. So that that's Those are the typical attributes you would find in a casual game. Um, although we tend to say the hardcore games are more often found on consoles and are dedicated computer games, and we tend to see casual games and things like mobile platforms and social uh, social network platforms, that's not always a case. There's not

a there's not a true division in platforms. After all, the Nintendo we in a way, is really a It's known mostly for its casual games, or at least that that was really how Nintendo promoted the WEE early on. It was the idea, this was the game console for anyone, even someone who had never really gotten into video games, because the motion controller gave you the opportunity to play games in a way that was supposed to be really intuitive and really simple. So there's that simple gameplay we

were talking about. Even if the games themselves were pretty complex, the the barrier to entry in the game was supposed to be really low. So that's the general difference. Most

games fall somewhere between the two. There's there there are a few games that you could probably argue, okay, this is like the example of a hardcore game versus the example of a casual game, And then there are a lot of games that you know, you might say, well, it has these attributes from a casual game, but you can't just log in and log off because if you do, you're gonna lose your progress. And you know, let's say plants versus zombies. Yes, that's a good example. Plans versus

Zombies is a fun game. Uh, it's it's relatively simple, it's got some great animations and great uh gameplay to it. Uh, and it's it's still it's not too difficult for someone who even isn't really big into video games to get into it. My wife loves Plants Versus Zombies, but she's not a video game person. However, that being said, it's also the kind of game that if you're in the middle of the level and you jump out of it, depending on what platform you're in, you may lose your

progress and have to start over. Yes, there's a zombie on your lawn. Well, I'll just have to go and get one of those pe shooters. Then I hope I have enough sunflowers to generate the sun. I also play a lot of Plans Versus on my phone and on my computer and in the browser. And you know, yeah, I'm one of those gamers that I like both camps. I like hardcore games and I like casual games. Yeah. Yeah, me too. Um yeah, I was thinking Tetris. I mean

there's fantastic example of a casual game. Ye yep. And and a lot of people find themselves unable to get the little falling um you know, the little tetraminos the head when they used to play that so often that when I would close my eyes at night, I would see the blocks in my sleep. Later those became the jewels from Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do do do do. Um. You know, in contrast, you might have something like, um,

uh the role playing games. Vast numbers of role playing games that could be uh, Dungeon Crawlers or shoot them ups or the first person series or uh, you know, the the Never Winter Nights type games walters Gate. Um. I would think that the Civilization series very complex. Even Sport could be considered a hardcore game because you spend hours building up your your species first four um, although very few people play it, I think in comparison, um,

and yeah, they're there. You know, there's there's stuff that falls in between. UM. I think there are some some of the Facebook type games now where the play on the level as you're working on the level is pretty easy, but then you know it's one in a series of things that you have to do to accomplish a larger goal. There's sort of hybrid games. Um. But yeah, as it turns out, well, I mean casual games sort of had

this reputation for being sort of a feminine thing. I know a lot of statistics I've read sort of say that excuse more toward women gamers. That spells the myth that women don't play games like the There was one statistic I saw, and unfortunately I don't have the source with me. So guys, when you hear me quote the statistic, remember any percent of all statistics that are quoted are

made up on the spot. But no, there was a statistic I saw that suggested that I think it was sent of the purchases of casual games were women, So whenever anyone was you know, if you were to look at all the purchases of the casual games across the market, of those consumers were female. Um. But again I don't have that source in front of me, so take that with a grain of salt. Guys. Yeah, yeah, Well, the it's it's roughly fifty fifty according to a study that

I found, Um for MSN games. Um, it's so it's you know, not not the same. It's not just for breakfast anymore. They used to say about orange juice, and I think it's, uh, depending on the game, it it defies category, It defies trying to put it in a little box. There you go, Uh, well, so you know they're they're definitely kinds that are easy to categorize. Like The Jeweled is clearly a puzzle game, right match three game.

If you will see that these are these subdivisions at Jonathan, the subcategories of subcategories, because within casual games you can have puzzle games, and within puzzle games you have different subcategories of that. Um, but you've got other kind of you know, games that are are out for both the computer and consoles uh, and and online social networks, things like you know, the Farmvills, the City Bills, the Frontiervills,

Mafia Wars. Uh. These are all considered casual games because again there are games that you can just pop PLoP into at any time. Now, I would say that traditionally speaking like if you're going with the very stereotypical hardcore gamer, yes, there is a stigma against casual games. Some hardcore gamers might say that casual games are not real games because they don't have that level of complexity that they prefer when in their gaming experience. And I can totally understand that.

I mean there's there is something to say like, well, I don't get as much enjoyment out of that, because, uh, this other game requires this level of skill that I've I've developed over time, and I feel like this is more rewarding. That's fine. I mean there are other people are going to find casual games far more rewarding than the level of frustration they would have they're trying to pick up a hardcore game. The thing I would tell hardcore gamers is you might think that casual games are

not really truly games. Tell that to the billionaires who made their fortunes through casual games. I mean billions of dollars. This is a huge industry, especially because, like Chris was saying, you know, using Facebook as a platform brilliant. As soon as Facebook opened up that a p I and allowed people to create applications or Facebook to exist on top of Facebook, the gaming market exploded. Because if you've already got a potential audience of more than eight hundred million people,

it's a no brainer. Yeah, well, you might be surprised then to find out, I'll surprise you. I bet it will. Actually um. The the CEO of New Zoo, Peter Warman, was quoted in an article I read where he was saying that somewhere between seventy six to of casual gamers play outside of Facebook. So of all those people who are playing Farmville and other games on Facebook, that's only a small fraction of the entire casual gaming audience. Well.

I have a membership to pogo dot com. I don't use it as often as I use some of the other sites. But uh, yeah, some some game companies have made their games available. I've seen games on on all sorts of different sites that I didn't realize had them. Um, like the Majong Dimensions game. I've seen it on multiple different sites that weren't when I consider traditional gaming sites, but they they added as a sort of bonus to uh,

to keep you there. Um. On the other hand, there are places like uh, you know, they develop their own stuff, like for example, Cartoon Network UM has games built around all their properties and it's specifically there or for uh you know some of the kids show game sites. Um, you know they do that for for those properties as well, So it's not just you know, the Bejewels of the world. Well yeah, and then you see the game's really hitting their stride with the smartphone revolution as well as because

one smartphones became a thing. Yeah, tablets as well. I think more smartphones even than tablets, mostly because I think of the average consumer. If the average consumer also happens to have a smartphone, and the average consumer is running into situation sens where he or she has a little time on their hands waiting for stuff like you're in line for the movie theater and the lines really long for tickets and the people in front of you are

just now deciding what they want to see. Then you know you've got some time to kill, so opening up a an app on your phone and playing a little Angry Birds is might just seem like the perfect thing they'll do to occupy yourself while you're waiting to play this, as opposed to, you know, occupying yourself by trying to convince yourself not to stab the person in front of you. And they're particularly useful the d M v UM. You know, there's so many different doctor's offices. I mean, any situation

where you are not doing something. However, I will say this people, if you play these social games, please don't do it in the restroom, and if you do, please mute your phone because I thought I thought you were not well anonymous for sitting in the stall next to me, because I did not know that pigs made that noise when they were impacted by Angry Birds. And now that I know that, I'm fine. I mean, okay, I mean granted, I still I'm a little skeeved out that you were

playing the game. Yea um, but yeah, no, the that's that's one of the hallmarks of the casual games though, right, is that it's really accessible and that you can play it at any time. And that's one of the really attractive things about them. Yeah. And and and this is what makes it so brilliant for people like ro Vio, the publisher of Angry Birds, the PopCap series. It's plants, plants versus zombies, bejeweled uh ing um. And and this is what all of them and many many others have

done so effectively. Half Brick also, I would throw in this camp that does fruit Ninja. They have hit the sweet spot because okay, they've they've made their games available on Actually they came from different directions. Um Rovio and half Brick came from the smaller uh, the the cell phone camp, smartphone camp. They made their applications available on on tablets, and then they started moving into Google Plus

and Facebook. Um Zynga and Popcat came from computers and websites and started moving their apps over to tablets and smartphones. And now all of these guys are available on all these platforms. So you you're eating your breakfast in the morning, uh, you know, you're getting ready to the kids ready for school, and you get in five minutes worth of gaming activity before you you leave the house. You're waiting on the bus.

You get on your smartphone and play for another five minutes. Um, you take a break at lunchtime, get on the tablet and play for another five minutes. And and it just goes on like this. You can do this. You're waiting for your co host to find a quote from a novel and guilty as charged, I have done that, um, and and this is really And then they go off and do uh crazy stuff like having plushies made. I cannot tell you how many stores I have seen angry birds in. Heck, I saw the board game when it

first came out. Ye, I see, yes, ten maybe waiting on on the kid after school, I see kids walking out with angry bird t shirts on UM. The Fruit Ninja of Hulks at half Brick are coming out with pleshy fruit and and sense a. UM absolutely look it up if you don't believe me. So the thing is, UM they've been able to expand the platforms to make them available more places, and they're they're cashing in on

the interest around these properties. So this has become a way for them to to uh, you know, sustain their operations, to market themselves and UM make a lot of money. And uh a whole lot. When we're talking about a whole lot, I mean they're billions for the whole industry. Like Zinga when it was announcing its IPO, it would have been valued at eight point nine billion with a B dollars and it had generated something like one point one point five billion in revenues since it started in

two thousand seven. Now, Zinga when it when it first started was one of those companies that UM that really was a big surprise to folks because the founder, Mark Pinkus, he had he had been an entrepreneur previously and had

had some successes and some failures. Some of the failures were related to the dot com crash back in two thousand but once Facebook was opening up that a p I, he saw the opportunity to jump in the social games space, and he thought that people would really enjoy playing games and being able to share that experience with their friends and to build in games that would allow people to help one another out in a in a virtual way.

And so he kind of jumped on that and he hired some really smart folks, including people like Bing Gordon, Owen Van that A, Mark Skags, Brian Reynolds. These guys are all really smart. Some of them are a game designers, some of them are great at at leveraging social networks. Uh. Bing Gordon is the consigliari. That's that's his term because what he what he does is he finds people that would be a really good addition to Zinga's workforce. Like he's kind of like one of those guys who just

he's fantastic and networking. As someone who does that a lot, I can totally I can totally dig that I do a lot of working myself. It seems to me, Yeah, well it seems to me that I'm more often get cool people I know opportunities with other cool people I know, more than I leverage it for myself, so I gotta be more selfish anyway. It's it's yeah, almost nine billion dollars in valuation, which is pretty phenomenal. Um and uh

that and that it's only been around since two thousand seven. Meanwhile, pop Cap, that company, I believe, Electronic Arts acquired pop Cap. So you're you're talking about these little bitty companies that people would have thought of as upstarts that are become that becomes such big players that the really well established huge names and gaming have taken notice and they're either you know, stealing themselves for direct competition or they're acquiring

them um as for direct competition. That's a little tricky. Let's get back to the Nintendo we and kind of wrap this up a little bit. So consoles in general don't tend to cater to the casual market as much. You can find casual games on these consoles, but the consoles themselves, one, their price point is pretty high. So that's a that can discourage a casual gamer who may not want to make that level of investment in a game or in a game system. To the interfaces tend

to be a little more complex. So again, if you first pick up an Xbox controller and you've never used one before, and you try and navigate through the menu system and try and find a game that you want to play, and then learn how the game itself operates and try to coordinate all that. It can be really intimidating. UM. So when Nintendo decided to come out with the Wei,

they were aiming at a different market. They were saying, well, why don't we go for these people who would otherwise you know, they might like to play games, but they just find these other systems to be a little too intimidating or complex or whatever. There's a barrier there. Let's remove that barrier. We're going to create this movement based controller where the controls will be much more intuitive, and we're going to create a bunch of games that cater

to that crowd. And uh. And it did really, really well when Nintendo we came out, it was it out sold the Xbox three sixty and it outsold the p S three and it seemed like everyone I knew had one. Uh. The downside is that the game sales didn't really take

off at the same rate. People were not buying up lots and lots of games, and whether that's because casual gamers are satisfied with a smaller variety of games, like just a few games is fine for them, or if they just lost interest and therefore didn't have that desire to buy that next title the way hardcore gamers do.

Because one of the byproducts of hardcore gamers is loyalty, they tend to build up brand loyalty and they will be very vocal about it, and to the point where if you express an interest in a game that they think of as a competitor, they will tell you are stupid for liking that game because that game is not the game they like. That's it happens a lot. But anyway, that's you know, I don't know if that's the reason why not to know, we sales like the games els didn't.

Some people might just say that there was a lack of compelling games on the market. Well, if you if you stepped back from it, and you aren't calling someone else silly for not having the system that you have and and look at them sort of across the board, there were there were a couple of things going on at play there um, one of which is if you look at it um with the Xbox three sixty and PlayStation three. I would argue that both Sony and Microsoft

were aiming for the core gamers. Um. You know, we're talking about a war of processors and a war of UM high definition and things like that and licenses, UM, the very serious um uh in depth games they were. They were serious gamers that were they were targeting. And they said, we're really gonna hit this market. And people scoffed at the Wii because he said, no, this is it's not even high deaf, it's just amidst made from off the shelf parts. Who cares. Nobody's gonna this little

WE remote. Nobody's gonna care. And it turns out that that kind of gameplay hit the sweet spot for a lot of people who just didn't see themselves buying that. So, plus the cost, I mean talking about the PlayStation three versus the cost of the we when it came out, these were differences. But I think more than anything, it was the kind of gaming involved. And you know, there weren't a lot of games at that time that I think UM hit the casual gamers for either the PlayStation

three or the the Xbox three sixty. When the Week came out, they just they weren't aiming for that market. Of course, now they are. You've got motion controllers to connect and uh, the PlayStation move and they are selling. Of course, people are using the Connect and hacking it to do All's actually heard recently, and by recently, I mean this, we're recording this in the beginning of March. Yes, it's March nine right now, the day we're recording this.

Behind the current um I heard recently that Microsoft is actually trying to move away from the the idea that the Connect is a casual gamer gateway into the Xbox.

I think what what they're trying to do is trying to make it more of a key element in some of their hardcore games to try and add value to those, because I think that's that that one of the problems, one of the challenges of going after that casual gamer market is that because they don't really think like hardcore gamers, you can sell them on a game once, but then selling them on a second game is a lot more challenging.

And therefore, if you're gonna, if you're gonna put a lot of effort into selling games, you might want to try and go for the audience that is shown historically to be interested in buying lots of games and to you know, the the audience that buys games occasionally, Well, then you don't. You know, it's not that you ignore them, you just don't dedicate a lot of resources to catering to them. Yeah. Well it's an issue of perception. Um, the way has a perception that it is a less

sophistic hated machine that has more casual games. That doesn't mean it can't be used to play more sophisticated, more in depth games. But that's the the reputation it has and the connect Uh did bring a lot of casual gamers on board for the Xbox three sixty, but it got a reputation for being a enabler tool for casual gamers to get on on the platform when the tool itself can be used for a variety of different games.

Same same thing with the Sony Move. Like you're saying, yeah, once on the motion control, I think again, because you're taking away that that element of complexity with a controller that has eleven buttons total when you animal up, Um, once you take that out, then yeah, I can see where that would uh some people would would equate that with it being a simple system, although it's not necessarily so we should also point out one other thing that

does tend to that I think people associate with casual games versus hardcore games is subject matter. I think a lot of people assume that if it's a casual game, the subject matter is kind of light and and inconsequential. I mean, Fruit Ninja good example, Right, you're just hacking fruit a part, yeah, Whereas if you're talking about a hardcore game, you might be talking about someone like Grand Theft Auto, where you're talking about some adult themes and

some pretty intense um scenes in the game, but moral issues. Yeah, but that's you know, really that that's content, and content is sort of agnostic when it comes to casual versus hardcore. You could have a casual game that has some pretty heavy concepts in it and it's nothing, you know, there's nothing stopping that. So that's one thing I wanted to address. Um, that's pretty much all I have about casual games right now.

I mean, it's it'll be interesting to see in maybe five years if casual games like you know, which ones are still popular or are there? Is it just a totally new batch of casual games that are popular or are people just satisfied with buying angry Birds and playing that for the rest of their lives. Well, the question for me is to that is whether people will make the distinction between hardcore and casual games anymore and just

start calling them games and then from there break it down. Um, it seems that we're still sort of in uh living in and us versus them world, although less maybe than a couple of years ago. Um, it's all because them stupid apparently. Yeah, all right, spoken like one of them anyway. So I guess that wraps up our discussion on casual games. If you guys have any topics you would like us to tackle, whether it's a technology, uh, if it's a trend in technology, if it's an innovator, if there's an

interview you want us to do. Remember we're going to try and do more of those this year too. Send us a message. You can email us at text up at Discovery dut com, or you can send us a message via Facebook or Twitter. Are handle at both of those is text stuff, hs W and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. It's time to harvest my corners. Be sure to check out our new

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