Every few years, the videogames sector gives birth to a new
sub-sector which rapidly develops its own buzzwords, figureheads and
key players - while much of the traditional industry continues to
look on with a cocked eyebrow and an unconvinced air.
You can identify the emergence of such sectors by the proliferation
of conferences and events which will spring up to service the
nascent market. Mobile gaming was one such sector; the seemingly
paradoxical serious gaming another. One might consider in-game
advertising to be a sub-sector in its own right, of course, and to
complete the set, there's casual gaming.
Of course, the irony of casual gaming is that it's a sector which
has always existed, to some extent, and whose growth has proceeded
along a path largely undetermined by the worthies who discuss it at
conferences. Any commuter on a London-bound train in the past decade
could have told you that casual gaming existed simply by pointing to
the office workers in their carriage busily playing Tetris on their
Game Boys or Solitaire on their laptops to while away the journey.
The advent of the Internet saw countless people around the world
being entranced by small web-based games, mostly created by amateurs
in their free time and played by bored desk jockeys during quiet
moments in the office. The growth has been steady, organic, and
largely removed from the world of expensive consoles - not least
because so little money was changing hands.
Wake-up call
In recent years, the entertainment industry at large has been
sitting up and taking notice of casual games. The primary revelation
is that any medium which is getting office workers with Internet
access (read: reasonably well salaried) and some level of technical
competence and interest in games (read: probably relatively young)
to sit in front of it willingly for well over ten minutes a day is,
of course, an incredibly valuable marketing medium.
The second revelation is that even existing console and PC gamers -
generally considered to be a relatively hardcore bunch - don't
always want game experiences that cost upwards of 30 pounds and take
40 hours to complete. Sometimes, a snack between meals is what's
desired, not a four course dinner.
These two core factors have led to an explosion in casual gaming in
the last few years, with the sector branching out in a number of
different directions. On one hand, marketing firms have successfully
employed free casual games as viral tools to promote movies, games
and consumer brands. At the other end of the spectrum, the next-gen
consoles give gamers the option to download and play cheap, high
quality casual games from services such as Xbox Live Arcade and the
PlayStation Store.
Nintendo's Wii takes the concept even further, with leading titles
on the system being composed of a collection of casual games - while
on the Nintendo DS, it could be argued that many of the top games
(such as Brain Age and Nintendogs) are, in effect, casual.
Somewhere in the middle ground of all of this, organisations such as
RealNetworks and MSN have launched successful casual game download
sites for PC users, while companies such as PopCap and sites such as
NewGrounds have emerged as new names from the seemingly fertile soil
of the sector.
The name game
In other words, casual gaming is booming - and the irony is that the
success of the sector also means that the writing is on the wall for
the whole concept. "Casual games" is an awkward and disingenuous
label which implies that it is truly a sector distinct from the
existing videogames market. The growth of this part of the market
has led to a broadening of the definition which is now blurring the
lines between "casual games" and "videogames" to the extent where
those lines no longer exist.
It's all just "games" now, and if anything, the insistence on using
the term "casual games" (and occasionally, wheeling out unpleasant
rhetoric about how casual games are the real mass market
proposition, thus attempting to dismiss the vast market enjoyed by
existing videogames as though it were a hardcore niche) does little
other than devalue the enormous contribution which the pioneers of
this sector have made to the growth of the market as a whole.
This is not, however, to say that serious challenges do not await
the ongoing push to make small, accessible games into a primary
leisure time pursuit for the mass market. For one thing, there are
still question marks over how the revenue models for the sector
should work - and worse, the only answers to those questions
available right now suggest that multiple different models will be
required.
The reason for that is the other huge challenge faced by casual
games and the reach into the mass-market - the challenge to become
truly ubiquitious.
Multi-tasking
For traditional games, being ubiquitous means being present on
perhaps seven platforms - PS2, Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, PSP, DS and PC.
For casual games, however, it means far more - it means being
available on multiple platforms with entirely different
functionality and interfaces, through a variety of different
distribution systems and allowing for countless different play
environments.
Casual games extend their tendrils into every platform from mobile
phones (a key market, and one which alone accounts for hundreds of
individual platforms) to web-browsers, from the Wii Virtual Console
to Xbox Live Arcade, from the Nintendo DS to the iPod Video. Of
course, not every casual game must be available on every platform;
but the sector as a whole is represented across all of these
platforms, and at its most successful; it's this ubiquity which will
drive acceptance by the mass market.
This in itself reveals the difficulty of setting out a business
model for this rapidly expanding end of the games market. Titles for
the Wii and DS follow a traditional games business model, but other
parts of the spectrum are vastly more complex.
Market forces
The web browser based game market looks set to be fully
advertising-supported, as do parts of the PC download market; the
mobile phone game market has settled on a game purchase model, but
may yet find itself forced to consider pay-per-play, rental and
advertising supported models.
Games on Xbox Live Arcade, the PlayStation Store and the Wii Virtual
Console follow yet another business model, and in the wings are
entirely different models such as episodic content or sponsored
content.
In a sense, it's a good challenge for mass market gaming to face -
it's clear that there is an audience, but the question now is which
combination of business models and content will provide the
healthiest business ecosystem to allow these titles to thrive.
This may well be the second huge gift of "casual gaming" to the
overall videogames market; having challenged it to extend the reach
of its content and encompass a far wider selection of audiences and
leisure times, the gauntlet is now being laid down to re-evaluate
how content is priced, delivered and supported.
No longer a sub-sector, but rather a crucial part of the videogames
business, casual games may well be the biggest driver for change in
the industry as a whole over the coming years.
(Gamesindustry.biz)
Mstation Games Review
Fri, 02 Mar 2007