The Casual Divide
A game about babysitting? Hardcore gamers, take notice.
10/27/2008 7:23 PM | 6 Comments | Page 2 of 3
Erin Bell
Status: I think there's something weird about my status ...
The pioneer of restaurant management games,
Diner Dash has been downloaded more than 200 million times.
Instead of being weaned on
Space Invaders and
Pac-Man, these PC gamers got their start playing
Bejeweled and
Diner Dash. They enjoy strange-sounding genres like "match-three," "click management" and "hidden object." They still think point-and-click adventure games are the greatest thing since sliced bread. They have their own gaming archetypes, like the "go-getting entrepreneurial female who opens her own business," or the "savvy detective who must solve the mystery by searching scenes for clues."
But make no mistake: This under-the-radar group is just as savvy in its own way. Games like
Virtual Villagers,
Build-a-lot and
Mystery Case Files may cause "hardcore" gamers to react with blank stares, but these series have enormous, fanatical fanbases that clamor for tidbits of news on upcoming releases, trade tips and tricks on online message boards, spend hours every day playing the games, and aren't afraid to voice their opinions on what they liked and disliked in user reviews.
The 19th game in Her Interactive's long-running series,
Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy.
The proof is in the numbers.
Mystery Case Files: Madame Fate,
Cake Mania and
Diner Dash 2 have all appeared on NPD Group's Top 10 charts for retail PC sales this year. In NPD's most recent published results for the week ending Oct. 11, the number two best-selling game was none other than Her Interactive's point-and-click adventure
Nancy Drew: The Haunting of Castle Malloy, holding its own against
World of Warcraft,
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway and
Crysis Warhead. As a series, Mystery Case Files has sold more than 1.8 million copies. The Bejeweled series has sold more than 10 million copies, and the Diner Dash series has sold a whopping 200 million.
Yes, there are bad casual games out there -- a whole lot of them, in fact. And few things could be more detrimental to the industry than publishers who underestimate peoples' intelligence by throwing together a slipshod product and hoping "casual gamers" will buy it because they don't know any better. It's this trend that scares a lot of "hardcore" gamers, and rightly so. But the casual gamers I know -- the ones reading message boards and writing user reviews and deciding to take a pass on pressing the "Buy It Now" button after their 60-minute trial expires -- are discerning enough to recognize good from bad.
Have gamers forgotten their roots? Remember a certain puzzle game where you had to guide falling blocks of various geometrical shapes to form lines using nothing but the directional pad and one button? Yes,
Tetris was a casual game. In a wonderful symmetry, Microsoft chose to launch the Xbox 360 with the Xbox Live Arcade game
Hexic, another casual puzzle game designed by the legendary Mr. Pajitnov.
