The Casual Divide
A game about babysitting? Hardcore gamers, take notice.
10/27/2008 7:23 PM | 6 Comments | Page 1 of 3
It never ceases to amaze me how irrationally defensive so-called "hardcore" gamers can get when the subject of casual games comes up. It's fine and dandy when the umpteenth zombie frag-fest or World War II-themed first-person shooter is announced (yawn), but a game about running a restaurant or beauty salon? The sky is falling!
A casual game that successfully crossed over,
Peggle Nights was well-received by both sides of the divide.
Puzzle games like
Peggle Nights and
Bejeweled Twist from PopCap Games, whose Seattle gala release party was touted by the company as being "the most spectacular launch event in casual games history," have earned crossover success in their ability to appeal to the majority of gamers regardless of casual or hardcore allegiances. But those casual games that stray farther away from entrenched hardcore expectations -- games that strive to be less "Die Hard" and more "chick flick" -- are generally less well received.
Take Joystiq's reaction when it found out about a casual click management game called
Babysitting Mania (and yes, the premise is exactly what you think it is):
Babysitting Mania. Picking up clothes and disciplining other peoples' kids is fun!
"Exhibit 7,324 that no one asks us before they decide to make stuff: Casual PC game Babysitting Mania is coming to the DS. You can play it for free right now on the PC, if you want. Or, you could take the precious life-seconds you would spend doing that, put them in a rocket, and shoot it into the sun. The choice is yours."
Actually,
Babysitting Mania was the sequel to
Nanny Mania, a casual try-before-you-buy PC game that was downloaded more than 8 million times and purchased by more than 130,000 people.
So the developer, Gogii Games, clearly did ask people before it decided to make
Babysitting Mania. Like any astute game-maker, Gogii looked at the 130,000 people who enjoyed
Nanny Mania enough to buy it and decided that these people might be willing to shell out more cash for another game with similar mechanics and theme.
Mystery Case Files: Madame Fate, a casual game that cracked NPD Group's Top 10 PC Retail sales chart.
But who are "these people?" They're definitely not the "us" that Joystiq referred to. And therein lies one of the problems, the Great Divide between Us and Them. There's a whole other demographic of gamers who are lumped into the "casual gamer" moniker, but whose gaming habits are anything but casual.
I'm not talking about people who enjoy the occasional round of
UNO over Xbox Live Arcade, or whose idea of a fitness regimen is pulling out the Wii Balance Board every couple of weeks and doing some deep breathing. I'm talking about people who get their gaming fix primarily from PC downloads, the so-called "try-before-you-buy" shareware model where players can download a free trial of the game, play it for a limited amount of time, and decide whether or not they want to pay to unlock the full version when the trial ends. Often they do pay. According to the Casual Games Association, casual games are a $2.25 billion industry.
