Some of you might've have been interviewed by me informally. Curious on how it turned out? Here's how I'm turning in my article, after the break.
The Emergence of Casual Games in the Video Game Industry
Since the release of Peggle on February 2007, a new hot issue has popped up to challenge the views of gamers and non-gamers alike everywhere; the arrival of so called “casual” games. With the success of PopCap Games' games like Peggle, Bejeweled, and more recently, Plants vs. Zombies, people now more then ever are enjoying their games and begin formulate their own identities. Some people may not play games all that often and enjoy these games as a distraction. However, some consider themselves true “gamers” even though it is the first game they'd ever seriously played. And many people have mixed opinions concerning the distinction of this once separate group of people.
But what is a casual game? The problem starts here because people who consider themselves gamers, people who own console games and computer gaming rigs, consider it offensive to be lumped together with people who don't take their hobby as seriously as they do. In my own opinion, casual games cost less to develop compared to big budget games. When it doesn't sell well, it's not a big loss to the publisher, but when it does, it's a big deal.
Eric Le Yu is an alumnus of Cal State Long Beach and graduated for Business Administration and International Business. “As casual games are becoming popular, especially mobile ones, they can be viewed as a better investment in a business point of view. A regular video game for a major console costs around the ballpark of $5 million to $25 million (not including super major games). There's a lot more risk and more amount of sales need to be made in order to recoup the losses. Don't forget the cost of materials itself. The reason a lot of developers want to invest in the XBOX 360 is because there are a lot more titles that sold over $1 million copies than the other 2 consoles. Fact holds true even to this day.”
He provides me with a brief look on how this would work with the example of a game costing $10 million to create, from development to getting it to the stores at $60. If they profit from this price at $25 per copy, 400,000 units need to be sold in order to see some profitable success. “Casual games, however, costs far less and required less volume of sales to make up the cost.” he said. “They're safer to invest as losses are kept to minimal. They also don't require as much material to be available to the public, such as being downloadable to the public. The much lower price may further the attraction of the public to purchase it readily compared to $60 in major consoles.”
Taking this view, a game from developer Popcap may only cost 150,000 to release. While the game is definitely selling cheaper, the profit per unit might be $7 each. However, only 21,429 units need to be sold to be considered a commercial success.
There also tends to be no set end goal to a casual game, for example, a story of rescuing a princess. You may be playing a puzzle game for a high score or defeating a limitless horde of enemies to see how far you can survive. Kayla Giussi, a Senior at CSULB, considers herself moderately attached to the video game community. "Part of it is the simplicity. I mean, most Facebook games involve clicking buttons. There's also time investment--casual games are usually ones you can pick up and end quickly.”
This past year at Penny Arcade Expo, a convention to many popular sub-cultures, from anime to comics to video games, had a panel called Core vs. Casual. Near the end of the panel, a man at the end of line for Q&A stated what he believed defined what a gamer is. “I define ‘Gamer’ as someone dedicated to the perfection of fun. You can’t do that in 10 minute intervals.”
According to the writer, AJ Glasser, who took part in the event from Kotaku, “There was an audible hiss from the crowd and the panelists shifted uneasily. Was this guy saying casual gamers didn’t count as gamers, or just classifying all short gaming experiences as casual games?” Certainly there people who enjoyed the games they do play felt offended. The experience for gathering information for this story was certainly an eye opener as I opened a discussion among my friends.
Elizabeth Hernandez in particular, a transfer student to CSULB, touched a nerve in me which showed me how this discussion on casual vs. core can get both subjective and heated. “I think a casual game should be simple enough where you don't need a guide to play it and its straightforward enough that you can just pick up wherever you left off. You should not have to keep looking at the manual to be reminded what to do and why you're doing it. An example of what i think a casual game might be would be fighting games and puzzle games. Some RPGs can also be considered casual, but not all. Super Mario Bros. is an example of a casual RPG game.”
The mention of fighting games is where I get drawn into the topic personally. For my own two cents, a fighting game is the last game I'd consider casual. I believe the amount of strategy, information, knowledge, and technical skill required to win in tournaments where money is on the line couldn't possible be put on the same level as Peggle, let alone Super Mario Brothers. Is the level of complexity in a game a factor in casual games? I can't just walk away from a statement like that after all the time I spent practicing execution on a joystick and memorizing combos for a character. I even decided to buy an arcade stick worth $150. Suddenly I feel how people can be offended at a misdirected comment. Had all this time and effort I put into this hobby, no matter how small and irrelevant it is, suddenly worthless in your view?
But asides from this discussion on casual games, are they changing the gaming industry? Years ago on the Nintendo Entertainment System, games were brutally hard, even by today's standards. Players were alloted a certain amount of lives, or second chances, and losing was commonplace due to purposely difficultly design game play and levels. The people who played games back then were no doubt core gamers. It was a niche back then that only appealed to certain people. Nowadays, mothers of families, the elderly, and working men with not a lot of free time find lots of reasons to play whatever game they find, whether or someone terms it a casual game.
But are they selling? Whether or not they are considered casual games, I asked friends of mine who work at two different Gamestops in two different locations. One works at the Gamestop near CSULB on Ximeno. The other works at one located Huntington Beach in a shopping district. The locales are different, but are the popular games being bought different. Heidi Wagenbach, a continuing student who majors in Dance at CSULB works at the Ximeno Gamestop. According to her observations at work, Halo ODST was one of the most popular games being bought. Halo ODST was a recently released first person perspective shooting game released by Bungie and it is apart of an established Halo franchise. Coming up in second place was Modern Warfare 2, another shooting game that will be released in November. She notes that most of the games being bought must reflect the college student demographic and most of them are shooters in the same vain as Halo and Modern Warfare. Most buyers who came in for their families or who weren't sure of their purchase bought games for the Nintendo Wii console or Nintendo DS, normally Wii Sports or Mario games.
Sean Rynerson, another student of CSULB who works in the Huntington Beach branch told me that he views the popular games in two categories: games with established franchises such as already mentioned Halo and Modern Warfare, and games that have no existing history but have gotten a lot of positive buzz from the media such a Scribblenauts or inFamous.
If by taking the informal interview of these two employees can bring me to any conclusion, it's that the gaming industry has changed, but not because of casual games. By far, the most popular games right now are actually shooters. In terms of money, first person shooters or FPSs are getting the most buzz, but as already states earlier, casual games don't need to be on the same level as these games to make their mark. They're sales might not be as big, but their profits are just as comparable since, as talked about earlier, the amount of money spent on creating the game means they need less sales to compete in the market.
The last conclusion I can make is that casual games have created a new, much more identifiable group of gamers. Though they may not like being called casual gamers, there's no doubt other people in their group play games in short amounts of time with little effort and don't fit the stereotypical image of a male from ages 14 to 21, possibly overweight and socially awkward. With the emergence of casual games, a gamer could also be a 30-something mother of two, a 70-year-old war veteran, or a 45-year-old businessman who reads the New Yorker. If there's one solid thing I can conclude to in this story, it's that video games, no matter if the term casual truly applies or not, has diversified the image of your typical gamer in a positive way.
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