Gamasutura : Innovation in Casual Games

[fathamburger]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1947/innovation_in_casual_games_a_.php

This is a very good article that I thought might be of interest. It compares the innovation in the 80's to the current casual game space and finds that they are very similar but he also finds that compared to the 80's the # of radical innovations today is a lot smaller than back in the day and *that* is what's missing and why many of us feel that despite the similarities casuals are still clone farms.

Very interesting reading :)

[jmcginley]

The # of radical innovations in the "casual game space" may be small, but that's like saying the music on Top 40 stations all sounds the same. Unlike a few years ago, there is a HUGE amount of innovation going on in games. Check out the last 2 years of games featured on any of these sites:

http://www.jayisgames.com
http://www.kongregate.com
http://indygamer.blogspot.com
http://www.fun-motion.com
http://www.tigsource.com
http://www.adultswim.com/games

Aside from the PC, there's Nintendo's Wii & DS, PSN Network (Flow, Everyday Shooter, Geometry Wars), XBLA (Wik, Outpost Kaloki, Catan), and EA's upcoming Spore. That's just off the top of my head. Radical innovation is not the rare thing it used to be.

Casual portals offer what their audience wants, and continue to refine it. I've never understood why that's considered a problem. Casual game players are a click away from discovering all sorts of new, innovative games but they don't bother to click. Trying to nurture innovation on a casual portal is like trying to introduce a new format to a top 40 station. The listeners aren't interested.

Having said that, I'm really hoping that Man!festoGames is hugely succesful. They're not a Top 40 station, and I love indie music.

[Jesse Hopkins]

Manifesto is getting better. They just published a sequel to Defender of the Crown! I hope they do 3 Stooges next (Cinemaware fans will remember). I used to stare at those box covers just wishing I could get an Amiga upgrade from my C64... Drool inducing graphics.

[Spore Man]

The article was interesting, and made me think there is more innovation than we thought. But then the writer flips it around by the last page, with the pseudo-scientific % and other arbitrary stats. I say that because it's flawed in the first place to compare an 80's arcade market to today's casual market.

But one similarity the writer completely missed is that even in arcades, in the heyday of PacMan, etc, it was not uncommon to find multiple machines of the same game. So if you are going to compare an arcade's limited floor-space to a casual portal's front page or "top 10" (and ignore the differences in those markets and audiences), we see an even greater similarity rather than disparity: Multiple clones of the same genre are pretty much the same as having 5 PacMan machines taking up limited floor-space rather than 5 different games.

[Dan MacDonald]

This was actually presented at casuality this year in seattle. It was a pretty interesting presentation, sometimes with his examples I get the impression that he's compareing apples and oranges intead of apples and apples. Still, some good food for thought.

[Jesse Hopkins]

But one similarity the writer completely missed is that even in arcades, in the heyday of PacMan, etc, it was not uncommon to find multiple machines of the same game.

My local arcades never did this. Thank god for that. Maybe this writer grew up in Latham, NY.