Kotaku
Just arrived at the Casual Games keynote, The Changing Face of Casual Games, which will be given by Chris Early, the studio manager for Microsoft Casual games. It should be interesting. I've increasingly felt that Microsoft has dropped the ball with their Xbox Live Marketplace. The game selection, to me, seems far too derivative and not nearly as innovative as I expected it would become when they first announced it.
The talk should be starting in just a tick. Hopefully Early will have something interesting to say. Hit the jump to follow along.
Early: As we heard yesterday, players are changing. The casual gamer... that's different now. Everyone's playing casual games now and they're playing games in places where we never expected to play games before.
Early is taking a quick look at games over history. The consistent factor, he points out, are that they involve people and fun. People and fun were the innovators in ancient games.
Early: What kind of a platform are you going to design for, because it has an effect on the game you make.
When Microsoft introduced a graphic operating system and included games, it wasn't about fun, he says, it was about training. Solitaire was all about drag and drop and Minesweeper was all about point and click.
This was a change in games spurred by education.
Now he's talking about Facebook games, which are essentially just text. Many of the games are asynchronous, you can play with friends and there are leaderboards.
He's moving on to PuzzleQuest, one of the great casual games of 2007.
In this case they've taken the fun of matching three in a row and put it in a meta game. The game also has persistence of data, leaderboards and the mini-games means that you have a lot of chances to win.
Car Racing, is a free game in Korea. You can buy add-ons for your car from better motors to oil slicks. The game again is really just about playing with your friends and includes leaderboards and persistent data. It also adds the ability to pay cash for items.
Bioshock, not a casual game, but built into it is a casual game. If you're successful with this casual game you can unlock things that help you out. This is an example of how casual play can improve the core game.
Rock Band, Wii, Guitar Hero, what did we learn from them. They all include an aspect of physical play, they let you collaborate with your friends.
You need to think about where you are, who you are designing for, which innovative concept are you going to build in your game better than the last thing you saw. What you can't forget is the fun, the rest of it you can even call artifice.
Donkey Kong who was the hero? Jump Man, they called it Jump Man because they spent so much time perfecting that one element. After they made that fun, they made a whole series around that concept.
What are my favorite innovative concepts:
Asynchronous Play
Persistence of Data/Character
Meta Game/Value System
Casual Play Benefits Core Game (I'd love to stand at the bank and do my Bioshock Flow game and have it matter)
If you think that's interesting I think you should go see our keynote tomorrow morning where you will see a little of this announced for the first time. That's all I'm saying it's vague enough that I won't get in trouble.
Ohh, that's a juicy tip. Annnnd it's over.
Comments
Unless microsoft is gonna talk about how they are gonna stop shoveling out derivative rehashed crap, i.e. 20 types of 'stack the blocks', 'put the puzzle together', 'wanna be pacman', and 'ported game X from years past'... i say, booooooorrrrrrrinnnnnnggg.
Gimme something a lil original, then gimme a call, it's 2008 guys.
@iNime: But I like UNO.
I had no idea everything on XBLA was developed by Microsoft. Thanks for that.
mmm juicy (everytime i see that phrase I think of fruit shaped words fresh and glistening aching to be bitten into)
Hmmm casual games... not a fan myself. I'm a bit of a hardcore gaming snob, and I think the Wii is great for your casual, but the real games are on the PS3 and 360. Its a shame hardcore gaming is getting slowly removed for cheap gimmicky crap.
@iNime:
But I like Rez.
@iNime: Actually, sorry. I just checked your post history, and you're not even worth a sarcastic remark. I don't know what Bill Gates did to you when you were little, but you'd best get over it.
Stating things we know, the obvious and sounding surprised. Thing is, all he talked about is all the things that DON't happen with xbox and microsoft lol
Oh and puzzle Quest was awsome on the psp.
Why is MS talking about changing the face of Casual Games when they aren't even in the top 10 list of casual games companies?
Juicy tips eh? It's morning, where are they?!?!?!?! Just kidding, waiting patiently BC. Great Liveblog!
I can only hope this is a big hint towards the rumored Microsoft hand-held gaming device. The only reason I'm thinking this are the comments that the platform you design for will effect the game you make, and that games are being played in places they never thought. I know the latter was probably supported by bringing up Facebook applications, but I'm still hoping.
@JohnnytheFuture:
It could be because MS is investing money with its own casual game portal.
@7ucky: Because they have a platform in Live Arcade that is made for delivering casual games?
Gotta love speaker talk, "asynchronous" eh? That should go over well with casual gamers. :P Either way I'll be keeping up with this as the keynote commences.
@Queasy: Yeah, it's not so much the platform I'm questioning, but the audience to which they cater.
Bah, we all know hardcore gamers are gonna die on the side of the road anyway...
Boy, a good jump man jr remake would be great.
Anyway - yawn. Sounds like they don't really get it still - sounds like their view is way too controlled, and well, boring (saying 'fun' doesn't make it so).
"Car Racing" doesn't sound terribly casual to me. And bioshock has mini-games? So what?
And their stuff tomorrow doesn't sound like anything special. Probably some platform designed to take more money out of customer pockets, and tie developers more tightly into the Microsoft Sodomy Harem(tm).
Although possible, doubtful it would be a MS hardware device, more likely to be leveraging their mobile or smartphone platform. But then again they've shown a propensity to throw money at hardware - but something that 'big' surely would've been leaked by now.
@NotZed: Yeah, there's never been a good casual kart racing game. Oops, I mean car racing. Same thing.
That was an interesting tidbit about why Solitaire and Minesweeper were created for windows.
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