I would happily admit to playing casual flash games & such.

But I would never pay for one.

The amount of money companies like pop-cap gouge for games like bejeweled is absurd considering the small amount of resources they put into them.

Bedroom programmers have been making better free games for years, and these are the types I suspect you will find men playing.

Women on the other hand who don't know or go looking for the free games are the ones that happily waste money on the wares of pop-cap and kin.

And I'm very glad for my DS.

The prices they gouge for the bottom of the barrel cell phone games they are selling these days makes me want to vomit.

Anyone who actually pays 5 dollars a month to play bejeweled on their cell phone should be imprisoned in a facility for pathological stupidity.
(if only such a facility existed)

So...is this real? Do companies really think men have some sort of complex about admitting they like "casual" games?

It's true I don't think it's worth spending money on them when you can play similar games for free. Why bother dropping dollars on a game that basically has a few hundred clones and I only play for a little while anyway. But still, it's not like I have some deep shame about admitting I like random flash games.

PEGGLE RUULLEESS!!!!

wimminz dunno how to pirate

I won't actually buy "casual" games, since most are shameless clones of earlier casual games, but every once in awhile I end up playing one almost as much as I play "hardcore" games. Peggle and Luxor are notably fun in particular.

people in general like casual gaming, as much as i despise it myself...

At the end of the day, a game is a game. How much personal time you need to invest in it to thoroughly enjoy it is probably, to me, the clearest division between "casual" and "hardcore" games. The truth is that most people dont have the time needed to thoroughtly grasp and enjoy a Final Fantasy or a Starcraft. Meaning you cant always take a casual approach to a "harcore" games the same way you can take a "hardcore" approach on a "casual" game.

To say that this boils down to "men have more time on their hands than women is incendiary and false.

I'd be willing to bet half my life savings that Bill Gates hasnt gone through more than half of Halo 3.

To me, that proves the point.

Vastly more men are gamers than women, so if 3/4ths of casual-game purchases are women, that's a sickeningly high margin. And if its split 50/50 in terms of those who play, that means we have a nice 2% of the male-market playing along with the entire female market (also 2%). Some hyperbole, but you get the idea.

Puzzle Quest FTW

does this count?

[www.thegameblazer.com]

The term "casual game" is as idiotic as someone who calls themself a "hardcore" gamer.

You either play games or you don't.

why cant we all just be gamers? why cant we all just get along?!

@Gumbydunzeeto: Yep. You're aboslutely right. And talking about SUV's or Hybrids or sedans is idiotic too! They're all just cars!

*sigh*

@brent_w: Yeah same here. I've played many flash games online (I've been going to Newgrounds for YEARS, probably like, around 7-8 years or something). However I rarely ever go out and buy them. The only ones I'd really buy are probably like XBLA board games that I loved to play when I was younger (like Risk, which unfortunatly isn't on XBLA /tearface).

I hate the fact that more immersive games are gonna dissapear because everyone is into the casual games now of days.

I love Lumines, though I could see how you could say that it's not a casual game, but is Bejewled any less involved?

I like casual games a lot, great way to pass the time, but i don't play them in a casual manner, i tend to want to destroy them ;)

Alright! I admit it! I downloaded peggle!

there goes all my e-credibility :(

Popcap 4 lyfe!

Real men play Puyo Puyo Fever!!!!!

MAN games like Bejeweled rock hard!

Hey, I'm playing Peggle right now so take that irrelevant and totally obvious study.

@nya-chama:
I'll play any of the Puyo Puyos BEFORE fever...

Puyo Puyo is truly the king of puzzle games, even more enjoyable than Tetris (Yeah, I went there. Wanna fight about it? :0)

Though the Fever-games are clearly the least good of the series.

@Wraithfighter:
Freaking seconded.

As for me, I've paid for a few, but I think the vast majority are WAY overpriced. I can understand trying to pirate a program that is worth less than 5 dollars, and being sold for more than 15-20.... retail is the worst, with the minigame collections of the wii, and the overpriced casual games of the DS... 30 dollars? Hell no! Digital download only for me.

The only thing that's shocking is that there is a Casual Games Association! WTF kind of shit organisation is that?!

Man peggle's awesome.

But would tetris be considered casual because if it is then the highest selling game is casual. But i still think this whole hardcore/casual thing is a bit silly.

A game is a game, and a book is a book. As stated earlier, there's no genocidal class for games, you either play games or you don't.

Just spent the past week wasting far too much time on my new love, tower defense games. All hail cheaply made flash timewasters.

@Wraithfighter:

Your comparison fails. You're saying gamers are cars where really the consoles are cars and gamers are drivers. I've never known there were hardcore drivers and casual drivers. "Yeah, I drive but only casually."

*sigh*

@Akin: Bashing Nintendo products in a non-Nintendo related news post? Shock!

As for this study, I also heard men are roughly 50% of the oxygen consuming human population. Really, men are less likely to claim to play more accessible, casual gaming titles than women? No way! I couldn't believe the core gamer demographic of men to be immature or boastful of their love for 'hardcore' games as the article states. Lies and slander!

Yeah, loads of sarcasm in here, but do we have nothing better to do than make up new studies and reports that tell us blatantly obvious things? Wouldn't that time and money be better spent, I dunno, doing something constructive or beneficial to mankind?

@nya-chama: Hells yeah.

"...most males are fans of realistic, "hard-core" games..."

There's some inconsistencies here. I find that every day I go into work I have to switch different colored balls around one by one in order to pair them by at least three of the same color in an empty room.

@indiemike: ...To be serious, though, I find that it isn't the realism, violent content, or any of that that seems to lure the hard-core gamers to their core games, but it is the difference between a narrative and non-narrative game. I find that my girlfriend, and all of her friends that I've played games with prefer the casual games I have on hand, and don't want to get wrapped up in a story within the game.

It seems that the stereotype for us nerds (or, to avoid confrontation, myself the nerd,) is that core gamers play games on hours to advance the narrative within the game, which seems pretty obvious. Since the mainstream thought of the non-gaming crowd is that it is nerdy and even (god forbid) "uncool" to play games for hours on end, which is complete blasphemy, then the narratives are avoided by the casual gamers.

I've been lucky to crank out an hour to 2 hours of mario party action from some of these girls. So these non-narrative, puzzle games are the answer to lure the crowd.

@KeyonSumner: Really? You've never heard of hardcore drivers?

I have a friend who is, he goes to the 1/4 track every weekend with his bimmer, and he constantly goes on about the things he's going to do to improve his time. It's a very real condition that afflicts many people.

Interesting statistics there.

"Everyone always thought that casual games were something that only appeal to women,".
huh?
Everyone as in everyone she knows, I'm guessing.

As I see, lots of hardcore gamers will play casual games every now and then... it all depends on how much time one has available to sit and play a game for some time.

Also, it all depends on the mood.

It is true though that the gaming marketing sees women as casual gamers only, though I know some who are more into hardcore stuff.

Though I agree with some people saying that games are games and period, the distinction must exist simply because there are different types of gamers.

And from now on, I'm betting different console systems will try to target different markets.

Wii x PS3 is basically it. The line is not that clear yet, but it's slowly becoming more clear.

And I guess it's for the best. I mean, I'd rather have good casual games, and good hardcore games than some lame mixture of both that doesn't quite pleases neither markets... something that is already happening.

@ampillion:
That wasn't at all bashing Nintendo. It was bashing all of the overpriced games on the systems. I do however, think that the idea that the Wii somehow invented casual games is absolutely absurd, however. In fact, consoles and handhelds are rather poor mediums for casual games; they involve having a special system, and going to a store. Most casual gamers buy their casual games online via casual gaming sites.

i want games to have some narrative, good visuals, fun and originality. i can play a zillion games, why whould play a histoy-less games with 80's graphics? i can play the witcher and fallout 2, and i play the witcher, and often i have to stop and wonder the scenary, or the history, is mega-conga-fabulouz. why i would waste even 30 minutes to a casual game?, casual games are like mindless minitoys, here the "wasting of time" is crude. i can't play these games more than a few minutes.

Is Portal casual?

@Ilia Chentsov:
yes. because it has a female main character.

female presence = casual.

its a fact. honest.

:p

bejewled is awsome, but my fav is probably tetris.

Atomic Tank is a free game over at PopCap, whose game play solely consists of blowing stuff up. If casual games are "only for women", does that mean that Atomic Tank is targeted at that market?

listen, I don't play games unless they come with a full rack of ribs, a 2lb sirloin, Mashed Potatoes, Budweiser, a shotgun, camo pants, and a stack of playboys, because I'm a real man!

I luvs me some Zuma

@Onizuka-GTO: Isn't it two main female characters?

Because obviously playing puzzle games on a regular basis is a scar upon my manlihood 9_9. Oh, please, not every game with testosterone bursting from the seams is good either.

All you guys who bought Puzzle Quest are proof of the horror of casual games.

Casual games are evil, they are the worst thing ever. They keep women at the computer instead of in the kitchen.

I have played bejeweled every day for the past three or four years. At least, as long as i've had a cellphone. It's a good bathroom buddy.