2006 Casual Games White Paper

Dubane writes "The 2006 Casual Games White Paper (pdf) has just been released by the IGDA Casual Games SIG. The 116-page report was contributed to by nearly 40 professionals in the casual gaming space, spanning all aspects of the industry, including developers, publishers, portals, tool providers and more. Notable updates from last year are the Business Models section with up to date information on how casual game companies are making money today, and the Publishing section which contains results from a publishing survey of over 50 players in space. These results provide information how companies earn their revenue, what genres of games perform the best, and typical royalty rates seen for the various players in the space (among other things). This year's paper is also available on the IGDA wiki where it can be continuously updated by the community."

What's Next?

Any ideas on what is really coming up next from this?

Disappointing

It's a bit dissapointing that your standard Bejeweled and Holdem clones are still apparently dominating the marketplace. Where indie development was said to be a dream of innovation and creativity, it really looks more like yet more connect-4 and royal flushes.

I've always been a casual gamer...

I never dressed up for gaming anyway, I just never saw the point of trying to fit in with all those phonies.

Meaning of Casual Games

Casual Gamnes seems like another loosely defined market sector, that's nothing really but a buzz word used by corporations to prop up their stocks. The genre is so broad they create an illusion of an ever expending market by stretching the definition of casual games. At first it may be just puzzle java games, with know player base of x. Next month they decide to also include non-puzzle java games with player base of y. X + y = x, and they can say that x grew by a percent value of z. This creates illusion of ever expending market. Soon there are news stories of publishing company ABC starting up their own casual games development department to compete with company XYZ in the casual games market. This kind of stuff repeats itself all the time on Wall Street. For me casual game has and always will be a game with loosely defined goal that progresses at your own pace. There is no need to hurry up blazing to the end, you should slow down and enjoy the ride. Sadly there are fewer and fewer games like that out there.

Argh!

I am on page 20 of 116, and already my eyes are watering from the spelling and style errors, the triviality, the blah-blah, the self-importance, the silly distinctions, and the senseless charts. I mean, who the hell shows a half-page pie-chart of the hours spent on gaming per week, with the whole pie representing 24 hours? That is just meaningless.