The next generation is casual

I've been working in the casual games of mobile for the past 3 years and as a hardcore gamer this is sometime a drag. Not only do we face hardware limitations, we have to concentrate mainly on the casual gamer.

The industry is going further down that road and the numbers do support them. As a business point of view, why would someone invest 80M to gain 20M profits while by investing 2M you gain about the same... (these figures are completely spawn out of my mine). The point is today's games cost a lot of money to make and the revenues more often than none doesn't pay. It's probably better to invest less and earn the same.

The casual gamers market is unbelievably huge compare to the hardcore gamers. Sure most of us in the industry will claim to be a hardcore gamer but when you step out of your gamers circle, you realize that there's a whole world living and breathing without a single knowledge of what we are up to. The number of people I know, who owns any next-gen console, represents about 10% of all my friends. And I am not talking about my 10 gamer friends. I am talking about all the people I know. Friends, family, neighbours, etc.

Now a days, people owns PC for web surfing mainly, but generally not consoles. Even my uncle in the back country of Vietnam has an Internet connection. He will never ever spend his hard earn money on a 400$(US) console, but is willing to do so on a 50$ crappy console. This said, he will never play Assassin's Creed or Mass Effect but he is playing variant of Bubble Popper. And this is the real Next-Gen.

In a market dominated by kids, the next generation is not the younger followers it's the older recruits. Your moms and dads, grand-pa and grand-ma, uncles and aunties. These are the untapped resources of the gaming industry. This is the Next Generation of gamers. And this generation of gamers demands casual games.

Le 10ième art?

I was in this party with people in the film industrie. We discussed about the likeliness of Games and Films - mainly the realtionship between the creators (directors, writters, designers and producers - yes, I believe producers have a say in the creation of a work). The talks were revolving around the creative process of a project when there is so many people involved. Whos project is it? Who can sanely take ownership of a collective work? And than The Question arised: is a game Art? We all consider movies to be art. And modern games are often considered interactive movies. But are games, as beautiful as they can be, works of art? Maybe the answer is obvious to gamers, but not to the art folks.

If take it down to the strict definition of art, than yes, games are Art. But if we further down the distanction of The Arts, than Games come to fail. If one accepts the 9 art forms and the criteria which makes them Art, than Games are not Art - well not in the present form anyway. Games do represent a part of our world (and many others...) but there goal is not to search for the sensible in the things which surrounds us. In other words, games do not try to understand anything. By playing games, one doesn't learn about nature or the human condition. One can only learn to play in a certain set of rules. These rules doesn't really apply in our world. Games are designed to entertain, not to see the beauty in the shapes of things.

I know this topic is pretty sensible in a field which so tries to give importance to its existance, but this is only a thought thrown into the debate. One can probably spend years writting such a thesis but I am mearly standing on my soap box babbeling.