Casual Games

The book I read to research this post was The Casual Revolution by Jesper Juul which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. The launch of the nintendo wii has revolutionized the console games market. Many people take their wii to their friends or parents or grandparents house & they all play a game on the wii & in a lot of cases they are all addicted to it. The wii is much more interactive than any other games console or computer although now sony & microsoft are trying to compete ie microsoft have introduced the kinect for the xbox 360. The wii has inferior graphics compared to the xbox 360 & playstation 3 but is by far the biggest selling console. Many people who haven't played games since pac mac came out are quite happy to play games on the wii. Another phenomena is casual games which are games which can often be played for a short duration & are often fairly easy. Bejewelled is a good example of a casual game, you have to match 3 of the same, it's a puzzle game which doesn't have fancy graphics but was a surprise hit. Some games like mario kart let you have a quick race & you can specify how many laps you want to do. In the westernised world more people play console play console games than don't play them. These people are often parents who may have an hour to spare & don't want to be playing a hard game for hours & hours. There will always be games that appeal to the hardcore gamer & many console & computer magazines seem to favour these games but in a world where a game budget can be $15 million which means a game has to sell a million units before it can make a profit they can't ignore casual gamers. A good example is grand theft auto: san andreas where you can explore the virtual world instead of playing the game.