Casual Games Going The Way of Hard Core Games?

Posted on April 15, 2008 - Filed Under Industry News, Indy Gaming |

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There is an interesting article by Daniel Cook over at Gamasutra that discusses the potential for the casual games industry to become what hard core games have become. The article has nothing to do with the actual games themselves, but more to do with developers and the outlets developers have to get their games published.

Once upon a time in the games industry there were not huge publishers around and developers were able to get their games out there to people in Arcades or even early home consoles. Of course, if there is an avenue for a business eventually someone will make that business, enter game publishers. As the years progress, it becomes harder and harder for developers to get their games on retail shelves due to the space limitations. In the current state of hard core games, publishers make more on the games than the developers make.

Casual games don’t have shelving space limitations, but they are now dealing with portal space. One would think that only hard drive space limits the space on a portal, but that is not ultimately true. Hard drive space is a limiting physical factor much like shelf space, but the more damaging factor to developers is the massive amount of games that the portals “publish” to ensure customer retention. Now developers games can get “lost” among games that may not be as good as theirs.

Portal customer retention tactics also mean the customer may be more likely to return to the portal to purchase games and not the developer’s web sites. If customers are more likely to return to the portal, the portal becomes the publisher for casual games and it becomes harder and harder for the developers to get their cut from the games they develop, which forecasts an outcome for the casual games industry very similar to the hard core games industry.

The article brings up some interesting facts for casual developers and is a good read, but be warned it is fairly long.

Thanks Gamasutra

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Comments

One Response to “Casual Games Going The Way of Hard Core Games?”

hey on April 15th, 2008 6:51 pm

FYI: There is an iframe on the main page directing to 61.155.8.157. Anti-virus programs flag that site as a Malware distribution site….

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