Hopefully you like the new look and feel, we went for a more crisp design this time and a lighter look and feel. Although the prior designed looked okay, we felt it was time for a change. Let’s call it Spring Cleaning, shall we?

What you’ll notice is a bit more access to some of the games we’re playing and a few that we really enjoy. As we find new titles we’ll be putting up links to where you can trial and buy them, more than ever before. The editorial content takes front and center, now, with the sidebars being pushed to the sides.

If you find any issues or have any feedback, please let us know. We hope to continue with 2009 strong, many new mobile iphone games, small indy projects, breaking news on the casual gaming industry and anything else we can find on the Internet.

Over the last few years we’ve enjoyed the great response we’ve received from many independent casual game developers looking to break into the industry. We’ve covered a wide array of games and brought the community a little closer to titles that are hiding in the shadows ready to jump out and change your life.

Hopefully, at least one casual game this year changes your life.

Rick from iQ212 wrote an interesting article about the “void” casual games fill in every day life. Basically, he feels there are three main areas that everyone needs to be happy in life. Those areas are home, not meaning you need to own a house, but a place you call home, work and a social setting, be it a bar or pub or an online community site. He goes on to make the connection that the biggest group of casual games players, Women age 35 – 54, are using casual games to replace their void of a job. They treat casual games as their job and developers of casual games should recognize this and develop games that are going to appeal to these women, the biggest part of the casual games audience.

Rick makes some interesting points in the article and it got me thinking. There are some women gamers out there that will spend hour and hours a day playing casual games and these are the women that probably have kids that are school aged and during those school hours have some free time on their hands. It is the time they use for “me” time. Once school lets out, I am sure they are driving the kids here there and everywhere and there is not another free minute until bed time.

I agree that developers of casual games should cater to their largest audience, but I don’t think every casual game developer needs to do that. If every developer did that, we would lose the innovation and creativity in the casual space. No doubt, some of the bigger companies have made huge hits by making games that appeal to Women age 35 – 54, such as Cake Mania and DinerDash, but those companies make different games as well, such as TradeWinds.

Casual game developers have to remember that Women age 35 – 54 make up a big piece of the casual game demographic, but they are not the only casual game audience. Developers can’t forget about the minority or casual games won’t become mainstream games.

Imagine that, IGN gives Grand Theft Auto IV a perfect 10 score while barely scoring any casual games above 4. This proves a bit about what we mentioned the other day about mass market journalists and their approval of hardcore games over casual ones.

Does it deserve a perfect 10 score? Probably, consider the amount of sheer effort and financial costs that went into a game like GTA IV. Quality and craftsmanship deserves reward.

Casual games can be developed in under six months, have a price tag of roughly $19.99 and, on a content/graphic level, won’t come close to meeting that of Grand Theft Auto IV. Some may say it would be like comparing “apples to oranges.”

Perhaps we need an IGN style casual game site which could give perfect 10 scores to the best casual game in the market? Please note, IGN did give Popcap’s Peggle a rating of 9.0 “outstanding” which isn’t so bad… but shouldn’t that have been a 10?

I’m sure you’ll find GTA IV in my Xbox 360 in the coming weeks, casual gamers can also have interests in other styles of gaming. It’s just interesting to note what games get the best ranking and which fall off the charts.

Congratulations to the folks at Rockstar Games and Take-Two for their awesome score, may it bring you financial success and keep potential buyers off your back from hostile takeovers. 

Twelve years ago the game industry had a growth spurt: 3D graphics. Although the concept of 3D graphics existed prior to 1996, the Nintendo 64, PlayStation and Sega Saturn stepped up the production value of video games. Increasing the overall cost to develop a single video game was due to the new complexities of graphic engines, pre-rendered movies scenes and realistic musical soundtracks much of which is contracted out to other studios.

The fifth generation of video game consoles also increased the complexity of many video games and boxed out some of the casual gaming enthusiasts. Many folks who loved the run and jump style of Super Mario Bros, Shinobi, Double Dragon and others were met with a new challenge: jumping through 3D space. We upped our gaming experience by learning a whole new dimension to video gaming but left a few folks behind asking, “why?”

Today, many of these early gamers have found a retro-style casual game experience more akin to their likings. They’re not the stereotype “hardcore” gamers and they don’t think like them. Casual gamers aren’t a stupid breed, hardly, but their desires for gaming entertainment are different. Much like one person loves the taste of a fine Merlot while another the a bitter dark beer, both people have a concept of perfect–they’re just not the same.

It seems Nintendo is at the forefront of the battle for casual gaming by designing a console mocked as a “novelty” with comments thrown at them like, “it will go nowhere” or “six months and people will forget it exists” yet the Wii is still impossible to buy. Not only is it impossible to purchase but the demand for the play-style is high enough to keep two big Nintendo products in the top NPD figures every month: DS and Wii.

Read the rest of this entry »

I recently read an article in the fall edition of Casual Connect Magazine about story lines in games. The article talked about the importance of story lines in games to draw the player in and make them want to continue playing until the end of the game. The article got me thinking whether game story lines are truly important.

As I was reading through the article, I was agreeing with most of the points being made, such as story lines help progress users through the game and create a sense of urgency to make users want to play through to the end of the game. I think this is definitely a major part of the story line. I know that if I am not interested in the story line I  am usually not interested in playing the game.

Part of me also thinks that game play is very important and I can get past a mediocre story line or even get past no story line, if the game play is great. For example, I think Tetris is a great game to play and there is absolutely no story line to that game. The better companies can make the game play the more lea way they have with the story line. Game play can go hand in hand with the story line, which makes the game that much better and more interesting.

So, you have read how I feel about story lines. What does everyone else think? How important are story lines to games?