Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tex stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hey kids,
Speaker 1: welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polatin. I'm
Speaker 1: an editor in how stuff Works dot Com. Sitting across
Speaker 1: for me as usual, although he's not juggling this time
Speaker 1: his senior writer, Jonathan Strickland. In the last years of
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century, there was to be found among the
Speaker 1: fops and fools of the London coffee houses one rangy
Speaker 1: gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cook, more ambitious than talented, and
Speaker 1: yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends and Volley,
Speaker 1: all of whom we're supposed to be educating at Oxford
Speaker 1: at Cambridge, had found the sound of mother English more
Speaker 1: fun to gain than her since to labor over, and so,
Speaker 1: rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had
Speaker 1: learned the knack of versifying and ground out choirs of
Speaker 1: couplets after the fashion of the day. A froth with
Speaker 1: joves and Jupiter's acclang with jarring rhymes and sting taught
Speaker 1: with similar stretched to the snapping point. Well, I think
Speaker 1: this is the first time where the quote took up
Speaker 1: two thirds of the podcast and we're done today. We
Speaker 1: are going to talk about casual games, yes, um, which
Speaker 1: is funny because you know, you know, I grew up
Speaker 1: with um grandparents and parents who like doing things like
Speaker 1: crossword puzzles and uh, you know, word search and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And as a kid, I used to love
Speaker 1: those and I thought, I'm sure I'm probably the only
Speaker 1: one of my friends who really enjoys doing these puzzles
Speaker 1: and games and things. You know. I As I got older,
Speaker 1: I started to uh and especially when video games became
Speaker 1: sophisticated enough where they were they were common, um, started
Speaker 1: playing things like the Majong tile games and Solitaire and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And still I thought, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: a big weenie because I'm not playing uh call of Duty,
Speaker 1: um duty. Um, good grief. I should have just gone
Speaker 1: with Halo. And even that, even then, if I had
Speaker 1: gone with Halo, all the all the hard core gamers
Speaker 1: all there be like Halo. Come on. Editors, note, we're
Speaker 1: recording this is the flip side of the day that
Speaker 1: we record the nuclear weapons podcasts, which on which we
Speaker 1: were pretty sober. So the fact that we're talking about gaming. Uh,
Speaker 1: and the fact that we're very very stayed in the
Speaker 1: first podcast, probably we're probably gonna be a little goofy
Speaker 1: full of beans anyway. Um No, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: I'm hardly alone. Um. Casual gaming is especially now that
Speaker 1: there are platforms available like Facebook where millions and millions
Speaker 1: of people come together to play socially. Um, casual gaming
Speaker 1: is huge. So let's start to define some stuff, shall we.
Speaker 1: So in general, we tend to break up games into
Speaker 1: one of two very broad categories, each of which has
Speaker 1: subcategories within it. Yes, and this has done I would
Speaker 1: say primarily for marketing purposes. I know people who play
Speaker 1: all these kinds of games and and and don't like
Speaker 1: being put into a box. Sure, so it's more it's
Speaker 1: more for a marketing There's a spectrum of games out there,
Speaker 1: and and most people I would say, fall in the
Speaker 1: middle of the spectrum, and that they like some games
Speaker 1: from one category and other games from another. There may
Speaker 1: be a few who they only like a couple of
Speaker 1: games that fall into one and then all the rest
Speaker 1: are in the other category. And then there might be
Speaker 1: a few extremists out there who believe that the game
Speaker 1: type of games they play are the only ones worth playing. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, there's that kind of person on pretty much everything.
Speaker 1: If you don't drive the car and a kind of
Speaker 1: car I drive, then you stink, right. So anyway, those
Speaker 1: two types of games I'm trying so hard to just
Speaker 1: get to my point here, sorry, is the hardcore games
Speaker 1: and the casual games. Now, hardcore games, when we talk
Speaker 1: about that, what we're really talking about is the level
Speaker 1: of complexity of the gameplay itself, all right, the how
Speaker 1: deep that game goes, how much time you need to
Speaker 1: dedicate to really play that game at a decent level,
Speaker 1: and whether or not you can just pick up and
Speaker 1: drop off in that game casually throughout the day. The
Speaker 1: hardcore game, a really hardcore game, is one of those
Speaker 1: things where you're gonna have to dedicate a good amount
Speaker 1: of time each playing session, where you're not interrupting in anyway,
Speaker 1: and that it's not just pick up and play, and
Speaker 1: that the controls themselves are really really complex and there's
Speaker 1: a there's a learning curve to really getting to know them. Uh.
Speaker 1: A good example of this is a typical first person
Speaker 1: shooter on say the the Xbox three sixty that uses
Speaker 1: the controller to its full extent, because let's let's think
Speaker 1: about the controller for a second. Okay, so the Xbox controller.
Speaker 1: You've got the two thumbsticks, both of which can also
Speaker 1: click in to act as a button. You've got four
Speaker 1: shoulder buttons to trigger buttons into bumper buttons. You've got
Speaker 1: the four buttons that are that are in a diamond
Speaker 1: pattern on the on the right side where your right
Speaker 1: thumb can touch them. And you've got a direction pad
Speaker 1: as well. Plus you've got the start in back buttons,
Speaker 1: which in some games also plays a part. So you've
Speaker 1: got all these different buttons, all these different that potentially
Speaker 1: could make a game incredibly complex and intimidating for someone
Speaker 1: to learn if they're just picking up gaming for the
Speaker 1: first time. Now, let's contrast that with casual games. Casual
Speaker 1: games have simple gameplay. It does not mean that the
Speaker 1: game itself is easy. It just means that the game
Speaker 1: mechanics are simple. So it could be a puzzle game
Speaker 1: that actually is pretty complex, but the the the way
Speaker 1: you play the puzzle game is easy, then you've got
Speaker 1: uh usually will allow you to play the game in
Speaker 1: just really short bursts so whenever you have time to play,
Speaker 1: you can just log on or you know, access it.
Speaker 1: However you're accessing this game, play a little bit, and
Speaker 1: then you can pop right back out and you're fine.
Speaker 1: You don't have to dedicate a lot of time to it. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's usually a way where you very quickly progress through
Speaker 1: the game, or you very quickly unlock other elements in
Speaker 1: the game. And a lot of them also have a
Speaker 1: method where they let you try the game in some
Speaker 1: format before you purchase it, or they will support the
Speaker 1: game with advertising, so that you know. They might have
Speaker 1: two different versions of the same game, right, they have
Speaker 1: one that has ads, so every so often you are
Speaker 1: subjected to an ad while you play this game. And
Speaker 1: then they might have a paid version where if you
Speaker 1: buy it, you no longer have ads in your game.
Speaker 1: So that that's Those are the typical attributes you would
Speaker 1: find in a casual game. Um, although we tend to
Speaker 1: say the hardcore games are more often found on consoles
Speaker 1: and are dedicated computer games, and we tend to see
Speaker 1: casual games and things like mobile platforms and social uh,
Speaker 1: social network platforms, that's not always a case. There's not
Speaker 1: a there's not a true division in platforms. After all,
Speaker 1: the Nintendo we in a way, is really a It's
Speaker 1: known mostly for its casual games, or at least that
Speaker 1: that was really how Nintendo promoted the WEE early on.
Speaker 1: It was the idea, this was the game console for anyone,
Speaker 1: even someone who had never really gotten into video games,
Speaker 1: because the motion controller gave you the opportunity to play
Speaker 1: games in a way that was supposed to be really
Speaker 1: intuitive and really simple. So there's that simple gameplay we
Speaker 1: were talking about. Even if the games themselves were pretty complex,
Speaker 1: the the barrier to entry in the game was supposed
Speaker 1: to be really low. So that's the general difference. Most
Speaker 1: games fall somewhere between the two. There's there there are
Speaker 1: a few games that you could probably argue, okay, this
Speaker 1: is like the example of a hardcore game versus the
Speaker 1: example of a casual game, And then there are a
Speaker 1: lot of games that you know, you might say, well,
Speaker 1: it has these attributes from a casual game, but you
Speaker 1: can't just log in and log off because if you do,
Speaker 1: you're gonna lose your progress. And you know, let's say
Speaker 1: plants versus zombies. Yes, that's a good example. Plans versus
Speaker 1: Zombies is a fun game. Uh, it's it's relatively simple,
Speaker 1: it's got some great animations and great uh gameplay to it. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's it's still it's not too difficult for someone
Speaker 1: who even isn't really big into video games to get
Speaker 1: into it. My wife loves Plants Versus Zombies, but she's
Speaker 1: not a video game person. However, that being said, it's
Speaker 1: also the kind of game that if you're in the
Speaker 1: middle of the level and you jump out of it,
Speaker 1: depending on what platform you're in, you may lose your
Speaker 1: progress and have to start over. Yes, there's a zombie
Speaker 1: on your lawn. Well, I'll just have to go and
Speaker 1: get one of those pe shooters. Then I hope I
Speaker 1: have enough sunflowers to generate the sun. I also play
Speaker 1: a lot of Plans Versus on my phone and on
Speaker 1: my computer and in the browser. And you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm one of those gamers that I like both camps.
Speaker 1: I like hardcore games and I like casual games. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: me too. Um yeah, I was thinking Tetris. I mean
Speaker 1: there's fantastic example of a casual game. Ye yep. And
Speaker 1: and a lot of people find themselves unable to get
Speaker 1: the little falling um you know, the little tetraminos the
Speaker 1: head when they used to play that so often that
Speaker 1: when I would close my eyes at night, I would
Speaker 1: see the blocks in my sleep. Later those became the
Speaker 1: jewels from Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do
Speaker 1: Do Do Do Do Do Do Do do do do. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, in contrast, you might have something like, um,
Speaker 1: uh the role playing games. Vast numbers of role playing
Speaker 1: games that could be uh, Dungeon Crawlers or shoot them
Speaker 1: ups or the first person series or uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the the Never Winter Nights type games walters Gate. Um.
Speaker 1: I would think that the Civilization series very complex. Even
Speaker 1: Sport could be considered a hardcore game because you spend
Speaker 1: hours building up your your species first four um, although
Speaker 1: very few people play it, I think in comparison, um,
Speaker 1: and yeah, they're there. You know, there's there's stuff that
Speaker 1: falls in between. UM. I think there are some some
Speaker 1: of the Facebook type games now where the play on
Speaker 1: the level as you're working on the level is pretty easy,
Speaker 1: but then you know it's one in a series of
Speaker 1: things that you have to do to accomplish a larger goal.
Speaker 1: There's sort of hybrid games. Um. But yeah, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, well, I mean casual games sort of had
Speaker 1: this reputation for being sort of a feminine thing. I
Speaker 1: know a lot of statistics I've read sort of say
Speaker 1: that excuse more toward women gamers. That spells the myth
Speaker 1: that women don't play games like the There was one
Speaker 1: statistic I saw, and unfortunately I don't have the source
Speaker 1: with me. So guys, when you hear me quote the statistic,
Speaker 1: remember any percent of all statistics that are quoted are
Speaker 1: made up on the spot. But no, there was a
Speaker 1: statistic I saw that suggested that I think it was
Speaker 1: sent of the purchases of casual games were women, So
Speaker 1: whenever anyone was you know, if you were to look
Speaker 1: at all the purchases of the casual games across the market,
Speaker 1: of those consumers were female. Um. But again I don't
Speaker 1: have that source in front of me, so take that
Speaker 1: with a grain of salt. Guys. Yeah, yeah, Well, the
Speaker 1: it's it's roughly fifty fifty according to a study that
Speaker 1: I found, Um for MSN games. Um, it's so it's
Speaker 1: you know, not not the same. It's not just for
Speaker 1: breakfast anymore. They used to say about orange juice, and
Speaker 1: I think it's, uh, depending on the game, it it
Speaker 1: defies category, It defies trying to put it in a
Speaker 1: little box. There you go, Uh, well, so you know
Speaker 1: they're they're definitely kinds that are easy to categorize. Like
Speaker 1: The Jeweled is clearly a puzzle game, right match three game.
Speaker 1: If you will see that these are these subdivisions at Jonathan,
Speaker 1: the subcategories of subcategories, because within casual games you can
Speaker 1: have puzzle games, and within puzzle games you have different
Speaker 1: subcategories of that. Um, but you've got other kind of
Speaker 1: you know, games that are are out for both the
Speaker 1: computer and consoles uh, and and online social networks, things
Speaker 1: like you know, the Farmvills, the City Bills, the Frontiervills,
Speaker 1: Mafia Wars. Uh. These are all considered casual games because
Speaker 1: again there are games that you can just pop PLoP
Speaker 1: into at any time. Now, I would say that traditionally
Speaker 1: speaking like if you're going with the very stereotypical hardcore gamer, yes,
Speaker 1: there is a stigma against casual games. Some hardcore gamers
Speaker 1: might say that casual games are not real games because
Speaker 1: they don't have that level of complexity that they prefer
Speaker 1: when in their gaming experience. And I can totally understand that.
Speaker 1: I mean there's there is something to say like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't get as much enjoyment out of that, because, uh,
Speaker 1: this other game requires this level of skill that I've
Speaker 1: I've developed over time, and I feel like this is
Speaker 1: more rewarding. That's fine. I mean there are other people
Speaker 1: are going to find casual games far more rewarding than
Speaker 1: the level of frustration they would have they're trying to
Speaker 1: pick up a hardcore game. The thing I would tell
Speaker 1: hardcore gamers is you might think that casual games are
Speaker 1: not really truly games. Tell that to the billionaires who
Speaker 1: made their fortunes through casual games. I mean billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: This is a huge industry, especially because, like Chris was saying,
Speaker 1: you know, using Facebook as a platform brilliant. As soon
Speaker 1: as Facebook opened up that a p I and allowed
Speaker 1: people to create applications or Facebook to exist on top
Speaker 1: of Facebook, the gaming market exploded. Because if you've already
Speaker 1: got a potential audience of more than eight hundred million people,
Speaker 1: it's a no brainer. Yeah, well, you might be surprised
Speaker 1: then to find out, I'll surprise you. I bet it will.
Speaker 1: Actually um. The the CEO of New Zoo, Peter Warman,
Speaker 1: was quoted in an article I read where he was
Speaker 1: saying that somewhere between seventy six to of casual gamers
Speaker 1: play outside of Facebook. So of all those people who
Speaker 1: are playing Farmville and other games on Facebook, that's only
Speaker 1: a small fraction of the entire casual gaming audience. Well.
Speaker 1: I have a membership to pogo dot com. I don't
Speaker 1: use it as often as I use some of the
Speaker 1: other sites. But uh, yeah, some some game companies have
Speaker 1: made their games available. I've seen games on on all
Speaker 1: sorts of different sites that I didn't realize had them. Um,
Speaker 1: like the Majong Dimensions game. I've seen it on multiple
Speaker 1: different sites that weren't when I consider traditional gaming sites,
Speaker 1: but they they added as a sort of bonus to uh,
Speaker 1: to keep you there. Um. On the other hand, there
Speaker 1: are places like uh, you know, they develop their own stuff,
Speaker 1: like for example, Cartoon Network UM has games built around
Speaker 1: all their properties and it's specifically there or for uh
Speaker 1: you know some of the kids show game sites. Um,
Speaker 1: you know they do that for for those properties as well,
Speaker 1: So it's not just you know, the Bejewels of the world.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, and then you see the game's really hitting
Speaker 1: their stride with the smartphone revolution as well as because
Speaker 1: one smartphones became a thing. Yeah, tablets as well. I
Speaker 1: think more smartphones even than tablets, mostly because I think
Speaker 1: of the average consumer. If the average consumer also happens
Speaker 1: to have a smartphone, and the average consumer is running
Speaker 1: into situation sens where he or she has a little
Speaker 1: time on their hands waiting for stuff like you're in
Speaker 1: line for the movie theater and the lines really long
Speaker 1: for tickets and the people in front of you are
Speaker 1: just now deciding what they want to see. Then you
Speaker 1: know you've got some time to kill, so opening up
Speaker 1: a an app on your phone and playing a little
Speaker 1: Angry Birds is might just seem like the perfect thing
Speaker 1: they'll do to occupy yourself while you're waiting to play this,
Speaker 1: as opposed to, you know, occupying yourself by trying to
Speaker 1: convince yourself not to stab the person in front of you.
Speaker 1: And they're particularly useful the d M v UM. You know,
Speaker 1: there's so many different doctor's offices. I mean, any situation
Speaker 1: where you are not doing something. However, I will say
Speaker 1: this people, if you play these social games, please don't
Speaker 1: do it in the restroom, and if you do, please
Speaker 1: mute your phone because I thought I thought you were
Speaker 1: not well anonymous for sitting in the stall next to me,
Speaker 1: because I did not know that pigs made that noise
Speaker 1: when they were impacted by Angry Birds. And now that
Speaker 1: I know that, I'm fine. I mean, okay, I mean granted,
Speaker 1: I still I'm a little skeeved out that you were
Speaker 1: playing the game. Yea um, but yeah, no, the that's
Speaker 1: that's one of the hallmarks of the casual games though, right,
Speaker 1: is that it's really accessible and that you can play
Speaker 1: it at any time. And that's one of the really
Speaker 1: attractive things about them. Yeah. And and and this is
Speaker 1: what makes it so brilliant for people like ro Vio,
Speaker 1: the publisher of Angry Birds, the PopCap series. It's plants,
Speaker 1: plants versus zombies, bejeweled uh ing um. And and this
Speaker 1: is what all of them and many many others have
Speaker 1: done so effectively. Half Brick also, I would throw in
Speaker 1: this camp that does fruit Ninja. They have hit the
Speaker 1: sweet spot because okay, they've they've made their games available
Speaker 1: on Actually they came from different directions. Um Rovio and
Speaker 1: half Brick came from the smaller uh, the the cell
Speaker 1: phone camp, smartphone camp. They made their applications available on
Speaker 1: on tablets, and then they started moving into Google Plus
Speaker 1: and Facebook. Um Zynga and Popcat came from computers and
Speaker 1: websites and started moving their apps over to tablets and smartphones.
Speaker 1: And now all of these guys are available on all
Speaker 1: these platforms. So you you're eating your breakfast in the morning, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you're getting ready to the kids ready for school,
Speaker 1: and you get in five minutes worth of gaming activity
Speaker 1: before you you leave the house. You're waiting on the bus.
Speaker 1: You get on your smartphone and play for another five minutes. Um,
Speaker 1: you take a break at lunchtime, get on the tablet
Speaker 1: and play for another five minutes. And and it just
Speaker 1: goes on like this. You can do this. You're waiting
Speaker 1: for your co host to find a quote from a
Speaker 1: novel and guilty as charged, I have done that, um,
Speaker 1: and and this is really And then they go off
Speaker 1: and do uh crazy stuff like having plushies made. I
Speaker 1: cannot tell you how many stores I have seen angry
Speaker 1: birds in. Heck, I saw the board game when it
Speaker 1: first came out. Ye, I see, yes, ten maybe waiting
Speaker 1: on on the kid after school, I see kids walking
Speaker 1: out with angry bird t shirts on UM. The Fruit
Speaker 1: Ninja of Hulks at half Brick are coming out with
Speaker 1: pleshy fruit and and sense a. UM absolutely look it
Speaker 1: up if you don't believe me. So the thing is,
Speaker 1: UM they've been able to expand the platforms to make
Speaker 1: them available more places, and they're they're cashing in on
Speaker 1: the interest around these properties. So this has become a
Speaker 1: way for them to to uh, you know, sustain their operations,
Speaker 1: to market themselves and UM make a lot of money.
Speaker 1: And uh a whole lot. When we're talking about a
Speaker 1: whole lot, I mean they're billions for the whole industry.
Speaker 1: Like Zinga when it was announcing its IPO, it would
Speaker 1: have been valued at eight point nine billion with a
Speaker 1: B dollars and it had generated something like one point
Speaker 1: one point five billion in revenues since it started in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven. Now, Zinga when it when it first
Speaker 1: started was one of those companies that UM that really
Speaker 1: was a big surprise to folks because the founder, Mark Pinkus,
Speaker 1: he had he had been an entrepreneur previously and had
Speaker 1: had some successes and some failures. Some of the failures
Speaker 1: were related to the dot com crash back in two
Speaker 1: thousand but once Facebook was opening up that a p I,
Speaker 1: he saw the opportunity to jump in the social games space,
Speaker 1: and he thought that people would really enjoy playing games
Speaker 1: and being able to share that experience with their friends
Speaker 1: and to build in games that would allow people to
Speaker 1: help one another out in a in a virtual way.
Speaker 1: And so he kind of jumped on that and he
Speaker 1: hired some really smart folks, including people like Bing Gordon,
Speaker 1: Owen Van that A, Mark Skags, Brian Reynolds. These guys
Speaker 1: are all really smart. Some of them are a game designers,
Speaker 1: some of them are great at at leveraging social networks. Uh.
Speaker 1: Bing Gordon is the consigliari. That's that's his term because
Speaker 1: what he what he does is he finds people that
Speaker 1: would be a really good addition to Zinga's workforce. Like
Speaker 1: he's kind of like one of those guys who just
Speaker 1: he's fantastic and networking. As someone who does that a lot,
Speaker 1: I can totally I can totally dig that I do
Speaker 1: a lot of working myself. It seems to me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it seems to me that I'm more often get
Speaker 1: cool people I know opportunities with other cool people I know,
Speaker 1: more than I leverage it for myself, so I gotta
Speaker 1: be more selfish anyway. It's it's yeah, almost nine billion
Speaker 1: dollars in valuation, which is pretty phenomenal. Um and uh
Speaker 1: that and that it's only been around since two thousand seven. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: pop Cap, that company, I believe, Electronic Arts acquired pop Cap.
Speaker 1: So you're you're talking about these little bitty companies that
Speaker 1: people would have thought of as upstarts that are become
Speaker 1: that becomes such big players that the really well established
Speaker 1: huge names and gaming have taken notice and they're either
Speaker 1: you know, stealing themselves for direct competition or they're acquiring
Speaker 1: them um as for direct competition. That's a little tricky.
Speaker 1: Let's get back to the Nintendo we and kind of
Speaker 1: wrap this up a little bit. So consoles in general
Speaker 1: don't tend to cater to the casual market as much.
Speaker 1: You can find casual games on these consoles, but the
Speaker 1: consoles themselves, one, their price point is pretty high. So
Speaker 1: that's a that can discourage a casual gamer who may
Speaker 1: not want to make that level of investment in a
Speaker 1: game or in a game system. To the interfaces tend
Speaker 1: to be a little more complex. So again, if you
Speaker 1: first pick up an Xbox controller and you've never used
Speaker 1: one before, and you try and navigate through the menu
Speaker 1: system and try and find a game that you want
Speaker 1: to play, and then learn how the game itself operates
Speaker 1: and try to coordinate all that. It can be really intimidating. UM.
Speaker 1: So when Nintendo decided to come out with the Wei,
Speaker 1: they were aiming at a different market. They were saying, well,
Speaker 1: why don't we go for these people who would otherwise
Speaker 1: you know, they might like to play games, but they
Speaker 1: just find these other systems to be a little too
Speaker 1: intimidating or complex or whatever. There's a barrier there. Let's
Speaker 1: remove that barrier. We're going to create this movement based
Speaker 1: controller where the controls will be much more intuitive, and
Speaker 1: we're going to create a bunch of games that cater
Speaker 1: to that crowd. And uh. And it did really, really
Speaker 1: well when Nintendo we came out, it was it out
Speaker 1: sold the Xbox three sixty and it outsold the p
Speaker 1: S three and it seemed like everyone I knew had one. Uh.
Speaker 1: The downside is that the game sales didn't really take
Speaker 1: off at the same rate. People were not buying up
Speaker 1: lots and lots of games, and whether that's because casual
Speaker 1: gamers are satisfied with a smaller variety of games, like
Speaker 1: just a few games is fine for them, or if
Speaker 1: they just lost interest and therefore didn't have that desire
Speaker 1: to buy that next title the way hardcore gamers do.
Speaker 1: Because one of the byproducts of hardcore gamers is loyalty,
Speaker 1: they tend to build up brand loyalty and they will
Speaker 1: be very vocal about it, and to the point where
Speaker 1: if you express an interest in a game that they
Speaker 1: think of as a competitor, they will tell you are
Speaker 1: stupid for liking that game because that game is not
Speaker 1: the game they like. That's it happens a lot. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's you know, I don't know if that's the reason
Speaker 1: why not to know, we sales like the games els didn't.
Speaker 1: Some people might just say that there was a lack
Speaker 1: of compelling games on the market. Well, if you if
Speaker 1: you stepped back from it, and you aren't calling someone
Speaker 1: else silly for not having the system that you have
Speaker 1: and and look at them sort of across the board,
Speaker 1: there were there were a couple of things going on
Speaker 1: at play there um, one of which is if you
Speaker 1: look at it um with the Xbox three sixty and
Speaker 1: PlayStation three. I would argue that both Sony and Microsoft
Speaker 1: were aiming for the core gamers. Um. You know, we're
Speaker 1: talking about a war of processors and a war of
Speaker 1: UM high definition and things like that and licenses, UM,
Speaker 1: the very serious um uh in depth games they were.
Speaker 1: They were serious gamers that were they were targeting. And
Speaker 1: they said, we're really gonna hit this market. And people
Speaker 1: scoffed at the Wii because he said, no, this is
Speaker 1: it's not even high deaf, it's just amidst made from
Speaker 1: off the shelf parts. Who cares. Nobody's gonna this little
Speaker 1: WE remote. Nobody's gonna care. And it turns out that
Speaker 1: that kind of gameplay hit the sweet spot for a
Speaker 1: lot of people who just didn't see themselves buying that. So,
Speaker 1: plus the cost, I mean talking about the PlayStation three
Speaker 1: versus the cost of the we when it came out,
Speaker 1: these were differences. But I think more than anything, it
Speaker 1: was the kind of gaming involved. And you know, there
Speaker 1: weren't a lot of games at that time that I
Speaker 1: think UM hit the casual gamers for either the PlayStation
Speaker 1: three or the the Xbox three sixty. When the Week
Speaker 1: came out, they just they weren't aiming for that market.
Speaker 1: Of course, now they are. You've got motion controllers to
Speaker 1: connect and uh, the PlayStation move and they are selling.
Speaker 1: Of course, people are using the Connect and hacking it
Speaker 1: to do All's actually heard recently, and by recently, I
Speaker 1: mean this, we're recording this in the beginning of March. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's March nine right now, the day we're recording this.
Speaker 1: Behind the current um I heard recently that Microsoft is
Speaker 1: actually trying to move away from the the idea that
Speaker 1: the Connect is a casual gamer gateway into the Xbox.
Speaker 1: I think what what they're trying to do is trying
Speaker 1: to make it more of a key element in some
Speaker 1: of their hardcore games to try and add value to those,
Speaker 1: because I think that's that that one of the problems,
Speaker 1: one of the challenges of going after that casual gamer
Speaker 1: market is that because they don't really think like hardcore gamers,
Speaker 1: you can sell them on a game once, but then
Speaker 1: selling them on a second game is a lot more challenging.
Speaker 1: And therefore, if you're gonna, if you're gonna put a
Speaker 1: lot of effort into selling games, you might want to
Speaker 1: try and go for the audience that is shown historically
Speaker 1: to be interested in buying lots of games and to
Speaker 1: you know, the the audience that buys games occasionally, Well,
Speaker 1: then you don't. You know, it's not that you ignore them,
Speaker 1: you just don't dedicate a lot of resources to catering
Speaker 1: to them. Yeah. Well it's an issue of perception. Um,
Speaker 1: the way has a perception that it is a less
Speaker 1: sophistic hated machine that has more casual games. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it can't be used to play more sophisticated, more
Speaker 1: in depth games. But that's the the reputation it has
Speaker 1: and the connect Uh did bring a lot of casual
Speaker 1: gamers on board for the Xbox three sixty, but it
Speaker 1: got a reputation for being a enabler tool for casual
Speaker 1: gamers to get on on the platform when the tool
Speaker 1: itself can be used for a variety of different games.
Speaker 1: Same same thing with the Sony Move. Like you're saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: once on the motion control, I think again, because you're
Speaker 1: taking away that that element of complexity with a controller
Speaker 1: that has eleven buttons total when you animal up, Um,
Speaker 1: once you take that out, then yeah, I can see
Speaker 1: where that would uh some people would would equate that
Speaker 1: with it being a simple system, although it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: so we should also point out one other thing that
Speaker 1: does tend to that I think people associate with casual
Speaker 1: games versus hardcore games is subject matter. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people assume that if it's a casual game,
Speaker 1: the subject matter is kind of light and and inconsequential.
Speaker 1: I mean, Fruit Ninja good example, Right, you're just hacking
Speaker 1: fruit a part, yeah, Whereas if you're talking about a
Speaker 1: hardcore game, you might be talking about someone like Grand
Speaker 1: Theft Auto, where you're talking about some adult themes and
Speaker 1: some pretty intense um scenes in the game, but moral issues. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's you know, really that that's content, and content
Speaker 1: is sort of agnostic when it comes to casual versus hardcore.
Speaker 1: You could have a casual game that has some pretty
Speaker 1: heavy concepts in it and it's nothing, you know, there's
Speaker 1: nothing stopping that. So that's one thing I wanted to address. Um,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much all I have about casual games right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it'll be interesting to see in maybe
Speaker 1: five years if casual games like you know, which ones
Speaker 1: are still popular or are there? Is it just a
Speaker 1: totally new batch of casual games that are popular or
Speaker 1: are people just satisfied with buying angry Birds and playing
Speaker 1: that for the rest of their lives. Well, the question
Speaker 1: for me is to that is whether people will make
Speaker 1: the distinction between hardcore and casual games anymore and just
Speaker 1: start calling them games and then from there break it down. Um,
Speaker 1: it seems that we're still sort of in uh living
Speaker 1: in and us versus them world, although less maybe than
Speaker 1: a couple of years ago. Um, it's all because them
Speaker 1: stupid apparently. Yeah, all right, spoken like one of them anyway.
Speaker 1: So I guess that wraps up our discussion on casual games.
Speaker 1: If you guys have any topics you would like us
Speaker 1: to tackle, whether it's a technology, uh, if it's a
Speaker 1: trend in technology, if it's an innovator, if there's an
Speaker 1: interview you want us to do. Remember we're going to
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