March 12th, 2007 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial | 2 Comments »
Earlier this month, Markus Kassulke has voiced his arguments against
mobile games going mostly casual in article
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Why Does The Mobile Gaming Industry Ignore The Gamers?
2 Responses to “Why Does The Mobile Gaming Industry Ignore The Gamers?”
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Disclaimer:Arjan Olsder is the Vice President of Pixalon Studios. Opinions expressed on this publication do not have to represent those of Pixalon Studios. |
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In 2006 we (OrangePixel) decided to push out more “casual” (and OneThumb) games that were mainly easy to control and understand, yet I believe some of those titles (RocketBoy2 for example) are still challenging experience for most gamers out there except the hardcore shooter/console fan.
Casual does not, and should never, mean lack-of-challenge. I concider myself a casual player these days since I don’t spend hours on end playing a game. A game that takes a hardcore gamer 2 days to complete, will take me weeks and possibly months to finally reach the end. That is, in my opinion, the difference between casual and hardcore gamers.
Having said that, we have decided to be designing a few new hardcore games in 2007 besides our “casual game” brands, as I totally agree with the fact that the hardcore gamers are also playing mobile games and need a challenge.
I beleive the hardcore gamer is actually the one bringing in a good portion of off-deck sales as they are more willing to find that extra challenge. Where a casual gamer will be pleased enough to just browse his easy-to-use operator deck and pick the top title for some minutes of fun. So for smaller developers this could actually be a much more interesting gamer to please.
I would agree with Pascal – being casual doesn’t mean not having a challenge. I think we’d all agree that the stalwarts like Tetris, Bejeweled etc are actually challenging on the PC AND they are definitely casual games. Yet the mobile versions I have played – on Series 60 handsets – so let’s be clear these aren’t underpowered mobiles – SUCK, precisely because the challenge in them has been sucked out and I can play them without even thinking. Some of the retro-classics were the same – Space Invaders comes to mind – I couldn’t lose a life, I could go and make toast and come back and still not have died!
So I’m not convinced that we have to appeal to Hard Core Gamers with hard core versions of their console games. I just don’t think that the mobile platform is up to the job – whether its native Symbian, Java or BREW – especially by the time you have to factor in the wide handset capabilities you need to make money on a game.
What we do have to do is re-inject the fun and challenge into the types of games that do work well on mobile.