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Casual Connect: Graphics Really Don't Matter...., PDF Print E-mail
Written by Bonnie Boglioli Randall   
Friday, 25 July 2008 12:31

Graphics schmaphics. Or so they say in the casual games industry. While the mmog and virtual worlds audience demand the most exceptional graphics that dev teams can muster, the casual gaming industry has gone about producing their games with rapid development and minimal attention paid to graphics. Why? Because it works, at least for them.

Many casual game developers are still one-man shows. The developers are passionate about bringing to market sometimes quirky, sometimes simulating and always fun games that people can do when their time allows. It's not unusual for developers to begin in their basements, and once they've reached the size of a dozen or so members they are clearly doing pretty well. They know bootstrapping, creating one game and then utilizing its profits to fund the next. Sure, the audience trades graphics for gameplay, but as the numbers show it works.

This more personal approach to creating games is seldom seen anymore in the larger, A-list blockbuster gaming crews where graphics and engines dominate. And who knows this better than Michael Capps, the President of Epic games. Epic Games, creator of some of the world's best selling titles including Gears of War, is an A-lister. Their Unreal Engine provides them with the technology that has won them numerous accolades including many Game of the Year awards. As leader of Epic and a longtime veteran to gaming development and production, you'd think Capps is pretty happy with life at the top, but you might want to think again. He's the first to admit that he wishes he were a casual games developer. Crazy talk?

Casual games just don't get much credit. When Capps asked his fellow game developers their thoughts on casual games, they quickly said 'Games for chicks!', 'Games you play that you don't really care about!', and the best one, 'Game Developers' purgatory'. Clearly there isn't much respect thrown to the casual gaming crew, but that's an asset in Capps' mind. "You've got small teams focused on short development and less graphics. People are passionate about the games even months after their release because it's still new to the dev team," Capps told his audience. Compared to his 100+ person development team at Epic that is constantly working to beat out the competition, casual games solicit dev teams of less than a dozen just looking to have some fun and hopefully make a living wage. This ideology is a recipe for solid collaboration and creativity, Capps believes. He should know, as Epic itself began in a basement. "If one of my team members has a great idea that would be a load of fun, I have to ask the big question which is plastered to the walls of our office: How will this help Epic?" Epic's success, as Capps points out, literally ties their developers down. "We're stuck in a cycle of more and bigger weapons trying to compete with the other games on the market."

You would be correct if you detect bitter-sweetness from Capps, who remembers fondly the days when Epic's few employees felt a huge sense of responsibility to each other and the games they made, eatting ramen and drinking coffee well into the morning hours. Now it's catered meals and flights around the world working with their collaborators, though still ample caffeine. To be sure, Capps' presence at Epic is the driving force of keeping that old spirit alive, at least as much as possible, from profit-sharing to coffee. Their profit sharing allows for each employee to truly be worthwhile, and for prospective employees to undergo some stringent interviews (afterall, they'll be taking a cut away from everyone else's paycheck). What's more, under Under Capps' direction Epic has recently purchased a casual game company, ChAIR Entertainment, so that they could learn from what the casual industry has to teach a blockbuster like Epic. A rather refreshing, and new, approach.

Clearly, big games do sell well after all these years, though market research shows that their numbers are falling to the fully emerged gaming crowds of kids, tweens and women. 150million of my fellow females are gaming actively, and interestingly two-thirds of us are over the age of 35. What's more, the trends continue upwards as more women around the world have access to the net. Anita Frazier, a gaming industry analyst with NPD, has numbers that show the trend towards easily accessible games, from casual games online to the Wii. "Women account for 70% of all PC-based games. Of the 8 and under crowd, nearly 100% of the US population is playing games! Tweens account for just 5% of the US population but 20% of the gaming market" Frazier tells us. What's more, 60% of Americans over the age of 2 are playing games, be it online, on pc's, console or their cell phones. But let's look deeper into the numbers at the really exciting part for market analysts and industry personnel alike. When a large NPD research study questionned how Americans spend their lesiruely hours, 97% responded that they spent some of their leisurely hours watching television. By contrast, only 56% responded that they play games. While there's no doubt that is a large number, it is also a number that reflects the immense growth that the industry can expect in the coming years. And given the current trends, we have reason to suspect that much of that growth will be towards casual, or social gaming.

Getting back to the graphics side of things, it has traditionally been the realm of the mmog's that catered to the 'core' gamers who demanded better graphics for a richer, more fulfilling gaming experience. But today, only 3% of gamers are estimated to be extreme, hardcore gamers (those playing over 40 hours per week), in study after study. 9% are considered 'avid gamers' and generally play both pc and console-based games with an average of 10 hours per week. But many more 'new' gamers are those kids and women, playing casually during their lunchbreaks or in the early morning hours before the kids wake up. These gamers do not require good graphics. To the contrary, games that have spent lots of years and money developing amazing games are taking high risks, as they tend to not perform well in the market with the exception of the big blockbusters (that have big backing on the production, licensing and marketing end of things). They want ease of access and the quick ability to log in and log out.

Thorsten Kolisch is managing partner with Intenium, a Hamburg based company for online business development. The German casual games market is the largest in Europe, and second only to North America worldwide. "Compared to the US which has 88% of it population with broadband, Germany only has somewhere in the 30 percentile. As this changes, we see more growth for the gaming industry as well as tremendous potential for more women gamers, which currently account for 37%." Until then, casual games offer non-broadband users the chance to game. "Germans really like their casual games," Kolisch says, "The developers get really tired of the old Match 3 games and the like, but the Germans love them! They go crazy over the stuff. And if you put a chicken in your game, it's bound to be a hit." Truth be told, Germans and many others around the world (particularly Asians) are not as interested in graphics as they are in play, even if it does seem rather silly at times. Personally, I've been so hooked on my avatar in virtual spaces that the thought of roleplaying a pink piglet seems absurd, but clearly this is attractive to people. As the fantasy-based games have dilligently proven over and over again, people will gladly assume the roles of non-humans or potentially preposterous looking figures if it means good game play. The reality is that graphics are not terribly important to most gamers today.

The Asian market has long been the bastion for casual games and few people from the West know it quite as well as Alex Garden, CEO of Nexon Publishing (a worldwide leader in online games). I heard Garden speak casually during a lunchbreak, and somewhere between chewing on honey-marinated scallops and ginger-infused white rice, I managed to take a way a few lessons from the well spoken Garden. "You can't mimic success. No matter how succesful Nexon is, we couldn't go out and produce a game that rivals World of Warcraft. You'd spend too much time and money trying to replicate something that is already succesful. But you can provide novelty. The Blair Witch Project is a great example from the film industry, in which they didn't have the budget of a filmhouse, so they took an entirely different approach." And, as Blair Witch proved, unique can infact compete with the big guys if done properly. It seems at this juncture there is some space for classic battles of the Davids and Goliaths, so I'll be watching that intently.

Lastly, we have pricetag to throw into the mix here. What allows for quick and inexpensive development of casual games also correlates to low, if any, pricepoints in the casual sphere. Many, if not most, casual games look to advertising as a means of providing free game content to their audience. Kristian Segerstrale of Playfish noted that ultimately, there is a large segment of the population that wants things for free. "We want the people that would never pay for anything," he says, noting that Playfish focuses on free trials and inexpensive subscriptions to hook their audience. But Segerstrale, with his unique Finnish accent brushed over by years spent in the UK, also points out that the core audience of any game can be the biggest money makers if virtual goods are exchanged. "When people are so closely tied to their avatars, you don't need many of them to generate solid revenue." Maybe MindArk was on to something afterall...

While many games and platforms are devoting much of their time trying to compete for the best graphics, biggest weaponry arsenal and more clothing styles to choose from, in the end it's all up to the state of play that a game offers. If it's creative, well thought-through and competitively priced, your audience will come.

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