I doubt casual games are hurting core games

[Anayo]

Well put, Hatta. That's sort of what I felt all along.

[Ivo]

Companies that only care about making the most money with the least effort will gravitate to casual games. Good riddance. There's always going to be a market for quality games, and someone will fill that market.

Consider any other type of medium. There are cheap pulp books at every drug store, popcorn action movies sell more than any serious attempt at story telling, and the radio is dominated by drum machines and autotune. But people still write real literature, they still make art films, and you can still catch real musicians playing real musical instruments most nights of the week in any medium sized city.

There will always be a market for quality games. However the price (and therefore production values) of the games may very well go drastically down. Good books don't cost over 30x of what Pulp books cost to buy, and DVDs and ticket entrances are fairly uniform as well. I believe similar value comparisons would hold for music (concerts or so on). Likewise, the production costs of the quality products is also similar or even pricier for the ones with mass appeal (e.g. popcorn action movies with all the FX usually cost more than art films).

So I think that casual games certainly will affect quality games down the line (I think they are doing it now). This may not necessarily be bad for the consumer as the prices should go down (naturally they will need to cut into the huge teams as well). The 3DS price drop may be the first real indication of this starting to happen in earnest with significant effects. I think this comic is quite apt:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/8/1/

Ivo.

[flamepanther]

There will always be a market for quality games. However the price (and therefore production values) of the games may very well go drastically down. Good books don't cost over 30x of what Pulp books cost to buy, and DVDs and ticket entrances are fairly uniform as well. I believe similar value comparisons would hold for music (concerts or so on). Likewise, the production costs of the quality products is also similar or even pricier for the ones with mass appeal (e.g. popcorn action movies with all the FX usually cost more than art films).

So I think that casual games certainly will affect quality games down the line (I think they are doing it now). This may not necessarily be bad for the consumer as the prices should go down (naturally they will need to cut into the huge teams as well). The 3DS price drop may be the first real indication of this starting to happen in earnest with significant effects. I think this comic is quite apt:
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/8/1/

Ivo.

I think this can only be a good thing though. Some games (especially recent PS3 titles) seem over-produced to some extent. More importantly, this would resolve the issue of current-gen games being too costly for publishers and developers to take any risks. Games should not only become less expensive, but should also become more varied and creative again.

[Ivo]

I think this can only be a good thing though. Some games (especially recent PS3 titles) seem over-produced to some extent. More importantly, this would resolve the issue of current-gen games being too costly for publishers and developers to take any risks. Games should not only become less expensive, but should also become more varied and creative again.

It can go both ways and it will probably go both ways. I'm not making a value judgement here, but to me at least it is pretty obvious it IS going to impact the other games.

I personally have always thought big publisher games are overpriced, even when we are talking about masterpieces (1st-party Nintendo games for example). I'm not saying they aren't worth those kind of prices, but there are other non-game entertainment options that compete for our free-time and money. This was already the case before 1-buck games started to really proliferate on mobiles, as there were already plenty of quality freeware/cheap gaming options around (we are Retro gamers here and you should know how much the typical high-quality commercial game becomes cheaper if it is not current-gen any more).

I'm not so optimistic about games becoming more varied and creative again just because of costs and prices going down. There will be some original ones of course, but that is not the trend I see in the "cheap to develop" casual games. There is a flood of clones going on as usual, and the ratio of unoriginal to original in the free/1 buck range may be even worse than what we have in the 40 to 60 bucks range.

So-called independent games are already present, often at a range of 20 bucks and under, sometimes with the "Pay what you want" approach even (at least in the PC, and with quite high-quality games in my opinion).

Ivo.

[flamepanther]

Games in the $10-30 range tend to have a more healthy variety than games in the $50-60 range though. I'm hoping that if more games start to fall into that price range they'll be less slavishly conservative and homogeneous, if even only a little.

[Inazuma]

Hardcore gamers will always buy hardcore games. However, the casual market is growing at a very fast rate, so developers who normally only make hardcore games are starting to also make casual games. They could easily end up making less hardcore games than normal.

Casual games did extremely well when the Wii was new, but not so much lately. It seems to have shifted to cell phones. Nintendo couldn't continue to make casual games because they can't compete with $1 games, so now they are back to making hardcore games.

[Hatta]

There will always be a market for quality games. However the price (and therefore production values) of the games may very well go drastically down.
Ivo.

Fortunately production cost and quality have little to no correlation. Most of the cost of an AAA game is in the graphics, which doesn't matter a bit for good games. If the market for quality games shrunk to the same size it was in 1994, well shit I'd be happy with that. 1994 was a great year for video games.

[AppleQueso]

I think the idea that casual = shitty is somewhat ridiculous honestly.

Tetris is an example of a game that's very casual (by the definition I'm aware of) while still being excellent.

[J T]

I think the idea that casual = shitty is somewhat ridiculous honestly.

Tetris is an example of a game that's very casual (by the definition I'm aware of) while still being excellent.

Perhaps this is self fulfilling due to a belief that casual games are shitty, but a lot of the games targeting a casual audience actually are shitty. Game companies seem to think if they release something cute, stupid, and easy that it will have mass appeal. It's a weird jaded view of people, but it does manage to pull in money.

I agree though that a casual game can have considerable depth. Tetris is a prime example. So is just about everything that Pop Cap makes: Bejeweled, Plants VS Zombies, Zuma, Peggle, Bookworm Adventures. These are all games that have friendly inviting graphics, like most casual games. What makes them great though is that the game play is easy to pick up and difficult to master.

[yomomma1]

That Chart is old, considering that New Super Mario Bros Wii has sold 20+ million copies worldwide.