Dreams of Casual-fornication

There are certain people out there in the game development world that worry games are not accessible enough to non-gamers. These are the sort of people that believe football stadium seating is not accessible enough to a deep sea angler fish or that a china shop isn’t accessible enough to a bull. They are the people that got rid of skill trees and stat points in Diablo 3 because customizing your character was too hard for the members of The Apathetic and Righteous Demographic (or TARDs for short). I don’t believe I’m alone in my opinion that this business practice of nerfing games (the “No Drooling Mongoloid Left Behind” method) is not only creating crap games but it’s forcing developers to make massive changes to how their games work which, in the case of Diablo 3, certainly does them no favors. Yet despite how keenly I feel that the grasp for the consumer’s pocket money has once again harmed an industry, I can’t get worked up about it anymore. You see, as demands on my time have increased more and more I’ve found myself drawn to play more caahaaa-... To play cassuuu...

To play casual games.

It hurts to admit that, but when I stagger home I am met at the door by an ever-growing mountain of chores and nipped at the heels by a pile of work that has followed me home. Walking through the door saps lifeblood out of me until I just don’t have the energy to start an epic adventure. After all, my next quest is a pile of laundry, staring at me, JUDGING me for buying more underwear from the store rather than go to the laundromat. The knowledge of that failure saps my energy and suddenly the idea of not finishing one more task seems reason for seppuku. So instead of grabbing Dragon’s Dogma or Assassins Creed off the shelf, I load up a Popcap game. The same damn Popcap game I’ve been playing for years. I barely glance at the score, it doesn’t matter. I’m not looking for an epic adventure, I’m looking for catharsis.

It wasn’t until the Christmas break started that I realized I wasn’t a dead empty husk that no longer took any pleasure in video games. I played more games in the week before Christmas than I had for months and it wasn’t because I felt obligated or because I needed to prove I was still a gamer. I played them because I love them and because they are my hobby.

Video games are very different than movies or television because they are not a passive experience so they engage us more than other forms of visual media can. Certain games (such as Call of Duty) test our reflexes, our hand-eye coordination and our ability to work as a team. Others (such as Heavy Rain) force us to think about the impacts of our failures and draw us in emotionally. Yet other games can help us relax and allow the sick and elderly sitting in a wheelchair a chance to control the wind in games like Flower. Mixing these genres would be ludicrous; granny doesn’t want to test her aging reflexes, she wants to feel like she’s riding the wind. Taking CoD and making it more “accessible” to grams just removes the challenge from it, making it boring for the fans that loved it so dearly before.

This is why we have casual games. They may not test our abilities, our intelligence or our beliefs, but they hold the power of entertainment that is accessible to impaired and non-gamers alike. It’s not about dragging these people in for their increased revenue and eventual transition to “hard core” games; it’s about giving us a reason to play when we’re tired or sad. It’s about giving a child in a hospital something to absorb in while they recover between treatments. If these consumers wish to play casual games their whole life, it’s not a bad thing.

Have we lost this concept or was it never around?