Hoping to leverage her “universal appeal”, Nintendo has signed Nicole Kidman to promote their Brain Training casual games series

In a move that will further thrust casual games into the mainstream, Nintendo has chosen Oscar-award winning actress Nicole Kidman as the official face of their newest Brain Training ad campaign.

Casual games differentiate themselves from the hardcore industry on many levels, not the least of which are their thematic elements. As our industry matures, we learn that modern culture is an attractive element to many casual gamers. Swapping fantasy and sci-fi for pop-culture, we see even more new gamers attracted to casual gaming.

We must learn to recognize the cultural and social divide between casual and hardcore gamers. Further, we must learn to merge casual gamers’ real-world interests into their gaming experience. Beyond the superficial licensed property, in what ways can pop-culture influence the way casual games are played? How can the deeper game mechanics reflect a pop-culture influence?

[Watch the ad] [via Mind Hacks]

Posted in Industry News

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Death Worm - An intuitive mechanic that’s easy to learn

While the content is not exactly casual game material, Death Worm exploits a very intuitive game mechanic that is easy to learn and enjoy.  Ecco the Dolphin meets Tremors, you control a meat-hungry Death Worm that tunnels its way through the earth until it finds suitable prey to feast upon, where it erupts from the ground in an Earth-shocking rumble and sprays its victim’s blood in its wake.

Why should you play?
The control of the beast is immediately obvious, and the goal of the game doubly so.  Few games adopt intuitive mechanics of this level, making it a game almost anybody could play.  (Sans the gruesome thematics.)  Not only is the mechanic easy to pick up, but it’s immediately clear which victims are appropriate for digestion and which will cause harm to your monster.  Death Worm also features a very satisfying screen rumble effect every time you break through the earth–something you have to see to appreciate!

What’s wrong with it?
The graphics are a sub-par and the theme is more than a little mature, but both work for the underground (no pun intended) indie audience it’s trying to target.  It might be a little more intuitive with a mouse-based control, and some power-ups or advanced movement mechanics might spice up the play somewhat.  (I’d like to be able to somehow keep my monster in the air to create massive combos, for example.)  Finally, playing up the some heavy physics effects might make it more visually interesting.

Despite the blood-heavy presentation, casual developers could learn a lot from such intuitive and natural game mechanics!

[Play Death Worm] [via TIGSource]

Posted in You Should Play

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The fellow fanatics over at BinaryJoy have posted an in-depth interview with Reflexive Entertainment’s James C. Smith. (Also of Game Sales Charts fame.) Reflexive, about to release another sequel to their brick-busting Ricochet series, is trying to leverage the benefits of the Social Web to its advantage:

“The built in Internet enabled features give you direct access to thousands of levels to play. The improved tools in Ricochet Infinity help you browse, categorize and rate levels so that you can find the levels that YOU want to play. The new ranking system also keeps things interesting as you play the endless supply of levels.”

With the success of socially-driven websites like YouTube and MySpace, it’s about time the casual industry entered the game!

[Read More]

Posted in Industry News, Interviews

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60-minute trials, $19.99 demos, $7/mo game subscriptions, in-game advertising…and now, pay-as-you-play.

Merscom, in partnership with Double Trump, recently announced they will be offering five of their games under a novel pricing structure: play as long as you want, for only $0.01 per minute.

“…users can download and play any game they want for as long as they want, and pay only for the actual time they have played. It’s like buying the game one piece at a time, with the ability to stop whenever they don’t want to play that game any longer. Their maximum charge per game is limited by the list price of that game, so they will never pay more than the original game price.”

Players may appreciate the flexibility, and publishers may hail the death of the 1% player, but is this a good thing? It would take over 2,000 hours minutes to recoup a single $20 sale. Compare this to the $0.25 to $2.00-per-play of your typical arcade game, who’s audience appreciates the high-intensity challenge required to keep them pumping quarters into the electric joybox. (And ignoring, for a moment, that brick-and-mortar arcades are crumbling like an alcoholic by noon.) Is this devaluation the shot-in-the-arm our industry needs to thrive and grow to mainstream acceptance?

Surely there are more constructive pricing structures?

[Update: Thanks to lexaloffle for pointing out that it’d take 2,000 minutes to recoup $20, not 2,000 hours. That’s quite a discrepancy!]

[Read More] [via GameZebo]

Posted in Business, Industry News

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Remember those girls in your 4^th grade class that colored in the lines? I don’t mean they merely stayed within the lines, I mean they covered every molecule of white within that virtual ink barrier with mechanical accuracy! That’s bad. It’s a waste of effort and energy. Especially where “really good” often commands the same attention as “perfect.”

It’s impossible to make the perfect game, so don’t bother. Identify your goal (a game), your constraints (your budget), and focus 90% of your attention on the 90% of the game the user will spend her time with. Otherwise, you might never achieve your goal within your limitations.

If you’re a perfectionist, you may run out of money (or time) before you reach your goal. And if you’re sloppy, you may release a sub-par game. By identifying the most important facets, which are usually the most mundane–jumping, moving, swapping–you’ll foster an immediately more enjoyable game for the player.

“…you must pick your battles, deciding in which areas ‘most’ matters and living with ‘least’ the rest of the time.” –Seth Godin

That’s not to say the rest of the game isn’t important, but we live in a discrete world with finite resources. The more carefully you manage yours, the better game experience you can provide for your expenditure and audience!

[inspired by Seth’s Blog]

Posted in Game Design

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