I like creating. I love gaming. Creating games is my passion.
December 21, 2011
In my previous post I explained that I am starting this blog to share the results of my research project, among other reasons. The subject of my research project will be the rise of casual games and the effect they may have on the more ‘traditional’ gaming market.
When our assignment was first explained, we had a discussion on the subjects each of us was irritated or concerned about related to gaming. Some moment during the discussion I vented my frustration that both in the news and in school, there was an awful lot of focus on casual and social games. I had a sneaking suspicion that this might be bad for me and other gamers who prefer to play ‘traditional’ or ‘hardcore’ games.
My suspicion is that more developers will focus on casual games which means there will be less developers working on bigger games. Of course I might be completely wrong on this. Maybe these developers will later go on to make hardcore games. Maybe there is no significant effect. There’s a lot of factors that might play a role. This is why I think it might be interesting to investigate this trend and it’s effects. Thus my research will be as follows.
In recent years the gaming industry has increasingly noticed and catered to the growing market of casual gamers, reached through new platforms like social media mobile devices. These days a huge number of people play casual games, be it on the train or the bus, on their smart phone or on their social network.
These simple, short games are much more accessible to people who would not normally consider themselves gamers which is why they represent a new market. Traditional video games or ‘hardcore’ games as I like to call them focused on a demographic of people already familiar with video games and who were expecting to invest time and effort into the game to enjoy its fullest potential. These demands are in direct contrast to the demands of casual gamers.
This study intends to examine the hypothesis that ‘The rise of casual gaming has a negative effect on new games for hardcore gamers’ using the questions ‘What are the sizes of both the hardcore gaming and casual gaming industries, now and in the past?’, ‘Has the supply of hardcore games changed in the recent years?’ and ‘How are these related?’. I will examine these questions using revenue statistics and games reviews.
Next post in this series: A question of definitions