How "Casual" Are You? - David Braben Looks at Casual Gaming

[Callum Rowley]

How "Casual" Are You? - David Braben Looks at Casual Gaming

David Braben continues his regular monthly column for Develop Magazine where he delves deep into "technology, design, and the murky ground where they cross-over" within the games industry, this time by covering the problems's with snobbery towards casual gamers and making games accessible.

I hate the term ‘casual gamer’.

At Frontier we have made a number of games that appeal to a broad audience, including the so-called ‘casual’ gamer, like the Roller Coaster Tycoon games, Thrillville games, Dog’s Life and Wallace and Gromit games (we view LostWinds as primarily a core-gamer game, by the way). With each of these games we have conducted audience studies both in our own right, and with publishers, as well as the anecdotal feel we all have anyway as gamers. Over time this gives a good impression of what people tend to like and dislike, and it is a subtle, complex mix.

Read the article in full...

Let us know your thoughts by replying to this thread.

 

[SuperG]

casual I am not.
I game for a long time, since Atari 2600. Then not. But picked that up again after we got a 80386 PC.

Got the Wii to as Party Casual Fitness platform. Nice as a altenative console.
Because I´am a gamer but not every one at home.

It´s nice to see that old dad try´s it. Wii Fit. And sister and bro´s and aunty and visitors. On a family party.

But Nintendo kiddy IP. The so call Nintendo hardcore games I realy dislike. But then agian Wii is my first Nintendo console.

As PC gamer from Dos to Dos4GW skipped WinG but from dX2 and up to DX11 I Play PC games. Mostly SP offline.
Bro and sis and me lately play on PS3 online MW2.

Well I do think that Wii draws some non gamer to become a bit gamer. And casual gamer might game bit more. Discover other platforms with graphical higher and with more depth games. And gaming becoming something more common. Instead that nerd tag on it.

That good. But for big sales you must aim a bit more on mass market.

MW2 does that to. It´s accesable. Strait forward. But also hardcore.
Wii Redsteel 1 was a disapointment. Redsteel 2 it handles better but the direction they went in is a disapointment to.

Games on WiiI did like where onrail shooters and resident evil line.
Tennis make very sense on Wii but the Wii plus version reminds me that I suck at tennis. I did that in reallife to on gravel.


I also think even X3 series could be a whole lotta axcessable then it is now.

Like, mid combat, seeking a player owned ship, in a near sector trough a property list. To assist you in combat. Don´t make sense to me.
A tactical menu with a list of close or within range optinal support ship who can act on you distress call. For reènforcements.
A quick response reenforcement menu

The PC versus console thing.

PC is way better for FPS. I have read some real proof. Proof in the form of a comercial game. A public Dev article about how they match Xbox live gamers with Windows live gamers in the same server session. They had to cripple the PC gamer and give some assit to consolers to get matched. MS game calles Shadowrun.

Of course FPS do well on Console because as online gamer you play with the same handicap and assist. And the gameplay is consolised. And optimised for gamepad. So FPS PC versus Consoles.

The only problem I have with it is that some specific gameplay styles that work great on PC and less with gamepad. Will get rare thing.

Keyboard vs gamepad, I think a gamepad has lot of buttons place in a nice fashion. While Keyboard has a lot more. Like overkill of button nice for typing not gaming. But as PC gamer wASD is no problem but those key you use once a while you need to memorise and look out for pushing the right one. But as regular FPS gamer you can memory´s a lot key binds. So can do more complex things.

I think accesability is avoid keyboard as much as posible but do most with the mouse.

Mouse vs gamepad right analog stick.

That analog stick on gamepad is just like a mini micro joystick. That nice but clumsi for getting a good fidelity feel. That why true aiming with gamepad suckes. Very noticeable wen you play a for PC mainplaform developed game with a quick cheap port to console. Realy aiming with that small sticky.

Mouse you got more aiming feel. More fidelity and ease.

Then you got game mouses who are yet agian much better at it then regular mouses.

So I think it even posible to have a FPS gamepad wich use a methode that gives you this fidelity to. Like measuring force instead delta angle the stick does.

Natal and move, What I do expect, the same Wii casual crap games, but with good graphics. And Third party triple A games wich can use it to if it has some merit to the game. Redsteel 3 or 4 on PS3.

I see it more, that the hardcore console platforms want to compete with wii on casual market. Wich is a good thing. I miss good graphics on wii. The good thing about crap GFX is that pixelated zombies doesn´t look so scary.
I won´t play Doom3 or deadspace on highend PC. To scary.

 

[critic]

I want to cry when reading Braben defending "casual" gamers and speaking of consoles like they are not designed for the casual gamer.

Yes, I've been playing games since the time of Elite and I'm sad that we "core gamers" have been ignored by Frontier and Braben.

I respect the work you are doing and make an effort to buy all the games made by Frontier, this is not an easy task as it would involve me buying a Xbox or a PS3 and I have not been able to find anything but RTC at the local shops.

It seems that the 7-13 year old market is your target audience, I'm looking forward to Outsider, but it seems that it's a secondary project. There are no updates, no interviews, no information, for years the only info is a page worth of information. I guess the point is to keep quiet and spoon feed us, until it's "ready", then publish so quietly that countries other than US and UK, don't even stock the game. It's still unclear if the game will be available on the PC...

I'm looking forward to Outsider, when in reality it is only a distraction from the real prize, Elite IV. And I'm saddened by the approach taken to reach that goal, no game released by Frontier in the past few years is worth a second look by a "average" PC gamer, 10 years ago I would have said "hard-core" gamer.

Anyway, keep up the good work and release something for the PC gamer, something that a 13-year-old wont describe as awesome or cute.

 

[Callum Rowley]

It seems that the 7-13 year old market is your target audience, I'm looking forward to Outsider, but it seems that it's a secondary project. There are no updates, no interviews, no information, for years the only info is a page worth of information.

The Outsider is in no way a secondary project =) If anything it's actually going to be one of our flagship products until there is a new Elite - and even then we think The Outsider will be remain one of our main titles.