The Space Game marries the resource extraction component of an RTS with a tower defense game. No surprise here; The Casual Collective is Paul Preece and David Scott. Preece created Desktop Tower Defense, though this is Scott's game.
The Space Game begins with two inaccuracies: It is created by The Casual Collective, and it is not a casual game; and the developers bill it as an RTS, which it is not. It is, however, a good game.
Now, for some reason, the term "casual game" has become one with unremittingly positive connotations (and been the fount of many a business plan, some of them actually funded); everyone in the universe today, seemingly, wants to claim that they produce "casual games." Thus, say, Kongregate, whose most popular games are often shooters and sidescrollers, claims to be "casual;" the Wii, manufactured by the very company that created gaming's hardcore, is supposedly fostering the growth of "casual" games; the success of Geometry Wars on XBLA is pointed to as an example of how casual games are successful on consoles as well, despite the fact that the shmup is an extraordinarily geeky hardcore genre; etc., etc., etc.
To me, a casual game is a 60-minute limited demo, marketted to middle-aged women, and falls into one of three genres: match-three, hidden object, or time management. I'm willing to expand the definition when another genre that sells mainly to middle-aged women succeeds. Okay, no, I won't be that anal about it, but let's face it: The Space Game involves shooting. It's fundamentally about combat. Casual? I think not.
The RTS, too, is a well-defined genre: it involves resource extraction, a tech tree, and large-scale battles between forces directly controlled by opposing players. The Space Game is real time, in that it is not turn-based; and it is a strategy game; but it is not an RTS.
What it is, is a game that marries the resource extraction component of an RTS with a tower defense game. No surprise here; The Casual Collective is Paul Preece and David Scott. Preece created Desktop Tower Defense, though this is Scott's game.
In each mission, there's some arrangement of asteroids. You build solar power stations to generate energy, then miners to extract minerals from the asteroids. Miners have to be powered, which means they must be within a certain range of the solar power stations (though you can build energy relays to extend their range); power links are shown as blue lines on the screen. In addition, you can build two types of laser defenses, and missile defenses. Indeed, you need to, because space pirates will attack you (in TD-like waves).
Naturally, all installations can be upgraded, and there's a wide variety of pirate types, including boss-like entities, which require different defensive strategies to defeat.
For a Flash game, The Space Game is remarkably deep, and extremely well polished; among other things, the tutorial is excellent (though since this is a far more complex game than most that appear on free Flash sites, may deter some users). And the asteroid mining motif lends itself to a degree of graphics minimalism, keeping the .swf fairly small and the game peppy even on slower machines. It is a nice piece of work.
It seems that your
It seems that your definitions of "casual" and "RTS" are not the ones being actively used nowadays. Are you really arguing that games should be broken into rigid categories, and that the boundaries of those categories should never shift?
No, I'm arguing that sloppy
No, I'm arguing that sloppy use of language obfuscates rather than reveals.
I'm not a middle aged woman
I'm a middle aged man. And I've logged more hours playing hard-core games -- video, computer, pen-and-paper, bookcase, etc. -- than any of you whippersnappers. And I also enjoy casual games as well as serious games. The Space Game is awesome and ate my Saturday two weeks ago. Desktop Tower Defense has eaten several Saturdays.
My definition of a casual game has two parts: 1) It can be learned by someone with no experience in the genre in less than 15 minutes. 2) It can be enjoyably played, with some kind of result, for 15 minute chunks.
If you adhere to the "middle aged women" school for casual games, then all hardcore gamers must be the unshaven, oily, unemployed teens living in their basements.
Let's enjoy the fact that a larger market for more types of games makes them better for all of us.
Casual Game
I play Snood and Bejewelled too, for that matter. That's not really my point. If tower defense, a combat-oriented genre, is lumped into the same category as puzzle games, word games, and time management games, then "casual" ceases to have any meaning whatsoever.
All In Favor Of Drastic Genre Reform, Say Aye
Doom involves strategically choosing which demon to shoot first, so it's a real time strategy game.
Civilization is an action game because in order to play the game, you have to take action.
How about we start using terms that unambiguously make sense, like "defense" in a "sci-fi" setting where the player's role is a "non-character"?
"The RTS, too, is a
"The RTS, too, is a well-defined genre: it involves resource extraction, a tech tree, and large-scale battles between forces directly controlled by opposing players."
As long as we're picking nits, I think you mean "small-scale" battles. RTS battles typically are controled at the individual unit level, occasionally at the squad level, and only rarely beyond that. Number of units per side is usually in the tens. Also, you forgot base-building. And 'tech-tree' in an RTS usually means 'upgradable buildings'.
When I put my pedantic-contrarian goggles on (and if I ignore the lack of player controlled units) I can't tell the difference between The Space Game and Starcraft.
That said, The Space Game is a fun little diversion...
I made the space game and
I made the space game and co-founded the casual collective and I think Andy has it right.
"1) It can be learned by someone with no experience in the genre in less than 15 minutes. 2) It can be enjoyably played, with some kind of result, for 15 minute chunks."
I have attended countless 'Casual Gaming Conferences' where people have tried to define what a casual game is (it's the standard opening to such an event) and everyone has their own take on it, but no one has ever suggested it's just games marketed to middle-aged women and has to be one of 3 genres! Not since the early 2000's anyways :)
Casual it is
This is essentially a re-hash of "Harvest: Massive Encounter." I agree with Critters that the essential criterion of a "casual" game is the ease with which one can pick it up... and preferably drop it. If I'm right, and this is a re-make of Harvest, then you can use it to fill up time without the danger of addiction. Partly this is because it's level-based rather than infinitely expansive... Then again, it is 10 to 4 in the morning.
Re-hash is a bit harsh :) It
Re-hash is a bit harsh :) It does give credit (in the credits section of the main menu) to Harvest for inspiring us, but hey, harvest is a great game :)
It does have 9 levels but also has open-ended play with the survivor, mining and wave modes.
Sloppy language?
A differing definition of "casual game" from yours isn't "sloppy use of language." Other people use "casual game" as a cross-genre term to refer to games they can play, as andyhavens said, in 15 minute chunks, and without a steep learning curve. I can't play Final Fantasy at breaktime at work, or while I'm waiting for the pasta to finish cooking. I *can* play a game of Wii tennis or a puzzle game or a quick shooter, and I can drop it as soon as the pasta's done--that's why the term is useful for some people.
I think you're seeing "casual games" as a genre in and of itself, rather than a descriptor for a type of game that could be in any genre, but that doesn't seem to be how other people are using the term. And maybe not everything described as a "casual game" fits under my definition either, but it's a new coinage and it's still developing. Maybe it'll become like "alternative music"--useless--or maybe it won't, but it's not like arbitrarily restricting the definition to hidden object games makes the linguistic process any better.
Hmmm.
That would make ADOM a casual game.
DAMN YOU ALL!
You tricked me into playing a tower defense game. WHY DID NOBODY TELL ME IT WAS A TOWER DEFENSE GAME?
*EDIT*
Oh wait, you did. My bad.
It should really come with a giant warning label though, like the ones on cigarette packets.
You know,
I considered that, but the learning curve is pretty steep. You have to learn what the ASCII symbols mean and you have to learn the key commands and what the skills do, etc. (POWDER might qualify, though. Jayisgames actually linked to it once.)
I guess that means that
I guess that means that people who play TD games all day are hardcore casual gamers?
Besides, everybody knows who had the last word on casual games anyway.
Hmph
The basic idea behind casual games is "there weren't any! games were only for geeks! and now we have casual games! For the rest of us!"
Uh. Huh.
Pac-Man?. Easy learning curve, playable in 15 minutes, accessible to women, by the way. Little Computer People? Definitely a title that sold to non-hard-core gamers. Myst? Hard-core gamers hated it; it sold basically to what we might call "non-gamers," except that, as far as I'm concerned, anyone who plays games is a gamer. (Including my deceased grandmother, Hearts shark that she was, bless her soul.) Tetris? In many ways, the perfect illustration of a 'casual' game, except nobody called it such -- and indeed, the success of 'casual' gaming is heartening precisely because it creates a commercial marketplace for games like Tetris, a game style that hasn't been commercially successful in the mainstream industry since the 80s.
By the proposed definition of "casual game" -- intuitive UI + playable in 15 minute chunks -- you'd have to include every game from the 80s arcade revolution, plus, say, Counter-Strike. (Playable in 15 minutes, definitely, and "move and shoot" isn't hard to pick up, although you'll definitely be pwned by hardcore players within minutes.)
What was astonishing, and heartening, about the "casual games" revolution was that a) it created a market selling to people who had never really bought games before (e.g., middle-aged women); b) it demonstrated that downloadable game sales was viable, we didn't have to be stuck with the boxopoly forever; and c) it revitalized the puzzle game (of various styles), which was dead in the water in the conventional market. Cool, and great, but it's time to move beyond that.
It's time to create games that attract audiences beyond the predominantly middle-aged, female demographic of the casual game portals; it's time to demonstrate that downloadable game sales can work for many other game styles; it's time to revitalize other languishing genres (graphic adventures, anyone?); it's time to smash "Moore's Wall", get beyond the $5m+ budget, 100-man team, $50 retail price point dynamic, and show that casual games are only the start, that creativity and digital distribution can be more than just "casual" games, a one-size fits all, 60-minute trial, $20 price point, narrow purchasing demographic market.
In other words, why not games for the people who traditionally buy games?
Like, say, those who might enjoy playing something like The Space Game? Who, I don't think, are the same people likely to enjoy Bejewelled. And may well be the same people who likely enjoy Age of Empires.
If it's played by the hard core, is it still "casual?"
What does "casual" mean?
And isn't the term holding us back at this point?
Fuck casual games. Give me something interesting. And I don't look to the "casual game market" for interesting, at this point. Because that market has gotten as narrow, from a genre perspective, as the conventional retail market. Match three, hidden object, time management. 80% goes to Yahoo or Oberon, and the developers make nothing.
Screw that.
Woah! Caps!
But seriously though.
I used to dig the whole 'everyone is a gamer now' thang thats been happening over the last few years, but when I stopped to think about it, I got pissed off. For one, I enjoyed gaming when it was a niche thing. Why shouldn't someone have to earn the right to be a gamer? Does driving your car to work every day make you a driver? I tried rock climbing once, does that mean I'm a mountaineer?
Simple, trivial games insult us, because people who have no idea about gaming will pick up a Wii and think 'oh, so this is what Hendar has been doing all these years. How cute!'
And two. Our art has been ridiculed, dismiss, mocked and even demonized for decades, and now we want these people to come and play with us? I say FUCK EM.
But that's when I'm in a bad mood. Hi Mom! Wanna play Guitar Hero?
*Oh and I don't really have anything against a TF game done well. 5 Stars for The Space Game :)
Re-hash
Well, it's not a complete copy-paste of Harvest: Massive Encounter's design. There's some slight variation to the tower and enemy config and the urgent expansion is absent. Apparently, it's also tedious to program all those energy balls in Flash, but I know a clone when I see it. This game is free and instant play, the other does it's job better (apart from it's abysmal tutorial).
The Space Game is a simplified clone of an already light game (which is presumably what most people who do not think marketing terminology understand as casual, Mr. Costikyan). A good one, I might add, for people to enjoy over the internets.
At least the Casual Collective more or less honestly give them due credit.
Two things
RE-HASH
First of all, even if I do think that this is a re-hash, I don't think it's a bad game. I quite enjoyed playing it, and may play it a bit more when I finish writing this post. But if we think games have something to say, there's such a thing as not saying anything new...
CASUAL GAMES
Costik, I think you're a bit too focussed on the "middle aged woman" theory here. While it's true that they form one of the main... markets, I guess, for sites like pop-cap, I reckon that has more to do with the fact that middle aged women in our society are spending a disproportionate amount of time on the internet, in general. And after the first few days, everyone starts to realised that the internet can be a fairly boring place (at times). So rather than looking to these games to have something in common that makes them appropriate for middle-aged women, we should think about why these women are online in the first place. This board may not be the place to have that discussion, but briefly it seems to have a lot to do with a culture of domesticity.
I'm more persuaded by the arguments made here that a "casual" game is any game that someone plays casually, or "non-seriously." That may be a somewhat subjective definition, but there are certainly games that depict themselves as utterly appropriate for casual play: they aren't demanding or intimidating, and you're not going to feel bad if you don't "finish" them.
That last level...
In spite of what I just wrote, I've spent the entire evening trying to beat the last level on this.
I'm finding my strategy is making independent solar stations, each supported by a few pulse guns and the occasional heavy weapon. There are long tendrils connecting the stations, which also act as secondary mining areas.
I think the key to this is speed (so I play it on slow). I should actually pause more frequently than I already do. I find that when the pressure gets too high, I'll sell all of my mining equipment to buy more guns. That's just shooting yourself in the foot. On top of that, the mining platforms are useful for delaying the enemy attack. But if I'm not short on minerals I'm short on guns. And of course if I'm not short on guns, I'm short on energy.
Casual games
I've asked countless developers who say they work on "casual games" to define what it means. I've gotten a different response from every developer. The cynic in me says this is a sure sign that no one has any clue what the market is and that the whole "casual games" thing is balderdash. If only the games would utterly fail to make money so I could prove my point.
In general, I've seen the following types of classifications:
* Non-core demographic. This can either mean "everyone who isn't male, 18-25" or specifically "women 25-45". Yes, I have run into a casual developer who claimed that casual == 25-45 F.
Problem: the 18-25 M demographic is no longer the majority of the market. The average console gamer is over 30; one in four is over 50. The average game developer isn't even 18-25 M. So this definition of "casual" is outdated at best.
* Does not typically spend money on games. This can be measured as annual dollars spent, or percent of disposable income.
Problem 1: Parents are the ones who typically buy games for their kids. Does that mean the parents are hardcore and the kids are casual, when the kids are the ones playing all the time?
Problem 2: What about the cheapskate tightwads who play games obsessively but don't spend any money on them -- they either play free downloads, borrow games from their friends, or (at worst) grab pirated torrents? Are we going to call these ultra-diehard gamers "casual" just because they're financially challenged?
Problem 3: Does anyone see a problem with trying to sell games to people who, by definition, do not by them? On the face of it, this sounds absolutely f---ing retarded. What's next, selling ice cubes to the "casual ice cube" market of Antarctica?
* Does not typically spend time playing games. This can be measured as number of hours spent gaming per week, or percent of leisure time spent playing games.
Problem 1: What about people who lead terribly busy lives? I'd LIKE to play games 80 hours per week, but with my schedule it's usually more like 5 hours.
Problem 2: What about a secretary who does not self-identify as a gamer, has never walked into a game store in her life... but she spends half of her time at work playing Solitaire or Minesweeper, plays Tetris on her cell phone during the bus commute, and plays Dance Dance Revolution ten hours a week? She probably spends more total time gaming than most "hardcore" gamers, but if you tried to tell her she was a "gamer" at all (let alone "hardcore") she'd laugh you out of the building.
* Does not self-identify as a gamer. Does not follow the game industry. Does not consider games a hobby. Does make games part of one's lifestyle. Is not game-literate or industry-literate.
Problem 1: unlike all of the other methods above, this one is difficult or impossible to quantify. Which means you can't make a game targeted at them.
Problem 2: this category is a negation, so it is likely not a single unified market but a large (infinite?) collection of fragmented markets. Without a single "casual" demographic, it's impossible to make a single game that "targets" them.
As far as I can tell, the only reason why people even talk about "casual" games is because of five games that were huge smash hits that sold to a non-core audience: Pac-Man, Tetris, Deer Hunter, Bejewelled, and The Sims. I don't understand how we somehow got an entire industry based on five nonrepeatable data points, but here we are.
And don't even get me started on the definition of what a "casual game" is.
Casual games
Even on the massive casual games portals, there are big hits that are not mtch3hdnobjctmngmnt. There have been a number of strategy, simulation, adventure, even RPG titles that do perfectly well, as long as they are friendly and follow casual design principles.
Plenty of casual gamers aren't middle-aged women. Sure, they are much more strongly represented among the casual buyers than among the hardcore, but they're not even 75% of casual customers afaik.
And if you're going to make middle-aged-women your defining feature for casual, you'll have to remember that the dedicated hardcore puzzler adventure game niche fans constantly buying the titles that the mainstream claims are dead ALSO skew older and more female than the hardcore market.