When I started to read this book I thought: My! The first serious book on casual games I have ever red (well, there are not a lot of books on casual games, the first serious analysis of casual games I have ever red). First of all the historical approach (from Windows Solitaire to Nintendo’s wii sports) is interesting. Secondly I loved this concept: to answer the question why casual games have success NOW, the author says:” As the average gamers have gotten older, they have also found they have less time to play games. These players now have wives, husbands, kids, jobs, DirectTV and housework all competing for their attention. Fitting in a 15-hour marathon of Civilization gets harder and harder. But they still want to play something, just in shorter sessions. They need to slot gameplay into their lives, not the other way around.” A very interesting way to see casual games success.
Now the problem with this book is that the next n pages are so general that they could be applied to whatever game design you think about…Finally the second half of the book came back to be focused on casual games. I think you can consider this book a practical anthology of kinds of (casual) games but I will not put it on the annals of game design.
http://www.lostgarden.com
http://www.lindastone.net/
Crayon Physics
"Try to taking out key rules to see where the game breaks."
"Try giving goals and rules to different activities to see how you might make them into games."
"Voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. -- Bernard Suits
...Continua
