Casual Games On Openpandora [ Yes / No ]

[typs lik dis]

I was under the impression that casual games have, by definition, a larger audience than anything else; anyone can play them. The Wii is outselling every other game console this generation because it's built mainly for the casual gamer; obviously you'll find the majority of polled people like casual games, even on this forum, given the wide range of features drawing people to the Pandora.

Personally, the only games I enjoy which could be called "casual" are simple creative simulators along the lines of the Falling Sand games and Powder Toy. Certainly, anyone could just click around and have fun finding each element's properties and reactions, but there's also room for rather deep creative expression. Gmod is also fun, but a ton more complex (and thus can do much more).

Edit: The post above me happened while I was writing. What you forget about is the iPod Touch; it's just an iPhone without the phone/3G features. It runs all the same apps as the iPhone (except for GPS/3G-dependent ones) and I was always under the impression that a large part of its attraction was the casual games from the app store. The cheapest one sells for around $230 on the apple store, putting it well within the range to compete with the casual games on PSP/NDS; in my high school, at least, it's a far more popular casual gaming device than the older/more dedicated gadgets (PSP/NDS).

 

[streak]

I was under the impression that casual games have, by definition, a larger audience than anything else; anyone can play them.

That's correct. If we want to create some game, the obvious game genre is "casual", because its easy to develop, nice in look and feel, and could grand bigger audience than for example arcade shoot'em up. of course we could start dev something bigger and better like tibia-equvalent on pandora, but here we have money problem... and we are back to the start...

 

[Svartalf]

From my perspective Pandora is only for enthusiasts... not for profit.

Yeah, but the iPhone's more constrained and the API's are...interesting. I certainly won't tell anyone to not target it, but some titles just simply won't go there. Moreover, if you do this "right" you don't have to put much effort out for Pandora support. Do a Linux port. Account for deltas between ES and full OpenGL and as long as your title will easily fit on a ~200Mb RAM profile including ES memory usage, you can have the Pandora port with no more than a 1% increase in your effort.

Caster is coming to Pandora that way. Several other titles too.

No, they're not EA. For most of the stuff they produce, I could care less, really- most of their stuff is bupkus anyhow.

I think you would get a much better idea of the community`s opinion if you would ditch keywords like "casual" and say what your games are actually about in terms of genre, style, depth, etc.

And nobody but the gamer crowd will 'get it' because the rest of the world doesn't think in those terms.

QUOTE

I tend to associate "casual games" with "lack of personality". You know, like those websites with glossy buttons and 10px fonts. I`m sure that you have something special planned though, so why hide behind such a generic description?


"Casual" means you can pick them up play them a little bit and then lay them back down- and it doesn't take any serious effort to learn the bulk of the basic dynamics of the game. This encompasses the crap you're griping about and then it covers things like TribalTrouble, which is far, far removed from the description you use.

So as you can see, we have already some interesting news from real dev's

So what am I and TheGoodDoktor? Chopped liver?

 

[streak]

So as you can see, we have already some interesting news from real dev's

So what am I and TheGoodDoktor? Chopped liver?


Blah, it supposed to be REAL DEV STUDIOS. I've eat the "studios" word
Anyway, maybe minced beef is better

 

[Svartalf]

Blah, it supposed to be REAL DEV STUDIOS. I've eat the "studios" word

I was just picking on you there... Yeah, it's really cool that real studios as well as many, many indies worth having do things for us are interested in what's been done. There's actually quite a bit of people watching this from the sidelines right at the moment.

QUOTE

Anyway, maybe minced beef is better



No kidding...

 

[Radon]

My main point is: there will be only 4000 Pandoras for now! ... maybe eventually 20-50k after a few batches.
IPhones/IPods however are sold in the MILLIONS every month ...
Even if the audience is a bit different you can't compare that potential market for games to the Pandora's

So if your primary goal is profit then the Pandora certainly won't be your best bet.

I'm not saying that you can't make any money with games for the Pandora... just not very much. If you still want to develop for it because of the better gaming controls etc. then I would consider you an enthusiast .. and not a businessman. However I would expect an enthusiast to care more about making the game he enjoys most rather than selling it to as many people as possible.

 

[PoisonedV]

Uh, you do realize that the Pandora is a pretty Niche product, so we'll be getting mostly indie games for it, right?

Of course, now its still niche product, but only time will tell what happen next. Already only Craigix / ED can really tell how many dev people / studios or bigger companies are interested in getting into OpenPandora. AFAIK its still very good proving ground for small devs to try sell own products, because in openpandora ground you dont need to invest anything. Grab some SDK + few people and make a game. Upload game to server and try to sell it. Easy, easy. If the game will be bad, make another one. If gets audience, sell the idea to bigger company - grant some money, repeat . Like i said this is whole new ground in any aspect, and if people dont want to understand, its too bad for them.

Lets make an example. Lets take RUCKAGE games. They're perfect in any aspect. Playable and with good graphics, and that its enough to invest a little bit and try to make NDS port. Do you think NDS players will not like it? Of course they 'll like it. But to make this big step ruckage should pass the first step of creating the game on GP2X and see the how the community will handle it ,

And what about Alex game, SqDef? Give me money to invest in it, and i'll assure You, this one will be big hit in NDS ground. Only to polish a code slightly. And take a look how uncomplicated the whole program is, almost casual..

With examples this is alot better. I love Ruckage's games, I intended to send some money his way but never got around to it. So yes, now i definitely agree, that casual games would be nice.

 

[Unfathomable Depths]

Pffft.

All games are casual, except for UT2004 - thats fecking serious.

 

[Monk]

Personally I thought "casual games" included things like arcade shoot-em-ups and pacman type things and stuff...


...and as far as developing for Pandora being too small a target audience - maybe it's just a more focussed audience to develop for? As easy as it is to take a program written for another system and port it to the Pandora, surely something written for the Pandora which did well could (and probably would) quickly be ported to other systems if there was money to be made there?

 

[emcp]

add the option, are you planning on making any

because this is the reason im getting the pandora, ive recently became found of good casual games, and plan on making the majority of my games, what i call abstract games which use primitives etc

im also at the moment hoping to get 2 fps and several 3d sports games, before the pandora's lifetime

 

[streak]

add the option, are you planning on making any

The main reason of creating this poll is to gather information about people thoughts about casual games on pandora [ like / dislike ], and that option will make big mess. This time "this is pointless"

 

[fischju2000]

If a hardcore game is a 100 hour RPG and a casual game is a shmup that I turn on and shoot crap for 5 minutes, then I will be using my Pandora for mostly casual games.

 

[Pleng]

I guess I only ever play 'casual' games.

I lost interest in games when they got so complex that they needed to feature 'learning modes'. I overhear conversations between gamers talking about how 'game x is really good but you need to spend a couple of hours learning it before you start to enjoy it'

For me when a game comes on screen you should be able to work out what needs doing within a few minutes. Bring on the mindless performers like Sonic and Mario, the simple beat-em-ups like Mortal Kombat, the Side-scrolling-fisty games (sorry, dont know the official genre name) like double dragon and streets of rage, and the arcade racing games like Daytona and Sega Rally (no handbrake for me please. Realistic driving styles? Pah I'll go and drive a car if I wan't realism... let me power-slide round every corner!)

 

[lulzfish]

To summarize the huge post I just erased:

I like games that start in a few seconds, get into gameplay in 2 or maybe 3 mouseclicks, and leave just as quickly.

Right now I'm thinking that I want the opposite of Crysis [I've also heard that Assassin's Creed is a PITA to exit from]

Crysis has all these little movies and menus and gigs of level data. Just playing Crysis at all is a huge commitment, so I usually play until it crashes and then go to bed for the night.

 

[Monk]

I overhear conversations between gamers talking about how 'game x is really good but you need to spend a couple of hours learning it before you start to enjoy it'

With "aquired taste" experiences, I always wonder how the first person aquired the taste. I mean, who thought "OK it makes me cough like a bugger, but I could get to like putting a burning roll of tobacco leaves in my mouth" or "OK, so snails/sturgeon eggs LOOK feel and TASTE disgusting, but if I persevere I might get to like them..."???

 

[Kramy]

I guess I only ever play 'casual' games.

I lost interest in games when they got so complex that they needed to feature 'learning modes'. I overhear conversations between gamers talking about how 'game x is really good but you need to spend a couple of hours learning it before you start to enjoy it'

I had that with Left4Dead. The first few hours, I was just training my hand to aim at stuff and click. I don't think I had played a FPS within a year of L4D, so my brain had to re-wire itself a bit.

But after that, it was loads of fun. While re-learning, it was only fun inbetween people cursing that I shot them. :lol:

For mobile devices(like my GP2X), I definitely lean more towards casual.

 

[fireball87]

I play exactly the same type of game that I did in the early 90s. Some of them were casual and some of them are extraordinarily deep and time consuming (luckily not as time consuming as some of the extraordinarily dull crap I've played from recent though). That said back then hardcore gamer and casual gamer wasn't all that far apart, it had to do with skill and knowledge in games, not what style of games that you played. So I suppose I'm a hardcore casual gamer...? Eh, I'll just stick with my previous classification of oldschool gamer... despite the fact that I play new games fairly often.

 

[cools]

Casual is precisely the same stuff that you get in arcades - but because arcades in western countries have all but died apart from gambling all of the innovation that used to happen is now happening in Flash in a browser, and the games have been branded "casual games" rather than the classical "arcade games".

It's a reasonable enough distinction - arcade stuff is coin operated and designed to give a challenge, to keep you entertained enough for you to keep stuffing coins in.

So yes, I'm all for "casual games", but they have to be good. Good enough to beat out the old arcade and console titles that got it right first - these are what I'll be playing primarily.

I'd pay for a Carmageddon port, but that's about it - there's so much quality old stuff that new stuff will have to be absolutely drop dead fantastic for me to give it my attention.

 

[gp2.eXe]

I actually like to have both "hardcore" and casual, RPGs for example, so that i can feel like i'm progressing through, and when i get stuck, i can unstress a little with casual playing, so for me casual is a need. B) I agree with cools, they have to be good, though.

whoops, misplaced punctuation, of course i'm not saying RPGs are casual, heh...

 

[MDave]

What the, it must be that time of the month again, and it begins with P

Joking aside, does the Pandora strike you as a casual device based on first impressions? It sure didn't for me.