The Great Myth of Casual

“Casual is going to destroy us all, everything about video games will be ruined/overtaken/whatever because of casual!”

This is, sadly, not much of hyperbolic statement as a paraphrase of some otherwise rational developers and businessmen in the gaming industry today. Look how fast casual is growing, it's new and different and therefore a threat.

I am reminded of pretty much every new format or business model introduced to every other form of entertainment in history. Recordings will ruin live music. Tv will ruin movies. Remember when reality shows were going to be the only thing left on television?

It's kind of sad to see that video games, only a decade ago so innovative and young, now have old men too set in their ways to see new opportunity. But this brings up the question of what that opportunity is, and how things will change because of it. After all, movies and television did eventually spell the death of the radio drama. On the other hand video never did kill the radio star, so what exactly will “casual” do?

Quite frankly, I think “casual” is just a generic and overly broad term that encompasses too many things right now.

One thing it covers is a new market. Those who just want to play a video game for a few minutes a day, or who just want the type of games from the era of duck hunt and tetris. Simple, straightforward games they don't really have to invest in. Both hard core audiences who just want a distraction on their phone and those who wouldn't spend $60 anyway are the types that will be buying “Fruit Ninja.”

I don't think this is really going to compete with Call of Duty. If you look at video game sales for 2011 you could be forgiven for thinking that this was the case though. Hardcore titles are seeing a large drop while casual soars, it must be connected right?

Well, you'd be forgiven for thinking such if you hadn't the slightest education in economics. Those who do will note that except for developing countries (which are still too poor for the most part to afford hardcore titles in large numbers anyway) the world has had a huge economic downshift.

Considering this, and that video games are entertainment it's little wonder sales of expensive games have gone down. The U.S. Has seen 9%+ unemployment for years, Europe has seen a slump and now faces a crisis, Japan has been in both financial trouble and stuck in a creative slump for years. The only thing to wonder at is why exactly anyone is at all is surprised that $60 entertainment products have faced slowing sales since the beginning of the downturn at the end of 2008.

At the same times the rise of “casual” titles like Farmville and Angry Birds is entirely unsurprising. Movies and other, cheaper forms of entertainment have always been seen as recession resistant, so the ability for cheap video games to rise is quite unsurprising.

In fact the video game industry should be thanking such companies for getting people to pay for such at all. Free “flash” (and otherwise) based games of similar or even surpassing quality (if not quantity) compared to such games as Fruit Ninja have been available for free, en masse, for over a decade. That companies can now charge for such things should be considered nothing short of remarkable.

Micropayments and Freemium

This is also sometimes falls under the term “casual” but is thankfully drawing away. There is, after all, little to be called casual about The Lord of the Rings Online, Team Fortress 2, or Heroes of Newerth. Freemium is just another new business model, and if it works better for some titles then more power to those who succeed with it.

I take it as a great sign that there's still enough competition in the business of video games for new business models to be readily embraced. And while the adoption of such is still sadly slowed down a bit from the heyday of video game innovation, the widespread adoption of such, or at least attempts at adopting it, could certainly teach other industries a thing or two.

Personally I find it amazing that I can't find any tv show episode I want at a reasonable price, if not free with ads, online and available whenever I want it.

But, to any saying “all games will now be this way” I'm tempted to laugh. Remember when everything was going to be an MMO? I certainly do. And while there are certain types of games that would do much better to switch towards such a model, I doubt the next GTA will be doing such, nor does it need to.

Movie theaters still exist despite the panic of home videos destroying them when VHS first came out. So too will the sixty dollar product survive. In fact the more options for a business model that developers have the better. While in game ads might be pretty much dead in the water for most types of games, it appears freemium will live on and healthy for a long time to come. And who knows, perhaps there is a way to combine “freemium” with $60 purchases, I say the best of luck to any brave enough to try.

Expensive Casual and Competition

Another noted rise is that of expensive casual, which I find a strange notion. Not because you can sell “Just Dance” for $60, but that companies would so readily believe such high margin games can continue unabated.

I would merely point to Guitar Hero and ponder the viability of Dancing and Fitness games to continue to sell like they do. How much advancement or even latitude for such things are there? Both “Zumba, Fitness” and “Just Dance” already have strong competition. And if history is any indication the market for such will quickly be exhausted.

But this of course isn't all there is too “expensive” casual. But the real key to this all is competition.

Welcome to Capitalism

Competition is, last time I looked, a large reason “hardcore” video games have gone from less than million dollars to an average of over twenty five million dollars a piece to produce (at least for AAA titles). With the very fast advent of casual and “social” titles the initial investment was low. There was no competition to be had, people were just guessing at what they were even doing.

But billions of dollars have suddenly sprung up around “Social/Casual” or whatever it is that we are calling it now. Billions of dollars means competition, it means those large profit margins are going to be crushed beneath the ever turning wheel.

Not six months ago I read an interview with the head of a studio espousing that Zynga couldn't be beat for facebook games. EA's introduction of “The Sims Social” at the number 2 spot in all facebook might just have made him eat those words, but then I doubt he was thinking of the kind of money a company like EA can bring to bear.

The point here is that Rovio, Zynga, anyone can be beaten. As an industry social games have just begun, and the monetized return of simple, straightforward games hasn't advanced much either.

What you play and where

The last thing I find interesting is a comment by a man I would otherwise have thought intelligent. “The next winner of the console cycle will be the one who figures out why X-Box Live Indie Games didn't become the next ios app store.”

Well, I just mentioned why casual titles have risen. Let's go over it. A: The world is in a recession, cheap entertainment thrives. B: It's finally been noted that the appeal of such “Tetris” like games never actually went away, and with smartphones and app stores there's now a solid way to monetize such. C: Social games and otherwise are essentially a new market.

Now, the only thing this comment connects to is B, and frankly I think this problem falls into a “screen size” issue. That issue is both simple and an incredible amount of people seem to be unaware of it. So what is is? The bigger the screen, the bigger the experience people want.

It is, really, that simple. Do people watch movies on their i-phones? If we are speaking of a general audience, no they don't. People watch them in movie theaters, they buy giant tv's to watch them on. But by the logic many in the video game industry go on they shouldn't. Their smartphone has a screen, they should do everything on that! It only makes sense.

But of course it doesn't. People still buy big screen tv's, and they still watch movies and the super bowl and etc. on them. In fact, for video the bigger the experience the bigger they want the screen. Most will watch tv on their big screen tv's, but a few more people will watch them on their smartphones or etc. Few will watch funny internet videos on their giant plasma screen, but hey there's no problem doing that on their I-pad. The smaller, more casual the experience, the smaller and more portable the screen size.

I'd be easily willing to bet the same principle holds for video games. Angry Birds on your giant plasma? It's not going to feel right. I doubt the title would have sold nearly as well on X-box Live Arcade even if it was the same $1 price as on mobile app stores. The wrong screen size just doesn't work for people.

But what about “Carnival Games”... well first off that's going to be selling for a lot less next generation. If only because balance theory will allow people to pay far less for it, or it's competition if the “Carnival” guys don't lower the price themselves. Secondly, it's still a bigger experience. It might not be “Gears of War”, but it's still more akin to a tv show compared to Angry Birds “funny internet video”.

One last note on something interesting, and that's control schemes. Geometry Wars relies on very precise inputs. Controls are an entirely other concern, something other than “screen size” that will help define what type of game is successful where. And so while the “screen size” effect might affect video in a large way, it will not be the only factor that in what video games sell well where. In fact I'd just call it something to keep in mind.

Conclusion, Narrow vs Broad, and Part 2

Large titles will still exist, and a (hopefully not THAT distant) resurrection of fortunes in the global economy will bring that back into focus and growth. Meanwhile for casual/social, the sector would be prepare to go through an economic principle best described as “narrowing”.

Let's take coffee as a metaphor. When it was first introduced as a product there was pretty much only one way to get it. You either wanted it that way or you didn't. Over two hundred years of development later we have drip, latte, espresso, mocha, americano, french press, iced, and this doesn't even cover the blend, roast, caffeinated or etc.

The point being that all markets start out with a narrow set of products targeted at a broad audience. And as they are developed the set of products will inevitably broaden, each targeting an ever narrower audience. And while certainly there will be products that have a larger audience appeal than any other, it will still never seem as broad as that first, glorious introduction.

The same will happen with social/casual games. And the race to see what that product is, as well as to be the next “Call of Duty” of such a market will be hectic indeed. Best of luck to all the contestants.

But this post can get even more rambling! A part 2 will be coming, connected to this in a way.

It basis is an interesting question: Does spending more money on games actually making them anymore fun?

A clever pun title about Female Gamers.

No more markets to tap, did I really say that? I apologize, there is one major market left. At least for major, high cost video game projects. Why doesn't the average woman spend $60 on the newest video game they just have to have? I see no reason this can't be done.

But first, let's define “video game”. So we can define exactly what it is that's being sold here.

“Video Game” an interactive computer program that creates and artificial context in which designed actions may be performed that are meant to elicit a desired emotional response.

Why is that important? So we don't have any confusion later on. Since I hope to be challenging some traditional notions of what a “game” is, or could be, I thought I'd get a solid definition of the word set down immediately.

Moving on, there's nothing in that definition that precludes women from liking a “game” any less than men do. So why isn't there a huge market for games targeting the female half of the population? We have Call of Duty, and will have whatever will eventually replaces it for males. But video game developers and producers are missing out on huge potential, where's the female equivalent?

In other words there could very well be a “Titanic” of video games. Or even better something that appeals to both sexes like “Avatar”. Two billion dollars (and more) to be made, but right now “hardcore” video games are mostly “for guys”.

So why is this?

The first thing I'm going to talk about is competition. Not in the economic sense, but in the broad sense of the word and how it applies to games. Competition is often thought of as a defining factor for something to be a game. And males love competition.

We have huge industries centered around competition. Billions are made just by people watching a bunch of guys compete with each other. “Sports”, at least as the average male defines it, is nothing more than competition.

To compete, to win, is a huge motivating factor for males. It's considered fun in and of itself. “To win” is as easy and nearly universal an objective for the average male as you'll ever find. In a lot of video games today that is the sole objective. Starcraft 2, Call of Duty, Halo, Forza, the list goes on. The mechanics of each vary widely. But the fun comes from competing, from trying to win. If you removed the competition most of the “game” would be lost.

Not quite a bombshell time

“To win” is not a universal concept for females. It is not a huge motivating factor. And why should it be? All of the games mentioned are completely arbitrary. The only reason that there is to care about winning is that it makes you feel good. And this is mostly because of testosterone, a hormone women don't have much of.

So, you can't expect victory or competition to be a huge motivating factor if you're going to create a game “for” women. That's not to say having victories is not a good thing. Women still enjoy winning at monopoly and etc. But you can't ping the “it's a competition” reward and expect women to flock to your game.

It's the journey, stupid

Guys like the destination. When traveling for vacation their only goal is to “get there”. Anything else is a frustrating waste of time. How can you be on vacation if you're not there yet? For women, when traveling for vacation they are ON vacation. Stop on the roadside to see that wonderful little store, look at the souvenirs in the airport, the destination is just something to move towards eventually.

Now these are broad strokes, to be certain. But they are also a fairly accurate portrait of the “average” female and male. And the same can be said of the video games each enjoy. In my experience, both personal and anecdotal, women enjoy games where the journey can be more important than getting to the objective.

One example is The Sims. This has been called, by males, not a game at all. There's no objective but one you create for yourself. There's no competition whatsoever. How can it be a game? Well it does meet all the requirements of the definition of a game I posted up above. It's also a highly successful series.

Cave(wo)men

For a solid understanding of what roles males and females enjoy we wouldn't go wrong by going back to the days of cavemen and hunter/gatherers. Humanity hasn't evolved that much beyond the time of these seemingly distant ancestors, and a lot of the behavior we still enjoy can be traced back to the roles played in such societies.

For males, the role was hunter, or warrior if two disparaging tribes or even families collided. Objective based behavior was rewarded, in evolutionary terms. Teamwork in small groups, fast reaction times, physicality, and the directed application of violence. Of course competition was also rewarded in direct attempts at breeding as well as food gathering when in contention with other groups.

For females, the role was gatherer, or mother eventually. Since, before the rise of agriculture, the location of edible plants from season to season for sedentary, partially or fully nomadic tribes was unpredictable evolution rewarded patient wandering. It also rewarded a love of bright colors since flowers are at least usually a sign of a plentiful land, and often edible fruits and berries are quite colorful and bright.

Since females would stay with the larger tribe, more social interaction, with a wider range would also be rewarded. Finally, to get all of this done females have evolved more towards a multi-tasking, management based style of thought rather than a singular, large objective based style.

Finally, since men were a bit more “disposable” from an evolutionary standpoint (at least after they bred) men have grown towards a more self sacrificing defensive posture and women towards a more self preservation defensive posture. In other wrods, while women get more reward from raising a child, men get more reward from defending one.

Now all of this not only carries into the modern age, but into how we craft our entertainment. Action movies, with their directed application of violence and usually defensive protagonist (notice how many of them have to save their women /children?) appeals a lot to the average male psyche.

Meanwhile horror movies seem to appeal more equally to the sexes; because while there is usually adrenaline inducing situations the goal of the protagonists is usually more geared towards survival than self sacrificing aggression.

Examples

So, my postulate is that one of the primary designs decisions that can be made for a game to appeal to females is to remove any intense, time sensitive objective that must be completed. And two, that the general interactions of the game must seem enjoyable themselves rather than just in the context of the end objective.

Chess: Usually a male dominated game. Highly competitive and the act of playing is not really enjoyable in and of itself. Moving a pawn a space up isn't really interesting, it's only in the context of the competition and the end goal of winning that the fun comes in. This holds up to the hypothesis.

Viva Pinata: Bright colors, no overall objective, management based gameplay, interactions that are supposed to be fun individually. It's no wonder this was popular among female gamers. In fact much the same can be said of Pokemon, another game that, while still having a male audience, seems to have at least as large a female audience. If not larger.

Sims 2 vs 3: This is an interesting case study. It's a virtual dollhouse, a game girls already play at a young age. But it has been noted that the third installment has been less well received than the second. One of the major changes between the two is that in the third “the sims” themselves, your virtual little dolls, are a lot better at taking care of their own needs.

Remember when I said females had evolved towards a multi tasked, management style mindset? This is why I believe that very change is what cause the series popularity to drop. Married suburban women may complain that they are overworked and harried, but millions still choose that life over a perfectly socially acceptable life of a career women. In fact many choose both a career and still attempt to do as many different household chores and obligations as possible.

The only conclusion I can come to is that there is some evolutionarily built in desire to lead such a life (regardless of whether it seems rewarding upon reflection). Having played both Viva Pinata and The Sims 2 I can honestly say I was overwhelmed by the amount of tasks presented by both games when they got to a certain point.

When watching women, and girls, play the games later they seemed not only far more capable of managing such a myriad of tasks but enjoyed doing so. Thus, a note to anyone at EA reading this: Bring back the ridiculous amount of management needed for the Sims 4 and it will probably gain back some of its popularity.

Fallout 3/New Vegas: Directed application of violence? Yes. Ability to gather? Yep. Choose your own objective? Yes. Bright colors, simulated social interaction, raising of other creatures? Not so much.

While popular mostly with males there is also a sizable portion of female fans that enjoy Bethesda RPG's (the makers of Fallout 3 and producers of the New Vegas, a game with near identical gameplay). As you can see these games meet the two basic requirements to appeal to the average female psyche. Interactions that seem fun in and of themselves, and no time intensive singular objective. It also meets two of the extra basic motivations for females. Thus, it sells to some in a decent amount.

Conclusion

Women are as perfectly willing to pay $60 for a game as males are. And while, due to spending habits and other factors they may not buy as many games as males there's still a market there that hasn't been fully tapped.

Perhaps part of the problem is that game designers are mostly male. This may be because males objective based thought and competitive nature proves better at climbing the corporate ladder or otherwise ending up as the lead designer for a game.

Other factors probably include the (culturally decided) edge males have in mathematics and thus mathematics based professions such as programming. Certainly the popular cultural notion of “cute idiocy” for females in the US is at least partially to blame.

And while it's beyond the scope of this blog to discuss methods for changing such we have never the less arrived at a business motivation for it. If game publishers and developers want to tap into the potentially much larger market of female gamers, encouraging an education and culture of women entering mathematics and game development would be a great start.

Random Thoughts of the Day

Next post is long and hard to work out right. But random thoughts of the day

Here is a rumor that Nintendo is having a hard time even making the Wii-U work. Why they didn't fire half their engineering department after the 3DS is beyond me. But at least it supports my post about the consoles possible failures http://kotaku.com/5838206/nintendo-having-serious-problems-getting-the-wii-u-working

Second is the next Xbox.

It tried to make a post on it, but there's not much there to say. Microsoft seems on an uneven keel right now, especially their gaming division. They've got a lot of smart employees and a lot of money, but not a lot of good leadership. Ballmer is too much of an unimaginative tyrant for creativity and real innovation to flourish under, and the sooner he's replaced the better Microsoft's long term prospects are.

That being said perhaps the next Xbox does not need to be highly original to succeed. A "steady as she goes" type approach might not set the world on fire, but with Nintendo's engineering flubs and Sony being burned by trying too much with the PS3 the competition might not be up to snuff for something really innovative. Of course this leaves the door slightly ajar for a new player to enter, though honestly Samsung might be the only real possibility for this.

Finally

Why are there so many complaints about people complaining about video games recently? As a complainer, quite frankly I just like to complain. So either these people like to complain as well or they just fail to realize that others do.

Wii-U: A repeat of the Wii? Nintendo's Doom? The sound of a fire engine siren?

The Wii is, or with sales dipping was, the most commercially successful console of the “generation” of consoles that stretched from approximately 2005 to 2012. The question is, why?

The first thing I'll admit too was that if I'd had the money I would have invested in Nintendo just before the end of 2006. I was excited about the new controller! Others were excited for the console, there was a palpable air of interest in the product among many. If I had done so I probably wouldn't even bother putting ads on this blog.

The second thing I'll admit was that I may have been wrong. Back in 2006 I was excited for the possibilities of the new controller. For many, any excitement for the “Wii-mote” was clearly overblown. The controller never did deliver any particularly new or exciting experience, in fact it was often decried as a hinderance in controlling many types of games. So why did my advice end up being good if the reasoning was wrong?

Was it the hype? Nintendo had it in 2006, it had interest, it had marketing, it had people hooked. And for its newest console it has hype once again. If you read reports from people trying the demo of the Wii-U at E3 2011 you'll read mostly excited and positive experiences. If I decry the Wii-U's possibility of failure to others they scoff and mock. The Wii-U, at least for now, has hype. It has marketing, it is growing towards a similar interest level as the Wii had just before it's launch in 2006.

So, should you buy stock in Nintendo? Right now might not be such a bad time if you were thinking about it. The failure of the 3DS to come even near expectations and ever slowing sales of the Wii have driven Nintendo's stock down quite a bit. The strange reality is that the vast majority of investors in the world can only understand graphs and quarterly reports rather than prospects; and this may give people the chance to earn a large profit off them if they buy. But let's examine things a bit closer before you hit up your online stock broker.

Does Hype really sell it?

So what was the key to the Wii's success, that “hype” that I mentioned? Honestly I don't think so. Hype can do a lot. Hype can have people lining up for the newest I-phone before the stores open. Hype can sell a crappy video game almost to the point of its previous installment's success. Almost, I'm referring to the generally decried Dragon Age 2.

While for reasons I don't know the “press” seemed to love the game, the majority of consumers have characterized the game as anything from slightly underwhelming sidestory to a complete waste of money. Hype and the initial reviews from the press may have driven initial sales incredibly quickly, but they fell of just as steeply, leaving the game with a lower total in sales than Dragon Age 1 and some bad PR for developer/publisher Bioware/EA.

So what does this have to with consoles? Well, hype can do a lot, initially. But consoles are now expected to last at least 6 years for a “life cycle”, or time the product will be on the shelf and selling. Considering in the case of Dragon Age 2 the steep decline in sales started less than two months after the games release, I'm going to predict that initial hype alone will do anything but guarantee a console's success. Nice to have? Certainly, but the Wii-U is going to need more than initial excitement to succeed, or even survive.

So why was the Wii a success?

Innovation. But it was innovative in a way few could foresee. I suspect even Nintendo was surprised at what sold the console. It wasn't the controller's new functions or features. The price and ease of use made the Wii a success. Casual made the Wii a success.

Back in the olden days of 2006 the term “casual” hadn't even entered video game lexicon, let alone being the large section of the market it is today. The idea that people besides children and nerds would enjoy video games was original and disruptive. Nintendo decided to try and see if there was anything to this idea, and so made sure its new controller was relatively easy to handle while looking and feeling more familiar to the average person than a game pad.

The idea worked, in a big way. Combined with undercutting the competition in price the Nintendo Wii managed to outsell both Microsoft and Sony in dramatic fashion for years. While many console makers relied on the sale of games for their consoles, for which they receive a percentage, Nintendo instead relied on making its console as cheap to manufacture as it could and selling each unit for a profit.

Nintendo managed to stack up profits and thumb its nose at Microsoft and Sony, its stock soared and the good days rolled. Until this year when it appears the Nintendo Wii has hit something like market saturation and has seen sales reliably dip month after month. The 360 now outsells the Wii every month and is pretty much guaranteed to beat the console in sales this year. But Nintendo has made its profits and has its new product on the way, apparently (though not perfectly guaranteed) about a year ahead of the competition for this newest console “cycle”.

Innovation? Feh

There is, however, a problem. Nintendo's new console doesn't tap any new markets such as the Wii did, and indeed there might not be any new markets to tap. It is at least socially acceptable for most anyone to play video games now. Meanwhile the new “innovation” for the Wii- U is that a large tablet like touchscreen has been successfully fitted onto a traditional controller.

Of course the I-pad, and smartphones have already been doing the “touchscreen gaming” thing since the original Wii was launched. Considering the largest section of paid apps for these devices is games I'd say the market for this is successful and large. However I'd also say the reason it's successful is because the games are on something portable and are cheap. Their success does not seem in any particular way linked to controlling them with a touchscreen.

Another supposed innovation of this tablet controller is that it will be able to show anyone holding it different information than is on the tv. The very notion that this would be particularly desirable is utterly laughable. Now before you dismiss this, let me remind you that most people, like you, have a strong tendency to automatically reject original thought and ideas. I say this because from my experience you are already sold on the “showing different things is new and good and innovative”, and you are dead wrong.

Let me explain. First, consider trying to look at two different screens at once. Who does this? The answer is office workers, usually computer programmers, and they use two screens to spread out all their windows so they don't have them overlapping a lot. Another use for this is for presentations, someone uses a projector and controls it from there laptop. In other words, you don't do any of this with your game console. Splitting peoples attentions between two screens is simply not going to work, and running a user interface off the touchscreen is going to be a minor extra convenience at best.

Another supposed innovation that has to do with this is multiplayer. One person can see something completely different from the other. A demo showed off four players, playing on the tv, running around in a maze in first person while someone with the tablet got an overhead view. I'm going to be unduly sarcastic here.

Hello 1991? Yeah, it's the internet calling Nintendo. Would you please pick up already?

The point, facetiously made, is that if people were on their own consoles or computers then this exact scenario has been available since the dawn of internet gaming. While it is interesting to have this scenario available “locally”, i.e. with people over it's still not a huge leap from anything consoles with a good online service can do already.

The final “innovation” and the only real benefit I can see is that your game can seamlessly transition from your tv to your tablet. Of course most people won't be playing games on the tablet's screen most of the time. But the idea that your wife/husband/parents/kids/whoever can take over the tv while you still get to play your game is a solid one. There may even be a few people who buy the thing without a tv and just play on the tablet.

But all of this comes at a price. Specifically the price of the tablet itself. Remember, part of the Wii's success was being able to undercut the competition while still being sold at a profit. With an incredibly expensive controller added to the cost of every unit sold this going to seriously hinder that strategy.

Blue Ocean, Red Ocean.

And what about “Casual”? Well, as I said casual is now a huge part of the market. Everyone wants a piece of it. In 2006 Nintendo was able to dominate the “casual” side of the console market. It was able to navigate its way into a so called “blue ocean” market, one where there was little if any competition.

But the sharks have come to casual. Microsoft's quite successful Kinect has showed it understands how to appeal to the casual crowd at least in one way. And while Sony hasn't been as successful yet it continues to try new things, pouring talent and money into capturing its own portion. Combined with the meteoric rise of casual on the pc and smartphones/tablets Nintendo no longer has its Blue Ocean and lack of competition.

That means it will have to compete straight up with everyone, and I doubt it can. Digital distribution is going to be a key factor in “casual” titles for the next generation of consoles. Certainly it will be a benefit for big publishers. Getting rid of some of the hassle and expense of dealing with manufacturing, shipping, and warehousing all those game discs and boxes is going to be a boon to anyone. But digital distribution will be the key to allowing casual titles to be distributed at all.

One of the keys to casual seems to be its low cost. Certainly the hardest of the hard core, such as MMO's and DOTA clones have benefited from new “low consumer cost” business models as well. But for casual games it seems a necessity. Boxes and discs and shelfspace are not part of this low cost arena, to get casual games to sell to the people you need a slick, functional way to deliver these games over the internet.

Nintendo doesn't seem to understand the internet. Nor casual. Extremely odd for one of the pioneers of casual perhaps, but I can't help but think it true none the less. Remarks by Saturo Iwata show only disdain for the rise of Angry Birds, Farmville and the like. Repeated statements of having no desire to participate, followed usually by haranguing that such games actually exist seem to indicate a definitive rejection of the very notion of casual.

Add on top of that a seemingly complete lack of understanding concerning digital distribution. Valve's Steam service has been stacking up profits for years. On the PC digital distribution has become so popular it has now surpassed retail as the primary means of delivering games on the platform. Meanwhile Nintendo has put a measly 2 gigabytes of flash memory into its 3DS, not even enough to hold an entire high quality game.

Much the same has been said of the Wii-U. 8 gigabytes of ROM is, again, probably not enough to hold a single average “hardcore” Wii-U game. But we were talking about casual. And while the stated had drive (or rather flash drive in this case) memory is enough to hold Angry Birds and etc., I take the lack of space and statements by the company president of all people to mean that Nintendo has neither understanding nor a cohesive strategy for digital distribution of games. You can rest assured that both Microsoft and Sony, who already have more successful and cohesive strategies, will not neglect digital distribution in the least for their next consoles.

Technological Archaism

I could mention Nintendo's continued lagging in the arena of online play versus its competitors. But I just did and no more needs to be said about that. What I will mention is the Wii-U's anemic technical specs. “It's a good transition console” is a quip about the Wii-U's hardware by Gearbox president Randy Pitchford.

Not a next generation console at all, but “a good transition” from the 360 and PS3 into whatever the PS4 and “720”? will be. Despite the success of the Wii it missed out on the most successful non Nintendo games because of its anemic hardware. Graphics matter, as does the hardware that computer programmers sitting in their darkly lit little cubicles use to get those graphics onto your screen.

Or more specifically. Being able to make creating games as easy, painless, and cheap as possible is an incredibly desirable thing; especially as games cost too much to make already. But at the same time game designers, and artists, and etc. all want to do as much as possible. They want their imaginations to pour out onto the screen in front of you, so the more power they have to do this the better.

What this ends up meaning is that if two consoles, such as the 360 and PS3, are the most powerful and even enough that they can generally run the same games without too much trouble then they will. But if a much less powerful console is available next to these other two, then it's going to be left behind. The game developers are faced with either limiting themselves to the lower console's ability, or are face with programming a very different game just for it. In other words one option hinders the very reason many game developers are at their job, the other costs a lot of money.

The Wii-U looks to be in much the same position as the Wii was. Without its domination of casual can Nintendo really afford to miss out on the next Call of Duty? Well there is a caveat to all this. John Carmack believes some things are getting “good enough” in gaming on the 360 and PS3. And while I disagree, it's still an interesting notion. With the Wii-U being more powerful than the 360 and PS3 will it simply be “good enough” for most things?

Possibly, but that's no guarantee. There's another thing I mentioned, and that is that games are too expensive to make. Long, well polished products and high risk (read: originality) do not often go together. So anything that can get games to be cheaper to create will be a powerful advantage.

Now, this requires a bit of explanation. All of the models you see in a game (near anything made of polygons) are made in a modeling program like Z-Brush. At first, a very highly detailed model is created in the program. Then either by hand or by another program another model with a more reasonable amount of polygons is made, often based on the initial high polygon model.

Then to make the normal maps (that little trick that makes surfaces look bumpy) you take the high polygon model, the low polygon model, and a program can move the differences into a normal map for you. Then there's lower lod levels to consider and... the point is this takes a lot of time doing what is essentially annoying busywork.

Now I mention this because the Wii-U is, for reasons most likely due to Nintendo trying to make a profit off each sale again, using an older spec'd graphics chip (for now). Open Gl 3.0 by the sounds of it, but I'm just guessing off what little information has been allowed to leak out. Now this is a problem, not only because OpenGl 4.0 (Direct X11, essentially) is out and an improvement, but because it allows graphics programmers something called tessellation.

I could go on about what this does, but what it means is that artists would no longer have to go through much of that annoying busywork I mentioned. It has the potential, for any graphics engine programmed as such, to allow artists to be more effective and probably happier as well. And while the (720?) and PS4 will doubtless support tessellation, the Wii-U does not right now. And that means artists trying to support the platform will be required to go back and do everything the old and tedious way, essentially negating the benefit of tessellation to them.

And if they don't want to bother? Not a game breaking consideration perhaps, but another nail in the “do we really want to support the Wii-U” question for game developers.

So, what's my conclusion after all this? That the Wii-U is in trouble. That it's not only impossible for it to repeat the success of the Wii, but that it's going to have a hard time competing at all. But it's not out yet. I hope, perhaps in vein, that someone bright and ambitious at Nintendo will read this and realize the product is in trouble. Competition is good for everyone and the last thing I want to see personally is the end of Super Smash Bros and the like.

Or more likely I hope that someone at Nintendo realizes these things on their own and seeks to redress them. A more modern graphics card that supports efficient tessellation. A coherent and robust digital distribution solution with a 120gig hard drive at least. Acceptance and support of casual titles coming to Nintendo products for cheap. Regardless of what you think of the Wii-U's prospects all of these things would help see the console as a more competitive product. And I sincerely hope that bright, ambitious person at Nintendo is trying to be heard.

But who Controls the Controllers?

No, it's not a new Alan Moore comic. But another pun title, this time about what we use to control video games.

Let's start off with a thought experiment, what is the ultimate video game? Answer: The Matrix. If you haven't seen the movie “The Matrix” is an all encompassing simulation so real that people can't tell it's not. A simulated world that's as detailed as the real world, but can be manipulated as easily as any digital one can. You want superpowers? Bam! Done. You want your “house” to be a mansion, a mythical tower, a giant spaceship? It's all within reach and just as detailed as if it was really happening.

While we may not want soulless machine overlords to run this, and I could certainly go on about a bunch of even more “out there” science fiction like concepts, the example given will do for the moment. The thought experiment, or rather test, goes like this: Is the advancement proposed moving us closer to “The Matrix”? Or stated another way: Are we at the point where we could build “The Matrix” yet?

If the answer to first way is “yes”, then I'd say as a concept whatever new technology under consideration is a good one (from a commercial viability standpoint). If the answer to the second way is no, then I'd say we can still make progress. There will never be “good enough” in graphics, in sound, in controls, in whatever until it's at that “This is what's going to be part of The Matrix” stage. Humans always want more, we always want to advance, and so we will until it some distant point in the future where we are finally at the stage that we don't care.

So, what the hell does all this have to do with controllers? Well, we have pretty good artificial sound, and it's advancing every year. We have artificial visuals so good we probably have reached the “Matrix” like level of believability, even if we can't do it in real time yet. So while these subjects will probably be covered tangentially in this blog, what we don't have anywhere close to “The Matrix” like level is controls or the other three senses.

So, for this blog post let's concentrate on controls, or rather controllers. Practicably we'll be concentrating on control options available for the next few years at a cost and usability level available for widespread consumer adoption.

First thing, head mounted displays of any kind. To track your head movement and/or cover your eyes to give you a completely immersed view of the virtual world. The answer is no. Yeah, it's that straightforward and simple. Current 3d Tv's have not caught on partially because people don't want to wear easily losable, dorky looking 3d glasses.

Further studies have clearly indicated that any sort of the enclosed virtual reality display is extremely confining and uncomfortable for the average user. Leisure activities that require something most people highly uncomfortable...

So moving on we'll next cover touchscreens or touchpads. Great for casual interfaces, do you know of any hardcore game that simply “must” use a touchpad? Neither do I, and that's because unless you're an artist with a stylus touchscreen are imprecise. Not the recipe for a “hardcore” title.

But what about casual titles? Well first off they don't need imprecise controls either. Secondly with the popularity of smartphones and tablets I'd say there's little call for some other device really needing a touchscreen or pad. It's not that the input method doesn't have its uses, it's that I'm guessing most of those uses for games are more likely going to be played on devices that already have those inputs available.

I could be wrong, there could be some undiscovered combination of touchpad/screen and more precise “hardcore” controls that hasn't been discovered yet. But from what I've heard this seems unlikely. Those who attempted to use a touchscreen or pad to replace a mouse for gaming report only failure.

Further we've already had a stylus/touchscreen device out with more traditional controls attached for some time. Yet the only use of the DS's touchscreen that I've particularly seen is for controlling a user interface and for drawing games. While drawing games may be interesting I doubt the genre will ever be large enough to warrant a dedicated addition to a standard controller of some kind.

So, moving on.

Let's cover something else that controllers can do, and that's rumble. While not a control at all, it does cover a little of one of those other three senses. In brief, why can't we try to expand this? The idea: four fully programmable (duration, frequency, intensity) rumble motors sitting at the four rose points in an otherwise standard (read, dual shock-ish) game controller.

Imagine you are playing a racing game and your car's left front tire starts sliding into the dirt. The front and left rumble motors activate and suddenly you can “feel” the tire going off. Pretty cool, in hypothesis, if you ask me. The “you are getting shot from ____ direction” indicator in shooters could do something similar. There could be entirely new types of gameplay where you'd “feel” your way around as a sixth sense. In the end, I just think it would be worth trying.

Continued in part 2, coming soon!

Cloudy, with a chance of failure

So the topic for this post, if you didn't catch the pun, is the cloud. Or more specifically, streaming games from “the cloud”. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, here's the websites for “Gaiki” and “OnLive”.

Or more specifically, the idea is simple. You, the player, sit at your, whatever. Nigh any internet connected device will do. That device reads your inputs, the controls you are sending, and sends them flying off over the internet to a computer somewhere far away. That computer then runs the game itself, and sends back the resulting outputs. E.G. The audio, video, and maybe rumble of the game you are playing.

Now, let's go over this in more detail, step by step and note any advantages and disadvantages to this approach.

First, your input. You are using whatever you have access too. A gamepad, a touchpad, mouse and keyboard. This is no different than any other video game though. Even if they don't use it often both the 360 and PS3 could support a mouse and keyboard. i.e. advantage/disadvantage is nil. Well, it's not. But I'll get to that.

Second, your “input”, your control of the game, is streamed over the internet. Your device, possibly compresses the data, sends the data out to the receiving computer. Problem one, this adds lag. Specifically lag from you pressing a button to the reaction of that button press coming back to you.

All other video game distributions are played locally. Meaning your input goes from the controller to the device, and that's it. “The cloud” adds going across the internet. To some, this is bad. To the likes of John Carmack (Rage, Doom, etc.) Turn 10 (Forza Motorsport) and the makers of Call of Duty the input lag of your controller to your console (and to your screen) is already too high, to them and to many consumers the faster and smoother the response of the game, the better.

The same can be said of e-sports players. In fact anyone competitively playing Call of Duty, Starcraft 2, League of Legends, or whatever popular competitive game comes up is not going to be happy with anything that adds extra lag. That's an entire section of gamers, of consumers, that won't be happy with streaming from the cloud.

But, the disadvantages don't end their for this upstream. Next we'll consider the Kinect, or rather any high bandwidth controller (right now only cameras, but you never know.) As you should know upstream bandwidth for near any consumer broadband connection is going to be much lower than the downstream bandwidth. And Microsoft's Kinect already uses over 1.5 megabytes per second, or rather over twelve megabits per second of bandwidth.

Meaning that the ability of most consumers to send this sort of information across the internet is going to be difficult. We can compress the data more, it's true. But with an average upstream bandwidth connection in the US of less than one megabit per second even high rates of compression aren't going to be enough for even the limited bandwidth of Kinect at the moment, not to mention any potential competitors or successors. Limiting the types of inputs (controllers) available to use, especially when they've grown to be a bright spot for innovation in the industry, is a definitive disadvantage.

But let's move on to the computer that's running your game. This will be something off in an air cooled room, with a handful of IT staff watching over servers that look much like any other. You connect, pick your game of choice. And start to play.

First things first for this, and that's picking your game of choice. Assuming you have the availability of any game, it's still not going to cost less than any other game. On the positive note, there will be relatively zero distribution costs for developers/publishers. No disc, no box, no store shelf, no inventory to manage etc. But wait, that's not quite right. Again I'll get to that in a moment.

Secondly there will be no piracy. But there's a big caveat too that, and that is that there will only be no piracy if cloud streaming is the sole option. As soon as it's available to be stored locally then some bored programmer somewhere in the world will inevitably make it available to pirates.

Moving on, and back to the machines running the games themselves. The operating theory here is virtualization and elimination of excess cost. Virtualization as in not everyone on the planet will be playing games at the same time. So if two people would play at different times, aggregated over all as in “X people wanting to play right now minus Y people wanting to play overall” or “Total capacity versus actual demand at the time”. Getting back on track, you'd need less gaming machines overall to still allow everyone to play whenever they wanted. Thus lowering the cost of purchasing hardware for, ultimately, the consumer. Sort of, getting to that.

Here our lag problem crops up again. Because of course the farther away a server is physically from a client the more lag you get. As stated above lag is already a problem, and anything that can be done to minimize it should at least be considered. More practically if companies want their games to be playable at all over streaming then they'll need their servers to be at least somewhat local.

Since east coast US consumers aren't going to be transmitting and receiving from a server in Shangai due to this, this breaks up the advantage of “virtualization” mentioned earlier. Now you need servers in (or very near) all the right time zones ready to go for whatever your max capacity is, no matter what. The second someone sees they can't play their own game because the server is too busy is the second they switch to something else. A hyperbolic statement perhaps, but probably not far off the mark.

Another interesting consideration is initial investment costs. Since consumers will no longer be directly involved in purchasing the hardware any real or even hypothetical streaming company will have to make a large initial investment in the hardware itself and hope that they'll be successful enough to pay it off somewhere down the line. While console manufacturing also incurs a lot of risk due to heavy investment in design and etc., it's worth pointing out that streaming from the cloud doesn't offer remarkably better opportunities for new players to enter either.

Let's get to, who's paying for these computers the player is playing on anyway? Well, the consumer ultimately does of course. In the current home console scheme the consumer pays both directly and indirectly. $200-$300+ for the console itself, depending of course. And indirectly, part of their money for each game they buy going to the console designer/manufacturer to pay for their profits and initial design investment.

This leaves streaming as having the benefit of no initial layout for buying games. Now onto the indirect, “hidden” costs of purchasing a game. Does it seem likely that streaming services will be able to charge more for their games because of a lack of initial layout of payment? An interesting conundrum. That's certainly part of the case for the PC this generation. While games remained $50 on their people willingly payed $60 for the same game on consoles in exchange for a much lower initial layout.

But, there are other things to consider. The benefit of consoles being much simpler, and thus much harder for the consumer to break. Also a note on instant gratification, or near enough instant. No long boot time of the pc, selecting the game, etc. This too is what their extra $10 a game bought. Streaming offers only one extra benefit, and that is there is no hesitation from purchase of a game to playing it. No download, no physical store, bought and played. However this is a benefit that will rarely rear it's head versus getting a game started.

Thus I believe that streaming will have little chance to allow higher cost games to pay for the infrastructure necessary. This means that there will be little benefit for publishers, the cost will be coming out of each game purchase quite similarly to if they sold the games on today's (or tomorrow's) consoles.

Now let's back up a minute... I mentioned other benefits of the console versus the pc, but what other benefits will the console offer versus streaming? One of the most popular activities today on the Xbox 360 is viewing other forms of entertainment. Streaming from Netflix is incredibly popular, for example. And so part of that initial $250 or whatever is going towards a device that can stream entertainment as well.

Further we can leave it to the creativity and imaginations of software developers and the console designers to see what other uses these machines can offer. As an example that such is possible, a clothing store is already using Microsoft's Kinect device to virtually overlay clothing onto people standing in front of it, displaying for them what the clothes would look like on them. And it's quite possible to match them up to the right size at the same time. Improved online clothes shopping is certainly not a force to underestimated, and this is just one example of something that would be practicably impossible for a cloud streaming approach to replicate.

Thus having no initial investment costs, while an advantage, is not as large a one as one might first suppose. Moving finally to the fact that the computer in a room somewhere has computed the game and is now streaming the response across the internet back to you.

More lag comes in here, but we've covered that, so let's get to the advantage. You, the consumer, are now receiving it on any internet connected device with a screen you wish. That's cool, undoubtedly. You can play on a netbook, on an ipad, on your phone for all the service cares. The question then arises... who would really want to?

Not many watch movies on their phone, not many choose to sit down with their netbook and watch the next epic chapter of HBO's A Song of Ice and Fire. And not many people will, most of the time, want to play their triple A game on a mobile device's small screen. The ability to do so is certainly an advantage, but it's not nearly as much of an advantage as some would portend. To paraphrase someone trying Batman: Arkham Asylum on their I-Pad “I'm amazed it worked!”

That's it, it was a novelty. They didn't want to actually play it on their Ipad. They had their big, immobile tv to do that. It was a tech novelty, something cool to look at once. And while there are plenty of uses cases, “Bring your game to your friend's house as easy as that!” The primary use is still going to be little different from where and when you have your console or pc or etc. with you anyway.

So, lets check off a list:

Pros: No initial cost for a system, a decent advantage. Incredibly portable, a decent advantage. Instant gratification from buying to playing, a very small advantage.

Cons: No user made software modifications, I did not mention this but the practice is still popular for certain games on the pc, thus a small disadvantage. Lag, a mid level disadvantage. Limited controller options, another mid level disadvantage, livable certainly but not wanted.

If we were to believe this then it would seem that streaming comes out, around nil. Offering advantages balanced out by disadvantages. To those consumers who most desire the pros mentioned, and/or are least affected by the cons mentioned streaming may then seem and excellent choice. But there's two more things I'd like to mention.

Personal Computing devices are not going anywhere, and they can already play games.

It may sound simple, but computers still sell well, tablets appear to be on the rise, I already mentioned the extra functions modern consoles can provide. And there's a small trend that may eventually grow of allowing ever more powerful smartphones to connect to other devices and be used as a more general purpose computing device.

Imagine for a moment a world where you would lay your cell phone down, and it would wirelessly connect to your larger monitor/tv, speakers, mouse and keyboard and be perfectly usable as a pc. And the main point of all these things is that they too can play games. And ever more popular laptops, phones, and tablets are all just as portable as the cloud, moreso because you don't need to be connected to the internet at all times.

While these may lack the “simplicity” factor of consoles and streaming they are getting ever closer to doing so. This of course eliminates one of the cloud's biggest advantages, and comes with none of the disadvantages.

There could be a lot more to discuss. The idea of a “home cloud” where your Playstation 4 sitting at home could stream inputs and outputs to other devices. Or netflix like game subscriptions services or etc. But I am aware of those and this blog post could go on for a lot longer if we discussed such things. But instead I'll leave you with one last thought.

There is one huge disadvantage for the cloud. One that, were it to occur, could spell doom for the entire concept. If the streaming company you bought your games from shuts down, your game is gone. It's history, wiped out, your purchase eliminated.

It is not hard to imagine how consumers will feel about this. How their friends, aquaintances and people they don't even really know on social networking sites will feel when they see how “easily” hundreds if not thousands of dollars can disappear due to no particular fault of their own. If this happens consumer confidence in cloud streaming could, potentially, collapse to the point where the entire thing is not viable to even try again. Depending on the amount of customers affected, perhaps for a very long time.

Introduction

Introduction

With this blog I aim for something ambitious. To chart the technological, economic, and artistic evolution of the video game industry over the coming decade. Your first question might be who the heck am I and why would I be qualified to give an insightful opinion on this?

In answer, I've covered more college classes switching between majors than most people who earn a bachelors degree have ever taken. But that honestly doesn't matter, hundreds of thousands have done similar and might not be considered qualified. The real answer is simply that I'm interested in this very question and in every aspect pertaining too it.

I've spent enough time pouring over interviews and articles on every aspect of game development, technology, and business to have a fair idea of what each area entails. Further this is why I probably won't be providing references to everything I say. Go ahead and google it if you want, it's there.

Moving on.

So what exactly do I mean when I say I'm going to the evolution of this industry? Again put simply, it means I'm going to try and combine the rambling train of thought that I've had running about such for years now into some sort of coherent narrative for people to follow. A difficult task as there is going to be no clear delineation between subjects. Everything in our universe is connected, and such is the case for any subject. So while I'll try to keep this easy to follow, please bear with me if I seem to veer off course every once in a while.

So, with caveats and pre-emptives out of the way in this first introductory blog post, I hope you enjoy reading. My name is not, by the way, Marcus Nispell. But it seemed like a name that would stand out, and so that is what the blog is entitled.