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Water Cooler Games served as the web's primary forum for "videogames with an agenda" — coverage of the uses of video games in advertising, politics, education, and other everyday activities, outside the sphere of entertainment.

The site was maintained at watercoolergames.org from 2003-2009, where it was edited by myself and Gonzalo Frasca. It is now archived here in full.

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E3: New casual games: less casual!

by Ian Bogost May 25, 2005

categories: Casual Games , Game Design

I know E3 is quickly becoming a faint memory, but it may take me weeks to catch up on everything I saw. Patience, dear readers.

Many of you may know that former Warner Bros. chairman Terry Semel has been at the helm of Yahoo! for several years now. One of his strategies has been to transition the company from an anonymous information portal into, essentially, an entertainment company. Incidentally, he made more than $200 million last year.

Yahoo! had a bizarrely vague presence at E3 this year. They had a big booth boasting "big changes" coming to Yahoo! Games. The booth and surrounding marketing all boasted an under-construction theme, and a few hints at their forthcoming strategy emerged. Among them, the three characteristics on the banner in the picture at top right (click for a bigger version), which was attached to a big crane being hauled around the convention center. The innovations?

MultiPlayer

Mobile-To-PC

Richer Graphics

I thought maybe their idea of multiplayer and mobile-to-pc gaming might take the form of asynchronous play, which I've argued for in the past as a good strategy for mutiplay in casual games. Unfortunately, that's not what they mean; they mean synchronous multiplayer between mobile and PC. Newsflash: not casual play.

Worse, though, richer graphics? Is that what the world's casual game players are yearning for? "Yeah, I liked Bejeweled, but what's up that there's no dynamic lighting? I just can't get into a puzzle game without pixel shaders."

Comments (2)

Yes, what an amazing "strategy" for a casual game portal.

Lets take the notion of casual games, then lets make them BIGGER.

Erm, isnt that what traditional publishers are doing?

Sure! but we can do it better! We are devine!

Sheesh, I wish publishers (and this is ALL publishers, not just AAA an casual) would forget the notion that THEY are the ones who make the market. They provide fodder for the market, but they ARENT the market.

I do think that the casual market can change, but thats more towards making more innovative titles, unfortunately there currently doesnt seem to have reached a saturation point where people are feeling like they are being exploited by the portals.

Maybe casual niche markets will form in the longer term.

Phil Carlisle on October 18, 2005 12:07 PM

At the Casuality conference in Amsterdam earlier this year Yahoo seemed to be making noises about community becoming the next big thing with their Casual Games.

If they're planning to make Casual Games bigger by adding community support, then I'm all for that. And I do agree that niche Casual Games markets are going to form.

Duncan Gough on July 31, 2006 1:57 PM