Taxonomy
Interview with Michael Schutzler, RealArcade
In the world of casual games, RealArcade is huge. Since pioneering the space back in 2001 (RealNetworks was one of the first companies to sell casual games as downloads), RealArcade has evolved from a distribution channel into developer, publisher, and distributor of games across multiple platforms (PC and mobile) and worldwide. Every day, over 700,000 games are downloaded through the RealArcade network, including RealArcade, GameHouse, and Zylom.
We sat down to talk with Michael Schutzler, senior vice president, Games Division at RealNetworks, about everything related to casual games --- how RealArcade started, how a game gets picked to be offered to its millions of users, even how casual games will change the world (for the better of course).
Interview with Arthur Humphrey: Last Day of Work
If there is a "Cinderella" story in casual games, it would be Last Day of Work ("LDW"). Starting with handheld games, LDW have launched not one, but two PC casual game hits, Fish Tycoon and Virtual Villagers, in the past year. And no one can accuse LDW of creating clones. Fish Tycoon and Virtual Villagers are both based on LDW's proprietary real-time game environment, so the game plays even when you are not there. We walked the 12 blocks to LDW's office (literally, Gamezebo and LDW's offices are that close) to talk to Arthur Humphrey, CEO and Lead Designer, to discover their secret of their success, the inspiration behind their games, and what future tricks they have up their sleeve.
Interview with Kenny Dinkin of PlayFirst
When PlayFirst first launched in 2004, they did two things to raise the bar for casual games. One, PlayFirst was the first company introduce the traditional publishing model to the burgeoning casual game space. Two, they hired Kenny Dinkin to run this publishing arm.
Painter, musician, and executive producer to a wide variety of games, including classic children's fare (remember Carmen Sandiego, anyone?) to the Diner Dash series, Kenny is truly the Da Vinci of casual games. We talked to him recently to learn about the philosophy of PlayFirst, as well as the code that makes this Renaissance Man tick.
Interview: Daniel Bernstein from Sandlot Games
Since 2002, Daniel Bernstein and his team at Sandlot have been creating some of the most innovative and addictive casual games around, from the hit trading and adventure Tradewinds series (my personal favorite casual games of all time) to Cake Mania, among the most popular and sweet-tasting casual games of the year.
Interview with Jessica Tams
A couple years ago, when I worked at Yahoo! Games, I used to meet once a month for breakfast with the top folks at other major game companies. Ostensibly we were there to discuss forming a trade association for casual games, but to be honest, we ended up achieving little (bummer) and eating a lot free scrumptious omelets (nice). Then about a year ago, Jessica Tams, Vice President, Product Planning at Skilljam / FUN Technologies, launched the Casual Games Association. In the process, she also started Casuality, a conference taking place in Seattle next week for those who create and distribute casual games in both the United States and Europe. Recently I sat down with Jessica to learn more.
Interview: Paul Thelen of Big Fish Games
When I first met Paul Thelen (founder of Big Fish Games) four years
ago, it was on his office boat on Lake Union in Seattle with his
full-time staff of three. Since then, Big Fish Games has expanded
to 100+ employees, released one of the most popular casual game
series (Mystery Case Files) and grown its Web site into one of
the largest distributors of casual games on the Internet (they
must have gotten a bigger boat). We sat down to talk to
Paul Thelen to learn the secret of their success and the
future of casual games.
Gamezebo Interviews Eric Zimmerman of gamelab
In the world of casual games, there are those developers that lead and those that follow. The folks at gamelab definitely fall in the first category.
Whether they are breaking the rules of casual game design (BLiX, Diner Dash, Plantasia) or changing the business model of casual games (see below for more information), gamelab is on the forefront. If you want to look into a crystal ball and see the future of casual games, your first step should be to skip the psychic and talk to Eric Zimmerman. And that's exactly what Gamezebo has done, in this interview.
Gamezebo Interviews Dave Walls of Funkitron
Dave Walls has been creating casual games before the term "casual games" was created or even before Gamezebo existed. In 2001, Dave left his cushy job producing games for Hasbro to launch his own company Funkitron. Funkitron has released numerous hit games based on popular licenses, such as Scrabble, Slingo, and the Poker Superstars Series (1 & 2). We sat down with this veteran to discuss the past, present, and future of casual games.
