All Features List

If you play casual games, chances are you have played more than few games developed in Russia. Aside from the US, Russia is the top nation for casual games development, and the top casual games company in Russia is Alawar Entertainment. We spoke with Andrew Postnikov, Director of Publishing, to learn all about Alawar Entertainment, and secret behind the Magic Ball series, and why Russian companies are so successful at creating casual games. Read more»

For the longest time, we (as in, people who work in casual games) have been talking about going multiplayer, adding avatars, offering virtual goods, and the like. Everyone who is anyone is working on it behind closed doors (or so they say...) but finally, someone has actually launched a product. Last week, Boonty officially launched Cafe.com. We chatted with Co-founder and President Mathieu Nouzareth to learn more and to share with you what could be the next big thing in casual games. Read more»

The folks at HipSoft, makers of Flip Words 1 and 2 and a variety of other best-selling and fun casual games, were one of the first video game developers to jump ship to the casual games space back in 2002 and they have not looked back since. We spoke with Brian Goble at HipSoft to learn about what makes HipSoft tick as well as what new tricks they have up their sleeve. Read more»

The story of Amanda Fitch (also known as Amanda Fae) and Aveyond is as unlikely as any in casual games. A female (if you have ever been to a game conference, you will understand this is a rarity) with a college degree in English creates a role-playing game (RPG) that becomes one of the most popular casual games of 2006 so far. How'd she do it? The answer: by creating a RPG accessible to everyone with great depth and storyline (with over 250 pages worth, in fact!). Read more»

In Part 1 of our Interview with Michael Schutzler, senior vice president, Games Division at RealNetworks, we discussed about how how RealArcade got started in casual games and how a game gets picked to be offered to its millions of users. Today, we talk about what's new coming from RealArcade in the future, casual games on multiple platforms, and most importantly --- how casual games will save the world. That's right, the WORLD. Read on. Read more»

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). Read more»

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. Read more»

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. Read more»

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. Read more»

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. Read more»

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. Read more»

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. Read more»

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. Read more»