All Features List

Gameplay and theme are, in the casual space at least, sort of a chicken and the egg type of relationship. Which gives birth to which? The answer varies from game to game, but every once in a while, the two arrive so closely together that it's hard to know where one ends and the other begins. Such was the case with Build-a-Lot, a title which has its gameplay and theme so entwined, it would be almost impossible to separate the two. Read more»

Justin McElroy delves into the making of Sally's Salon in our latest Behind th Game feature Games Cafe was a company in search of a game. They had narrowed the hunt a little bit, deciding that resource management, a job game, was the way to go. But the question was: Whose shoes did the team want to put the player in to? Read more»

A rare thing happened to me today. I was sitting at my desk minding my own business when out of nowhere I was hit over the head with a wonderful new game. The Scruffs is the best hidden object game I've played since Big City Adventure and easily the most delightful game of the year. Read more»

How do you make a game that is new, is innovative, original, but at the same time seems completely familiar? It's perhaps the central question of casual gaming, and something Stephan Smith was struggling with as FreshGames, the company he helmed, was looking for their next game. It was a question they would soon find the answer to in ZenGems. Read more»

Who is the Naked Gamer? Is he really naked? Is he really a gamer? After more than a year and a dozen editorials, it's high time those questions were answered. Don't you think? You've seen my photograph, you've heard me rant, rave and plea, but why am I here? What's the point of this 'column'? Well, let me tell you. Let's take a little trip, you and I. Allow me to escort you back...to 1969. (cue Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida). Read more»

When Big Fish went looking for the next big thing in the seek-and-find genre, they found their answer in the past: An amalgam of an item hunt and a classic adventure game that they would soon dub Azada. Read more»

In 1992, Francis Fukuyama wrote The End of History, in which he boldly proclaimed that with the end of the Cold War, the historical struggle between competing ideologies is over and liberal democracy has emerged as the victor. The unfortunate events of the past few years have proven otherwise. But, I will proclaim my own bold statement: 2007 may not mark The End of History, but it shall mark the End of Cloning in Casual Games. Read more»

Casual Connect. This is what they're calling it now. It used to be Casuality , but I think that sounded too much like casualty, so they changed the name of the conference to Casual Connect. Now it sounds like a lurid sub-category off the CraigsList personals. Let's connect, casually. Wink, wink. But really, that's what we did in Seattle last week. Those of us who make games and sell them. We connected, with each other. But not with you. There were no consumers, none of you who play the games and buy them. And this was kind of sad. I've never worked in an industry so far-removed from the customer. Read more»

In an industry built around whimsy, Gogii Games owner George Donovan isn't afraid to admit to being something of a pragmatist. "When I start coming up with game ideas, a lot of them come from an analytical approach," Donovan said. "I kind of look at trends and see how well games are doing in other markets. I start looking at the successful games, looking at the mechanics of those games, then I start breaking out the themes. I don't want to say it gives me a list, but it gives me a pulse for the sort of game that should do well." Donovan is the first to admit that he's standing on the shoulders of giants. But, as Escape from Paradise illustrates, there's an art to knowing exactly which giant shoulders to step on. Read more»

The Sopranos finale, 9-11 and the rise of casual games. It sounds like a dissertation but it's really just an observation, something you notice, not when you're paying attention but when you're not. It's human nature to make connections and look for patterns, and there's one here. The world is a lot different than it was six years ago, the term that comes to mind is sea change, so it's no accident that we've latched onto light, happy, mindless games. Read more»

Casual game portals are like gas stations. It doesn't really matter where you fill up your tank. Gas is gas. Yeah, it may have Techron or some other additive to clean your fuel-injectors, but if you're like me, you wait till the gauge is clearly on E, you pull into the nearest station and fill up your tank. Gas stations are really only differentiated by two factors - price and color scheme. BP is yellow and green. Shell is red and yellow. Chevron is red, white and blue. And I am influenced by these colors, by the personality of a gas station, more than I am their prices. I feel more comfortable at a Shell than I do at a CITGO, and it has nothing to do with the latter's ties to Venezuela's state run oil monopoly. It's because Shell's colors appeal to me, and I dig their logo. A nice, simple, yellow scallop. Shell is mellow, and cool, and I like the way their stations look at night. It occurred to me recently that casual game sites are fundamentally similar to gas stations. Read more»

When Mike Dietrich, GameHouse creative director, started looking for the "next big thing" in casual games, he had no idea that he was actually searching for next big things: Item hunts and customer service games. "I realized that we might actually be able to combine those two elements into one game, and compete with some other stuff that was out there at the time," Dietrich said. It was a peanut-butter-and-jelly pairing that would produce, to continue the analogy, a sandwich called Little Shop of Treasures. Read more»

My name is Dave, and I love games. Probably more than I should. Not only have I been producing and designing games full time since 1995, but I also have a LOT of board games and card games around the house. A closet full. About 500 all together. Much to my wife's chagrin. Read more»

Seventeen years. That's how long I've been pondering this question, since 1990 when games still came on floppies that actually were floppy. Games were small and crude and there room for preludes and cut-sequences or movies. But still we dreamed. We imagined interactive technologies could supplant video and film and that a new medium of story-telling would emerge, a more powerful medium that would engage people of all ages. We liked to use the term interactive story-telling, but we had no idea what that meant so we made it up as we went along and failed more often than we succeeded. Games could tell a story, but not a very compelling one. The adventure games of the mid-90's came pretty darn close though, and people like Tim Schaffer and the Miller brothers did a helluva job trying, but in the end even MYST and Grim Fandango are more game than story. The same is true of today's casual games. Read more»

"We went out to [the Game Developer's Conference] and we showed it to a few publishers, and there were a couple who thought we were completely crazy. They said 'We think it's an interesting idea, we just don't think it will go.' They didn't think it would fly...so to speak." Though designer Wade Tinney admits his company's game Snapshot Adventures may have not received the warmest of welcomes, just a year later, the game is proving that its concept doesn't just fly: It soars. Read more»

There are these magic moments in life when a work of art seems as if it's sent to you by the gods. It hits you in just the right way at just the right time, and usually when you need it the most - Walt Whitman's Song of Myself, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye - and it's cathartic, it's life-altering. After you see them or hear them or read them, you look at things differently. You change. It happens most often to me with music or books, but in games it's rare. Yet it did happen. Twice. Read more»

It's a common theme in literature for characters to be saved when all hope seems lost by a mysterious, magical force ... and that was exactly the sort of divine intervention that Todd Kerpelman's team at Pogo were seeking as they tried to come up with the nigh impossible ... a tycoon game no one had thought of. Read more»

Some of the juiciest stories in casual games are the very ones that are remain under the radar. . . until now. Join me, my fellow Gamezebos, as we expose the biggest stories in casual games that are not being reported on. Read more»

"It didn't quite pan out. It was kind of like a pachinko-type thing," John Vechey said. "It was kind of forgotten about, but I always felt a big draw towards it. So had Sukhbir." It's admittedly not the most noble beginning for a game, but that's where Peggle's story gets its start; a model created by programmer Brian Rothstein that had all but faded from consciousness. However, it was a small flame that Vechey and producer Sukhbir Sidhu had been compelled by, and, with Rothstein's help, ignited one of the most talked about casual games in years. Read more»

Don't let my smile in the picture fool you. That picture was taken last year, during more happy days, when every time I checked my Gamezebo email a new gem of a casual game would be there to review. No, today I am not smiling. Why? Because the casual games industry is stagnating, from the developers who keep creating the same old thing to the distributors who promise products anew but do deliver nothing. The casual games industry needs a swift kick in the-you-know-where, and I'm the man to do it. Read more»

Imagine you're a Paleolithic man (or woman). You're a hunter of course, and sometimes a food gatherer. You spend all your waking hours in the bush and your dominant focus, your primary activity is scanning the world around you for things you can eat. But nature is a master of camouflage. Most of what you eat does not want to be eaten and has evolved to blend into the background, but you too, have evolved to compensate. You've developed a fairly sophisticated eye that (coupled with the most powerful brain in the animal kingdom) can create order out of chaos. What does this have to do with games? Everything. Read more»

There is an Independent Games Developers Association white paper on how to make casual games. Repeatedly in the white paper it emphasizes that a real-time strategy game is a poor fit for the casual space. Unbeknownst to the IGDA, they had laid down a gauntlet that Andy Megowan, Creative Director of Sandlot Games, found irresistible. Read more»

Call it what you want - casual gaming, downloadable gaming, blow off a little steam in the middle of your work day gaming. Whatever it is, however you want to describe it, this industry has a problem. We don't know what women want. Read more»

Hold onto your keyboard and kiss everything you know about interactive entertainment goodbye. Superb a year as 2006 has been for casual games between the release of blockbusters like Mystery Case Files- Prime Suspects, Diner Dash - Flo on the Go, and Slingo Quest, 2007 brings countless exciting new happenings and innovations. This article can also be viewed at Yahoo! Games. Read more»

PopCap's latest title was a game in search of a theme. Their new word game had briefly been titled "Word Fall," because, you know, letter tiles fell down, followed by the marginally more creative "Block Droppers." Read more»

Last week, PopCap Games released Bookworm Adventures, and with it, a little bit of controversy. Costing $700,000 to make and taking 2 ½ years to complete, PopCap also announced that it was pricing the game at $30, instead of the "traditional" $20 per game. This raised quite a ruckus on Gamezebo, with half the people writing in that they would never pay $30 for a casual game and the other half saying that this particular game is worth it. This raises many questions: Is the sky falling on casual games? Is this a trend toward higher prices? Are casual games worth $30? Read more»

I recently joined the cast of casual crazies in Kiev for the Casuality Europe (waaaay) East Conference. Kiev, in case you're wondering, is one of the most interesting event locations I've been invited to. And while I'm sure that 50% of the reason for inviting me was for my charm and good looks, the other half must have had something to do with the interesting panel I moderated on the subject of the Casual Games Value Chain. So nice. I like. High Five!

Which got me thinking: what am I thankful for this year that I could write about on Gamezebo?

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The team at Mumbo Jumbo had just discovered that those who work with bugs walk a very fine line. They had decided to make a game that would fuse Galaga, Zuma and Centipede, and had even kept the latter's aesthetic, going so far as to use the working title "Bug Blast." Unfortunately, bugs had become problematic. Read more»

When I traveled to St. Petersburg to give a lecture at the Game Developer's Conference last week I thought I might be able to leave a little wisdom behind. There has been a string of finely crafted clones coming out of Russia of late, but I wanted to know if an original, hit, casual game could come out of this fractured union. So I went to Russia thinking I'd help enlighten them, and to perhaps discover the next gameLab. Instead, I discovered something remarkable about myself. Read more»

One of the nicest things about running a tiny independent game studio these days is that, more and more, people work remotely. My wife, Carla, and I, who make up the core of the team, are no exception. While we are based in San Francisco, Carla is originally from Italy, and so we migrate over to the 'old country' every year for a couple of months in the fall. Working from here is not much different in terms of communication, since almost everyone we work with is part of our 'virtual office' anyway, and we all keep in touch using instant messenger, email and phone. One thing, however, changes a lot--our environment. Read more»

Light. Colors. High contrast patterns and soothing musical tones. Movement. Texture. Repetitive motion and intermittent surprise. Sound familiar? It sounds like I'm describing the formula for the basic criteria for a casual game, but I'm actually describing an early childhood development toy hanging above an infant's bed. And as I was looking at this thing, watching it play music and spin, it occurred to me that casual games function to stimulate a gamers' brain much like a Fisher-Price mobile works on the mind of a small child. Read more»

Think managing a bunch of hungry, breeding animals in Fish Tycoon is difficult? Try managing a studio full of game designers. Much like the hero of their smash game, Last Day of Work's CEO and lead designer Arthur Humphrey soon found himself with too many mouths to feed and not enough to show for it. The result was a mass downsizing of the operation, and a future casual gaming smash placed squarely on one man's shoulders. Read more»

Well, I have been invited to share some of the experiences and dramas of a tiny independent game developer here on Gamezebo. I've often found that our wonderful community and fans find it very interesting to hear about some of the behind-the-scenes decisions and craziness that can be involved in creating a game from beginning to end, and I'm all too happy to share the experience. For those of you who are not familiar with us, we are Last Day of Work and our most recent release was Virtual Villagers, and just before that Fish Tycoon. I am the lead designer and captain of this fine ship. Well I think I'll jump right in and... Read more»

The guys from PopCap really weren't worried when they named their company Sexy Action Cool. It was an in-joke, lifted from a poster for the Antonio Banderas flick "Desperado." But the way they saw it, their company name wouldn't be heard much, they'd just be a small developer, in the shadows of the major portals who would host their games. Read more»

Twenty-two minutes, eleven seconds. That's how long I waited. And I've got broadband, and a brand new wicked-fast Dell lap-top. Twenty-two minutes and change. That's roughly how long it takes a photon to reach Earth from the Sun. That's a full episode of Entourage, for God's sake. Twenty-two minutes. That's how long it took me to download the whopping 754Mb Nancy Drew: Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon from Big Fish this morning, and that's not counting the three minutes it took to register and the four minutes to complete the install. Why did I choose this game above all others? Why didn't size matter to me? Read on. Read more»

Labor Day Weekend marks the end of the summer and the beginning of the new school year. If you are a parent (and a lot of you on Gamezebo are), this is the time to purchase school supplies for your kids: Paper (check). . . Notebook (check). . . Pens (check). . . Games (check)? That's right --- Games! Read more»

Reflexive Entertainment may have started out much like any small company, but that's where the similarities end. An unlikely road through the hardcore gaming world led them to create Ricochet Xtreme, an addictive brick-buster that would bring a classic idea into the casual games arena. Read more»

In 1001 Arabian Nights, Queen Scheherazade tells a new tale every night to her husband, the King Shahryar, to delay her imminent execution. If we were to modernize this classic tale to the casual game era, I imagine we'd call it 1001 Zuma Nights. That is because every week, a new casual game inspired by Zuma is released on the Internet. Read more»

Casuality Seattle 2006 may be over, but its not forgotten, at least by yours truly. Here are my thoughts & insights from the show, and what it means for you, the casual game player. Read more»