{"id":497,"date":"2010-01-03T22:12:11","date_gmt":"2010-01-03T22:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/?p=497"},"modified":"2010-01-03T22:12:11","modified_gmt":"2010-01-03T22:12:11","slug":"is-the-casual-boom-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/2010\/01\/03\/is-the-casual-boom-over\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the casual boom over?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a time a few years ago when casual games seemed to be the BIG THING. Almost everyone was making a game where you matched 3 things. Then they all cloned Bettys Beer Bar<\/a> (You might remember the first clone – Diner Dash). Then they all cloned Zuma, then… etc. I lose track of who everyone was cloning after a while.<\/p>\n

This wasn’t the golden age of indie game development. In fact, it was the golden age of actual indie<\/strong> game developers rolling their eyes and wondering what the hell people were thinking, when developer after developer announced their ‘innovative’ new clone of whatever was #1 on bigfishgames last week.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, a lot of casual games bombed and made virtually no money. At least, for the developers. The aggregators, who owned the platform like BigFishGames and Relfexive probably made a fortune. I wasn’t immune, I had Kudos<\/a> and Rock Legend<\/a> on a number of those portals. I still get the royalty checks for them, although it’s nothing to get excited about.<\/p>\n

Nowadays it seems everyone is cloning farmville, and I think I might have glossed over the bit where everyone was making a browser based MMO game. In 2010, I’m sure there will be a new goldrush (maybe the new mac thing) where indie developers all chase trying to cash in on the latest #1 guaranteed way to make millions.<\/p>\n

Because I don’t make games aimed at casual portals anymore, or even ones they would be interested in stocking, I’ve taken my eye off the ball. I have zero interest in games like that right now, I always only make the sort of game I personally think is cool at that point in my life, but I am curious as to the state of the market. Has it collapsed? Or are more and more people each year still shelling out actual money for the latest reskinned dress-up or clickfest time management game?\u00a0 That would be (as a game designer) a bit depressing, but\u00a0 it wouldn’t stun me…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There was a time a few years ago when casual games seemed to be the BIG THING. Almost everyone was making a game where you matched 3 things. Then they all cloned Bettys Beer Bar (You might remember the first clone – Diner Dash). Then they all cloned Zuma, then… etc. I lose track of<\/p>\n

Continue Reading… Is the casual boom over?<\/span>Continue Reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":498,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions\/498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.positech.co.uk\/cliffsblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}