Read it if you want to have a wider perspective on videogame history. The article also briefly mentions casual games (the original meaning), which were downloadable PC games mostly bought by women in the 2000s before mobile. These included hidden object, solitaire and match-3s games. - ThreadSky

greyalien.bsky.social • 52 days ago

Read it if you want to have a wider perspective on videogame history.

The article also briefly mentions casual games (the original meaning), which were downloadable PC games mostly bought by women in the 2000s before mobile. These included hidden object, solitaire and match-3s games.

Reposted from Felipe Pepe

Here we go, something I've been drafting for a long, long time: how the US-centric approach to video games and their history / culture basically gaslights us who come from other realities:
felipepepe.medium.com/the-gentrifi...

AKA, why LAN Houses, PokéTibia & Bomba Patch rule.

Comments

greyalien.bsky.social•52 days ago

These type of games never used to get mainstream press and still don't. Big Fish Games became the biggest seller of these games and was so valuable it sold for $1B TWICE!

The Facebook and mobile came along and F2P games happened and many of the audience migrated to those platforms.

greyalien.bsky.social•52 days ago

And thus the casual game industry dwindled. The original Regency Soliatire is a pure "casual game" and we didn't expect it to do well on Steam or get any press, but somehow it did actually get noticed and talked about, and we were able to gain fans off the casual game stores.

greyalien.bsky.social•52 days ago

I also had the feeling for many years that early indie devs didn't give a shit about our games because they were making "cool" games and we were making casual games (as full-time indies). They weren't IGF materal even though they were great games and highly rated by players.

adrianbauer.bsky.social•52 days ago

I used to play a lot of those casual games. Something interactive while taking a break from drawing or whatever. I still load up Bejeweled3 every so often.

greyalien.bsky.social•52 days ago

Also Peggle!

adrianbauer.bsky.social•52 days ago

Hell yeah! I've been kinda jonesing for a more Arkanoid leaning pinball game. A wide table full of satisfying feedback and stuff to break. Something that can play a bit endlessly in a chill zen way.

tubazef.com•52 days ago

I worked on a studio focused on "casual games" back in 08~09, Big Fish even published some of them.
Those were some dark times, there was this whole debate of "casuals vs real gamers" in games media and did a lot of harm to the medium. It spread toxicity and definitely helped GG form years later

octodontidae.bsky.social•52 days ago

I played sooo many Big Fish games. They were really good!

greyalien.bsky.social•52 days ago

Some of them are very polished and amazing games yes. Good for solo play or even family play e.g. HOG/HOPA games and word games etc.

markripley.com•52 days ago

Today, the problem is casual/wide-audience games need to compete with TikTok. I'd like the mobile stores to have a paid-only, ad-free, DLC-free channel where wrinklies like us can buy premium, intelligent, immersive games worth playing.

greyalien.bsky.social•52 days ago

Would be lovely. Then maybe we'd release on mobile.

markripley.com•52 days ago

Wife and I played MapleStory to death back in the day. We tried many of the Taiwanese MMORPGs too, but couldn't get into them - they just didn't measure up to WoW somehow.

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