Casual video game
Casual is a video game genre designed to be easily picked up and put down and not require much intensity or effort on behalf of the player.
Contents
Personal
In my youth, most of the games I played required a lot of commitment from the player, either due to a long play-time or a steep learning curve. However, as I got older, I discovered I tended to prefer games that were easier because it meant I could enjoy them without getting frustrated. Also, as my free time has diminished due to becoming a father and husband, I can't really commit to games which require focused attention for prolonged periods of time. While that has made me more appreciative of casual games, I still don't play many because I don't find them complex enough to be interesting. Of the ones I do play, they're usually just on the cusp of where they wouldn't be considered a casual game.
Definition
For the purposes of this site, a casual video game is one where a new player can quickly learn how to play without much guided instruction, doesn't feature anxiety-inducing game play, and can be stopped and restarted from where the player left off with ease. Because of this, casual games typically have short discrete levels and autosave capabilities.
Because the term is fairly nebulous, there aren't really any games which could be considered casual all by themselves and are usually the result of an existing genre modified to be casual. For example, match finding video games, match making video games, video card games, and video board games can all be easily made into casual games.
History
Although the term "casual" video games didn't become popular until the 2000s, when web programming and portable hardware became sophisticated enough to allow saving and loading so frequently, players didn't have to worry about finishing even a segment of a game within an allotted time, the concept of casual video gaming is much older. For example, any casual game in real life can be made into a video game, so, a video game version of tic-tac-toe like OXO from 1952 could be considered a casual video game.
Some video game writers have suggested that games like Space Invaders (1978) and Pac-Man (1980) are among the first casual video games, based on the fact that they are easy to learn and are broken into short levels. However, I think two other important parts of what makes a game "casual" include low anxiety game play and ease of access, neither of which applies to those games. If you have to travel to an arcade to play a game which requires constant fast reflexes, there is nothing casual about what you're doing. Other writers have pointed to Nintendo's Game Boy port of Tetris (1989) and Microsoft's release of Solitaire (1990) for Windows 3, not because they broke any new ground, but because the Game Boy made Tetris portable and the ubiquity of Windows made it possible to play Solitaire at both home and work.
My personal view is that causal video games got their start with portable dedicated games like Coleco's Electronic Quarterback in 1978 and Tiger Electronics's Playmaker in 1980. These games were far more easy to pick up and put down, could be taken with you on the go, and featured game play that wasn't very intensive.
While there were plenty of games throughout 1980s and 1990s that would fit my criteria for a casual video game, they were the exception in a sea of intensive video games. The advent of browser-based programming environments like Java and Flash brought casual gaming to web with simple games like Collapse! (1998), Bejeweled (2001), and Text Twist (2001). At the end of the 2000s, smartphones were becoming commonplace causing a boom of games, many of which were designed for people who only could play in short bursts which expanded casual gaming even further, and this cemented the "casual" video game into gamer lexicon.
Games
This is a list of casual video games that are important to me. For all games in this genre, see the category.
| Title | Released | Developer |
|---|---|---|
| 2048 | 2014-03-09 | Gabriele Cirulli |
| Bookworm | 2002-11-29 | PopCap Games |
| Doodle Jump | 2009-04-06 | Lima Sky |
| Totem Destroyer | 2008-07-06 | Gabs.tv |
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