A brief history of brief time

One of the first electronic casual games was Solitaire, itself based on the non-electronic version of the same name. It still fits the casual mode, though the rules of placement are slightly more stringent than the average puzzle game, and there are different strategies to employ in the pursuit of clearing the columns. Depending on how experienced a player you might be, Solitaire can be completed fairly quickly, or it can take a while to master. Also, it does tend to assume prior experience of the game -- this is, arguably, what attracts players to it in the first place: the novelty of a digital version of an already-loved game. So, there are arguments against it being considered a casual title, and this is where the point of redefinition comes into play (so to speak).

Casual games themselves must be regarded as having gradients -- simply put, some are more casual than others. This is due to what one might call 'gamer ability spread'. In essence, as games evolve, the audience tends to evolve with them. Players, through sheer everyday exposure, are becoming more and more canny, more used to the types of game mechanics that games of all sorts employ. This is evident by the introduction to the scene of Bejeweled 2, an updated version of the original, which features a wider set of phenomena than the original, and therefore, more complexity of approach to gameplay.

The evolution of the casual genre

In fact, a deeper look into PopCap's repertoire of diversions displays a fairly broad range of titles, each with its own particular challenge. Considered a casual games purveyor, PopCap offers games ranging in sophistication from the nearly mindless one-action input of Peggle, to the approaching-cerebral word creation puzzler Bookworm. They also have downloadable versions of their games, which tend to be more fully-featured than their online counterparts, yet utilizing the same basic mechanics. While Peggle is about as casual as one could wish, Bookworm, as gameplay progresses, keeps adding mechanics to the mix, until it can hardly be thought of as casual at all; certainly not with the requirement that the rules be simple, or that time investment be minimal.

These less-casual casual games exist because player expectations -- even non-gamer players -- for a casual title have grown more demanding. This is partly because of the increasing sophistication of the World Wide Web. The Web is vastly more elaborate than it used to be even as recently as 8 years ago, and its users have gotten used to many conventions that they might not be able to elucidate to themselves. Many of these conventions -- isolating important elements from a complex scene; the visual language of banner ads; intuitive mouse movement -- exist in casual games as well. So as users have become accustomed to existing in an online environment, they perceive a need for entertainment that follows the form and function of what they're used to.

And as users become increasingly comfortable with abstraction -- in the form of icons, and the manipulation of these icons to produce positive results -- games become enabled with ever-larger libraries of representations of objects, both real and surreal. An in-game fish, for example, need look nothing at all like a real life fish, as long as it's presented as a fish and displays fishlike behavior. So the need for casual games to model reality is changing, and with that change, a concomitant change in expectation in gamers's minds.

Managing expectations

Another factor in the evolution of the casual title is the fact that children are now growing up with the Web in place, both used as a tool and as an entertainment source. Many, or even most educational games belong firmly in the casual camp, with gameplay that typically centers around one mechanic -- a picture-matching game, for example -- and catering to a child's relatively short attention span. Yet toddlers have been shown to take to web browsing with ease, performing navigational tasks with a fluency at least equal to their elders. These kids get bored with overly-simple gameplay, and start looking for more complex challenges.

Finally, there is the expectation of the dyed-in-the-wool gamer herself. It would be fallacious to assert that even hardcore gamers don't enjoy casual games. Indeed, there are many such games to be found adapted for consoles, including classics like Root Beer Tapper, and modern hits like Lumines. With an aggregated history of over 20 years of game playing behind them, gamers' tastes have grown ever more refined, splitting up into subgenres like first-person shooter, or survival horror. To catch and maintain interest, then, even casual games have to step up in complexity somewhat, offering more than just 'put object x in box y'.

The complexity of simplicity

This is not to say that simple games like Peggle are doomed; quite the contrary. The success of flOw proves that there will always be a place for simplicity in gaming. This is merely to say that the casual genre is no longer as simple as the one, two, three approach of the opening paragraph of this article. There can be stratifications of casual play for each type of player. What's challenging to the non-gamer might be ludicrously easy to the hardcore gamer, so why not develop casual games for both? At the end of the day, a label is just a label; it doesn't necessarily tell you anything about actual gameplay.

This column will be dedicated to examining casual game mechanics in its myriad forms. We'll analyze a game and assess its place in the genre, where it works and where it doesn't, who might like it, and how it could be improved, if it can. Expect to see some games here that you might not have labeled as casual, and some notable casual games refuted as such. And if you have news of a casual game that deserves attention, send it along on our tip line.