A National Gamers Survey Report released in the UK has reported that the casual gaming market continues to grow, with British individuals accessing games on portals such as computers and spending £280m in 2009 alone. Studies in both Germany and France reported earnings of £440m and £220m respectively, highlighted the growing trend of casual gaming.
Investigated by Gamesindustry.com and TNS, the report found that an estimated 13.3 British people accessed online games such as Bejewled Blitz or Facebook’s Farmville. John Vechey, founder of PopCap, the casual game developer, explained “In the future all games are going to be social. Every game you have will be interactive in some way.” Creating games which allowed short periods of game play and intractability with other players, he added that he believed the sociable nature of such games was a return to traditional family based competitive gaming.
Bejeweled is possibly one of PopCap’s largest casual games, with users having to create lines of gems to pop them before the screen fills. Hitting the market in 2009 and now with 25m players on Facebook, player Darren Hayes likened it to Tetris. “Bejeweled is a good time stealer. It is completely addictive – mainly because each game only lasts for one minute. I found myself saying “just one more game” and before I knew it … 3am,” he explained.
Meanwhile Mr Vecher said that as casual gaming increased on the PC, they were looking at moving into the mobile market with their Plants vs Zombie’s game. “The iPhone is a great customer experience – you can spend 30 hours on an iPhone,” he said, hoping that the mobile casual gaming platform would prove as successful as the PC market currently does.
