xenofur wrote:interesting statement, mind giving me your definition of casual gamer?
Ill give you mine. The casual gamer has about 4-5 hours a week to devote to the game, spread out over the week in an uneven way. They *may* have that amount again on the weekend.
The casual gamer friends I have, have intensive day jobs (or other commitments) and have some sort of family situation that keeps them from dramatically increasing their hours.
I read a report on Gamasutra (an industry site) that more and more "over tweens" women are gaming. Id say they also fall into this group given their life commitments.
I think casual gamers and power gamers both want a sense of completion during any one session. Therefore, any penalty needs to be able to be worked off relatively quickly and there still be time to "get ahead" and maybe complete a quest of some kind. Load times and unload times for the client matter more for casual gamers, too.
As a casual gamer, the turn offs for me are:
1. Nerfing characters. If it takes me 2-3 times longer than a power gamer to achieve a "level of satisfaction", I dont want my goals nerfed. AC2 did this several times, changing core capabilities of characters.
2. Upscaling existing challenges without any real value added. Here are the gingos. They arent more fun, they just keep me trapped in the city. AC1 did this once, for an entire month -- every critter became a much more powerful monster, effectively trapping low levels in cities. No fun.
3. Massive downloads. Yes, true for everyone. If you have 1-2 hours max a night, you dont want to spend much of that time patching. Of course, broadband helps. If the demographic for casuals are generally "older", then I guess we can assume they are willing and able to pay for broadband.
Turn ons for casual gamers:
1. Engrossing storyline with inventive back system. It should capture interest from the moment of logging on. This is why I got into Saga. Its beautiful and is really something special. But I loved the monthly events in AC1. It looks like that is coming with Saga.
2. Challenges in the right places. Add a new dungeon, add a new location. Populate new locations with new quests. Start quests in home city, go elsewhere. If there is a storyitem which impacts character starting points, there needs to be an easy way to avoid it (like town attacks in AC1 -- great fun if you were strong enough, but you can run away too).
3. Solo. I want to be able to solo as much as possible. If that means taking on a dungeon full of weenie critters (so one character can take on a good sized mob alone), okay, but I still want some reward for it. Instanced dungeon settings are capable of doing this nicely, anyway.
4. Player Economy is useful but not Required for fun. I thought AC1 had it very good. You could buy the standard products, and, very unique and "dropped phat loot" would be for sale for a while after a player sold it. If I see a cluster of sellers around an NPC, I can choose to run and buy if I like, or not. Saga has a good compromise here, but the crafted items arent all that unique and interesting.
5. Unique items. This goes along with the engrossing story line. Saga has a lot of interesing, named objects you can harvest. Cool. Give me lots of useful and fun recipes to go along with it. Sure, a Gingo Steak Sandwich and Shooki Salad may only give me the same sort of heal, but they sound cool -- and I want to be able to see them, give them to my friends, etc.
This is how I see it, and reflects what my casual gamer friends talk about when we talk about games we enjoy. Anyone else?