Casual Gamer - History

History

Namco's arcade game Pac-Man (1980), which debuted during the golden age of video arcade games, is considered to be the first "casual game." It is estimated to have been played more than ten billion times during the 20th century, making it the highest-grossing video game of all time.

In 1989, Nintendo's Game Boy was released with Tetris as a free pack-in game. Tetris on the Game Boy proved immensely popular, and is credited with making Nintendo's fledgling portable gaming system a success.

Microsoft's Solitaire (1990), which came free with Microsoft Windows, is widely considered the first successful "casual game" on a computer, with more than 400 million people having played the game since its inception. Subsequent versions of Windows included Minesweeper, and once Microsoft discovered the popularity of their pack-in solitaire, they expanded on it with FreeCell and Spider Solitaire.

Casual games moved online in 1996 with the debut of sites such as Gamesville and Uproar which offered multiplayer, HTML-based games in genres such as bingo, cards, puzzles, and trivia. These games required a constant server connection to keep players in sync, and did not include chat or avatars.

The advent of Flash created a boom in web-based games, encouraging designers to create simple games that could be played to completion in one short sitting. One of the most prominent casual games, Bejeweled, started out as a Flash game. Flash games commonly use per-user LSO files as a mean of saving game states.

Casual games received another boost when cell phones with large color displays became the norm because, like Adobe Flash before them, the cell phones had limited capabilities ideally suited to short, simple games.

The arrival of the iPod in the casual gaming market made more powerful games widely available in a portable format. PopCap Games provided Peggle on Apple's music player and it was an instant success.

Despite casual games being around for some years the concept has only recently gained popularity with the release of Nintendo's Wii video game console. The simplicity of the Wii controller interface has opened up the gaming market to an untapped demographic who were unwilling to invest the time in learning or intimidated by the typical gamepad input device. This opportunity has seen a number of publishers attempt to design games that appeal to the relatively low skill level of these new players. 2006 saw a growing market of console-based casual games, such as Carnival Games and Wii Play. The precursor to this previously unnamed market trend can be seen in games like Crazy Frog Racer, Shrek: Super Party, Spice World, Buzz!: The Music Quiz, and Singstar. The casual game LittleBigPlanet is also a popular title on the PlayStation 3 in which players have the power to customize huge aspects of the game, while the gameplay itself is relatively simple.

Casual games are often computer simulations of traditional games such as chess, checkers, pinball, poker, sudoku, solitaire, and mahjong.

In 2008, social network games began gaining mainstream popularity following the release of Happy Farm in China. Influenced by the Japanese RPG series Harvest Moon, Happy Farm attracted 23 million daily active users in China. It soon inspired many clones such as Sunshine Farm, Happy Farmer, Happy Fishpond, Happy Pig Farm, and Facebook games such as FarmVille, Farm Town, Country Story, Barn Buddy, Sunshine Ranch, Happy Harvest, Jungle Extreme, and Farm Villain. The most popular social network game is FarmVille, which has over 70 million active users worldwide. Other popular social network games include YoVille, Mob Wars, Mafia Wars, and FrontierVille.