PopCap games was created in 2000, and generally focused on the yet-to-burgeon "casual game" market. Up to this point, "casual games" were things like Microsoft Solitaire, Elf Bowling, and other, trendy simple games that someone could idle-play while on their computer at home or in the office. They generally had lenient hardware requirements, and could be either consumed in small, occasional bites or in one long, chained binge. Casual gaming wasn't really a thing in 2000, by traditional means. In 2001, PopCap games came out with Bejeweled, and it felt like the ball had started rolling. Two things happened that acted as a catalyst: the release of Xbox Live Arcade and, earlier than that, the release of the Wii. Gaming for most of its existence had been aimed at young men, how young decreasing over the years as those children raised in the NES or SNES era grew up. The entire idea of a casual gaming console in the 7th generation of consoles was absurd to just about everybody, but Nintendo had other ideas. By creating a console that could be picked up by anyone, whose controls were intuitive to even those who have never held a controller, an entirely new market opened up wide. PopCap games at this point had been pushing out releases for as wide a market as possible, usually colorful puzzle games released on PC and Mac. While the Wii was garnering PopCap's market, another, more interesting platform popped up. The Xbox Live Arcade is an odd, early step in the online market place dynamic that now permeates the entire gaming world (so prevalent now that consumers are tearing themselves apart bouncing between markets, and pledging silly allegiances to what is, technically, video game Walmarts competing with one another). Odd mostly because it was early in attempting to publish smaller games, but also in how insanely influential it was. The Indie gaming boom started here. Games like Braid and Spelunky can partially thank Xbox Live Arcade and their heavy marketing behind the "Summer of Arcade" for their success and subsequent filing in the video game cannon. And while the Indie game boom has been talked about to death (and I'm guilty of this too), what is less talked about is in how it influenced casual gaming, as this is where Peggle first blew up.
Peggle was released on PC, but it was on the Xbox that it became an immediate cult classic. Peggle, for all of its renown and compulsory fun, is really just patchinko. You shoot a ball down into an array of pegs and paddles with a limited amount of balls. The goal is to hit every one of the orange pegs and get the highest score you can manage before you run out of balls. When a peg or paddle is hit, they will disappear after your ball has fallen through the void at the bottom of the screen. The twist on the patchinko machine, so to speak, is that you can aim where the ball shoots, and hitting a green peg unlocks your special. Your special depends on the character you selected before starting play, and there will only be two green pegs on the board. Specials can be as diverse as showing the trajectory of your ball for a certain length, or auto-adjusting your shot to one worth more points. The special moves are generally a matter of taste for the main campaign, with the only exception being the challenge missions which can be made easier by choosing a special that will help you around the more difficult arrangement of pegs. While that implies a skill based system, the skill ceiling (or floor, really) is rather small. For the most part, Peggle works on a load of chance and only a bit of skill unless you are willing to commit a large amount of time towards high scores. No level in the game - even the challenge levels - really require much skill, which is partially why it caught on like fire back in 2007. It was essentially arcade style gambling. The skill required to make a play dependably was unlikely to occur in most who played it, since the game played into that gambling aspect so well. Peggle is the perfect example of reward systems in games being mostly aesthetic and design rather than substantial reward through gameplay. When you shoot a peg it gives off a satisfying "bong" sound, and getting several in a row ramps up the pitch with each subsequent peg. It's exciting, feeling the points ramping up so immediately. When your ball comes close to the last orange peg, the game will slow down, the camera will zoom in, and you will hear a drum roll ramping up. If you hit the peg, an explosion of music and fireworks will blow all over the board, while your score is aggressively smashed into the screen. It's an explosive moment, one that hits all of those dopamine buttons in your brain and screams you done good kid. It feels predatory looking back, after years of manipulative game design and issues with addiction among the gaming landscape as we are aware of it now, but at the time it was exactly what a lot of people wanted. They wanted to be addicted.
The casual gaming world continued to develop, with Wii Sports Resort coming out a mere month after PopCap released maybe its biggest hit: Plants vs. Zombies. Plants vs. Zombies was a twist on the tower defense game. Flash games (the torchbearer of casual gaming between the age of the arcade and the 7th generation of consoles) at the time were full of tower defense games, but largely they had a winding path with nodes along them that could hold towers, walls, etc. that you could buy at the level end store. PvZ looked to streamline this, while at the same time giving you control over you currency ramp up. Instead of buying towers and other defensive items, you use sunlight to grow plants. Sunlight occurs naturally during the day, but you can also plant sunflowers for a marginal but not insubstantial fee in order to increase the frequency in which you gain sunlight. One of the key design choices that makes PvZ so fun to play is in giving you this control over your in game currency. Now, you need to not only manage your defenses and offenses, you also need to manage the frequency in which you can update or replace those defenses and offenses. It becomes much more strategic, not just in covering your weak spots, but in a more economic way, closer in tune with an RTS where resource management is paramount to the proper ramp up of power. Things get more complicated when you get onto a level that takes place at night and you are suddenly reliant on sunflowers entirely for your sunlight. Plants vs. Zombies has a different take on the casual game, moving away from simple input with massive reward and instead making simple strategy feel complex. It feels like you are doing a lot, mounting up defenses, layering in sunflowers to afford your heavier stock pea-shooters, or laying a cherry bomb to clear a large group of zombies. In reality, the game is rather simple. Getting in your sunlight ramp up is really the key to winning the game, because you are unlikely to need an excessive amount to the point you need to plan ahead with more strategy than just "heavy and affordable". So long as you keep up your spending and gaining, you're probably fine. Some strategy comes in later, when you have more types of plants than you can "party" for a level, and night levels require some tweaking by including free or cheap but low damage mushroom plants in your planning, but it won't ever kick your butt unless you aren't on top of you sunlight.
Although Plant vs Zombies has more involved gameplay, it still utilizes addictive design. When sunlight falls from the sky or pops out of your sunflowers, it becomes a little object on your screen that needs to be clicked on or tapped. Plants vs. Zombies was released on PC and several consoles, but where it really took off was on touch iPods and the relatively new smart phone (remember when we had to differentiate types of phone this way?). This tapping felt its most natural on this platform. Later, you will be able to collect coins from zombies that will allow you to buy stuff from the store, which again utilizes clicking or tapping on coins when they are dropped. In your brain, its similar to collecting loot. Seeing things pop up on your screen with increasing frequency is intoxicating in a lot of ways, as tapping or clicking a bunch of sunlight equates to feeling incredibly powerful. Doing so with money is less addictive because of the high costs of anything useful in the store, but never so low that I didn't get that little dopamine bump whenever I had to click them.
None of this is to say that addictive gameplay, or casual design in general, is inherently bad. Peggle and Plants vs. Zombies aren't trying to suck money from you in order to keep up the rush, but they do make wasting time far more rewarding than it probably needs to be. It takes quite awhile for the mist of excitement to dissipate after playing these games, but when they do your fondness for them is more than likely in the thrill, not really in the fun. Playing them is rather simple, it's the reward you more than likely have fondness for. This, largely, is what separates casual design from the more general game design, or other specific game design archetypes. Casual game design is about reward, about getting people in to the realm of games and game design, and showering them in reward. Casual gaming doesn't work as an actual rewarding experience in and of themselves, but they work as a simple and fun education on how games mostly work. It's easy to say that playing games are rewarding, but if you are a person that doesn't play games, especially someone older who has a lot of "folk knowledge" so to speak to learn on game design, you've never had that reward reinforced. Casual games allow people to get the feeling of reward from a game, often for the first time (hence the odd demographics on games like Wii Sports or FarmVille). Wiring up this understanding of seeing a game through to that reward creates associations that could encourage people to delve deeper into gaming as a medium, especially if they would have never considered doing so before. This is the good of casual gaming, but the problem is that their focus on high reward for little effort can create a black hole instead of encouraging exploration. People can become fixated on that one game they first started with, with little reason to move on. Again, this isn't bad, but the best good casual gaming can provide can easily become moot by its own design. One of the reasons I like games like Plants vs. Zombies is because they act as a stepping stone. While strategy is rather simple for most of the game, those inexperienced with games or energy preservation/utilization will still have trouble as they need to learn this in order to proceed. The little addictive touches make the game feel rewarding, but can also help you learn the game. Getting sunlight feels really good, because you feel empowered by it, thus you will focus on trying to get as much as you can early on, which is a good strategy for the first half of the game. It utilizes that rewarding design in order to teach the player how to play without asking them to think about it too much, which can feel simple to those with more experience with similar games but doesn't stop it from still being fun. When you get to about the half way point, the game puts more pressure on you, allowing you less time where you can get away with sunlight ramp up before starting to throw zombies at you, causing a new balance of ramp up and defensive/offensive placement. This balance is where Plants vs. Zombies feels like a game that could pose a challenge, but for the casual gamer it comes as the final challenge, where the game's subtle and easy to digest lessons are being confronted, and you have to think for yourself what in your strategy needs to be modified.
More people in gaming is a good thing, because a more diverse audience means a more diverse selection of games. The irony is that casual gaming is often criticized for not appealing to a more challenging sensibility. While I understand that they mean challenging through gameplay, I can't help but see this as ironic when generally gamers don't want thematic or narrative challenge that isn't within their small nook of interests. The reason casual gaming is interesting is in the way it can appeal to those who generally wouldn't find an interest in games, a dynamic gamers should be more open to because trying new and inventive games with different perspectives and challenges is precisely the type of growth the culture at large needs. The difficult balance between healthy and unhealthy design is a bane to the casual gaming market, and if it hasn't already, I feel as though eventually things will tip heavily into the unhealthy realm (most mobile gaming is deeply on this side of design), but that small bonus makes me think that the genre has a sincere hope.
Peggle
7.0
Plants vs. Zombies
7.5
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