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Simplicity Wins With Non-Gamers
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"For years, the video game industry has been making the equivalent of action movie after action movie," in terms of its guy-centric appeal, he said. "It's just now figuring out how to appeal to somebody other than the 18- to 34-year-old males -- this is the first positive step in that direction."
Zuma's creator, PopCap Games, is one of the biggest players in this market. Its flagship puzzle game, Bejeweled, has sold 10 million units, the sort of numbers that a runaway hit series such as Grand Theft Auto might pull but hardly the norm among casual games.
PopCap chief executive David Roberts said his company's games are intended to put players in a relaxed mood. "When you play an Xbox game, you rev yourself up to play," he said. "If you play one of our games, you're revving down, you're relaxing."
Roberts said the stakes are still low enough in the casual game industry that companies like his can experiment in a way bigger game-publishing giants can't afford to.
Cutting-edge games for a new console such as the Xbox 360 can cost more than $10 million to produce; they typically involve a team of a hundred or so people working for several years. Such games are so expensive to make that a flop or two can put a publisher in serious financial pain.
Casual games, on the other hand, cost a few hundred thousand dollars to produce; a typical PopCap game takes three people working for about a year.
Where the video game industry usually likes to get buzz rolling about its upcoming titles months or even years in advance, Roberts comes across as unusual.
He says he isn't sure how many games the company will have out this year because he never knows when a game is going to be finished.
PopCap's designers don't have to time a game's release to match a movie opening or to hit the holiday season. If a game is any good, it'll catch on regardless of the release date. Sometimes, he said, the company will put a project on the shelf when the designers decide it just isn't fun enough.
If only the rest of the industry worked like this.
