Casual games is a category of electronic or computer games targeted at the mass audience, which are peculiar for their simple rules, engaging game design, require no time commitment or special skills from an end user as well as comparatively low production and distribution costs from producer. January 2006 : January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December- → 31 January 2006 (Tuesday) U.S. President George W. Bush delivers the State of the Union Address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress (the House of Representatives and the Senate). ...

"Casual game" is a term recently coined to refer to video games designed to be played to completion in a few minutes or less. The term is fairly nebulous, but casual games almost always have certain common features, including:

• Extremely simple gameplay; usually a puzzle game that can be played entirely using a one-button mouse or cellphone keypad
• No plot
• Only one character, if any. This character (when it is present) usually represents the player, and often is only a decoration on the border of the game screen, and has no bearing on the game's mechanics.
• Little to no music, but often catchy and musical sound effects
• 2D, Jewel-toned, abstract graphics
• Often free, available either for free to play in a web browser, included for free with something else (like productivity software or a device like a cell phone), or available as a free download, usually with a "Deluxe" version also available for a nominal fee.

The word "casual" is used to define this type of games to indicate that they are produced for casual consumer who can ‘pick them up and learn to play quickly’. Casual game players normally classify themselves as non-gamers, in contrast to the fans of video games. Consumers are individuals or households that consume goods and services generated within the economy. ...

Casual games are played primarily in short bursts, during work breaks or (in the case of portable and cell phone games) on public transportation, and are thus designed to be short and simple.

History

(This section is based primarily on observation and conjecture. A more professional approach would be helpful, although the field is so new that such an approach may not be possible.)

Microsoft solitaire, which came free with Microsoft Windows, is widely considered the first successful "casual game" and was particularly played by secretaries and other office workers who were using Windows for their work. Subsequent versions of Windows included Minesweeper, and once Microsoft discovered the popularity of their pack-in solitaire, they improved on it with FreeCell and Spider Solitaire. Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, SEHK: 4338) is an international computer technology corporation with 2005 global annual sales of close to $40 billion USD and about 64,000 employees in 85 countries and regions which develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. ... The Klondike Solitaire game that comes with Gnome. ... Windows redirects here. ... Minesweeper is a single-player computer game invented by Robert Donner in 1989. ... FreeCell is a solitaire card game similar to Klondike. ... Spider is a type of solitaire card game. ...

In 1989, Nintendo's Game Boy was released with the free pack-in casual game Tetris. Tetris on the Game Boy was immensely popular partially because, as a casual game, it was quick and simple, which was ideal to the portable gaming model. Nintendo (Japanese: 任天堂, ニンテンドー Nintendō; NASDAQ: NTDOY, TYO: 7974 ) is an international company originally founded in Japan on November 6, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi to produce handmade hanafuda cards, for use in a Japanese playing card game of the same name. ... The original Game Boys design set the standard for handheld gaming consoles. ... Tetris is a puzzle game invented by Alexey Pazhitnov (last name sometimes transliterated Pajitnov) in 1985, while he was working for the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia during the days of the Soviet Union. ... The original Game Boys design set the standard for handheld gaming consoles. ...

The advent of Macromedia Flash created a boom in web-based games, while also limiting them to using a single-button mouse, and having no built-in functionality for save states, encouraging designers to create simple games that could be played to completion in one short sitting. The most prominent game from this period was Diamond Mine, released in 2000 by PopCap and licensed by Microsoft, as Bejeweled for their Microsoft Zone. Macromedia Flash, or simply Flash, refers to both the Macromedia Flash Player and to a multimedia authoring program used to create content for it as well as games or movies created using the program. ... A screenshot from Bejeweled. ... Pop caps (also popcaps and sometimes incorrectly called bottle caps) are plastic covers which are used to seal the openings of a soda bottles. ... Microsoft Zone (also known as Zone. ...

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

Casual games are mostly computer simulators of common everyday games (chess, checkers, pinball, sudoku, solitaire, mahjong). The primary task of this game is to engage a player with simple rules that can be learnt intuitively. GAMES Magazine is a United States based magazine devoted to games published by GAMES Publications, a division of Kappa Publishing Group. ... Listen to this article · (info) This audio file was created from an article revision dated 2006-03-08, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. ... starting position on a 10×10 draughts board Draughts, also known as checkers, is a group of mental sport board games between two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over the enemys pieces. ... Pinball is a type of coin-operated arcade game where a player attempts to score points by manipulating one or more metal balls on a playfield inside a glass case. ... The Klondike Solitaire game that comes with Gnome. ... Mahjong (Traditional Chinese: 麻將; Simplified Chinese: 麻将; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Cantonese: màhjeung; or Chinese: 麻雀; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Cantonese: màhjeuk; other common English spellings include mahjongg, majiang, and hyphenated forms such as mah-jong or mah-jongg) is a game for four players that originated in China. ...

Short List of Casual Games

• Tetris
• FreeCell
• Spider Solitaire
• Minesweeper
• Bejeweled
• Big Kahuna Reef
• Bubble Shooter
• Magic Ball
• Snowy
• QBeez 2

Tetris is a puzzle game invented by Alexey Pazhitnov (last name sometimes transliterated Pajitnov) in 1985, while he was working for the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia during the days of the Soviet Union. ... FreeCell is a solitaire card game similar to Klondike. ... Spider is a type of solitaire card game. ... Minesweeper is a single-player computer game invented by Robert Donner in 1989. ... A screenshot from Bejeweled. ... Bubble Shooter Deluxe 1. ... Tintin and Snowy (Tintin et Milou) are world travellers and inseparable friends in The Adventures of Tintin. ...

Casual games genres

There is no precise classification of casual genres in the modern gaming industry. That can be explained by the easy ideas that form the basis for each game as well as a great amount of genre mixes existing in this field. The most popular casual genres for 2005 are: puzzle, word, casual action, card and board games. Below is the listing of the most popular genres along with the game play description.

Puzzle – is the type of casual games, where a player’s main task is to solve a puzzle, e.g. match the identical pieces on the playing field or place the falling blocks in a line (Tetris). Puzzle games are aimed at training player’s logical thinking and reaction if the game is played at a time limit. The most popular examples of the puzzle games are matching games (Match-3), Tetris, Sudoku games. Tetris is a puzzle game invented by Alexey Pazhitnov (last name sometimes transliterated Pajitnov) in 1985, while he was working for the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, Russia during the days of the Soviet Union. ...

Matching games present the biggest percentage of casual games produced nowadays. The player’s task is to match two, three, or even four identical pieces on the playing field. In order to indicate the identical pieces, the player usually has to swap them with the neighboring ones, shoot, or place them together by mere clicking. Once a player clicks the identical pieces, they are removed from the playing field. The final mission of the matching game is to clear the playing field.

According to the IGDA Casual Games Developer Whitepaper for 2005, the most popular puzzle game is Big Kahuna Reef, which is an example of a match 3 game. The playing field is formed out of many charts and boxes with different pictures of undersea animals and plants inside. The background for the game is a 2D picture of the undersea.

Word games present the second largest category of casual games. In general, the point of every word game is forming a word (or a phrase) out of the letters (or words) on the playing field. The word games are aimed at training writing skills as well as improving the knowledge of spelling or studying a foreign language or learning alphabet for kids. The classic example for a word game is Bookworm Deluxe or Spot a Word. The playing field consists of the set of letters of the English alphabet. A player is required to form a word out of the neighboring letters on the playing field by clicking on them.

Action games require a player to participate in an action in order to win. Its main attribute is a character or a set of characters that need to be controlled by a player via keyboard or a mouse.

Card and Board games are computer clones of the regular card and board games. A board game is any game played with a premarked surface, with counters or pieces that are moved across the board. ...

The plot of many casual card games is inherited from the usual games like solitaire, Russian card game Durak etc. The player’s task is to find two matching cards with identical value and place them together.

Board games present another category of games (checkers, chess, billiards, pool house, Mah Jong). The game takes place on a board similarly to checkers, billiards, mah jong games. General Rules and game play features are preserved.

Means of Distribution

Software Type

The primary source of distribution for casual games is the Internet. Nowadays most of the casual games are distributed as a shareware on the websites of the game developer or publisher. Each casual game is packed in the .exe file that can be downloaded via the Internet on PC and further run from the local it. The optimal file size for such a casual game almost rarely exceeds 10-15 MB. Shareware is a marketing method for software, whereby a trial version is distributed in advance and without payment, as is common for proprietary software. ...

A large percentage of casual games are distributed on the “try-before-you-buy” basis, i.e. a player downloads a trial (evaluation) feature-limited version of the game for free. During this period he plays the game, yet he has a limited access to the features of the game. The evaluation copy of a casual game may allow the limited number of levels, or a certain number of game sessions. In evaluation copy some features of the games, like autosave or numerous backgrounds are not available. Once the evaluation period is over, a player purchases the full version of the game. In return he is issued a license number (registration code) to enable the full version. Its main attributes are unlimited game play, unlimited access to the levels as well as a complete feature set.

Distribution channels

There are two distribution channels on the I-net for casual games industry. They are the developers and publishers. In contrast to video games publishers publishers in the casual games industry are responsible for publishing the developed games at their website, marketing and advertising. In that case publishers act as the casual game vendors that obtain their goods from a producer.