Arcade Game Central

The Escapist, an online magazine covering gaming and gamer culture, published an article from Allen Varney titled Casual Fortunes, which discusses the economics of casual games, compared to “hardcore” games, such as popular console and PC video game titles.

The American casual game market was estimated to be worth $600 million in 2004, with a $2 billion projection by 2008. This is only a small fraction of the American video game market size, expected to grow from $8.2 billion in 2004 to $15.1 billion in 2009, but the size of the market is not really the point. The point is that game designers, by working on titles that can be completed quicker, and require smaller development teams than console video games, and by controlling their own marketing, can actual earn more for their efforts.

The article mentions a few noteworthy games, game designers, casual game companies, and blogs, including Popcap Games, Dexterity, Pretty Good Solitaire, and A Shareware Life, among others.

This article is a good introduction to the casual arcade game industry, and helps to shatter the perception that all gamers are teenage boys playing Halo and Grand Theft Auto in their bedrooms. Indeed, everyone is becoming a gamer - mom and dad, kid sisters, even grandma and grandpa have joined the stereotypical teenage boy as game consumers - and they are just the market that casual games try to serve.