Remember how hard it was to there was no “casual gaming?” That’s still the experience many adults have.
Modern-day ‘casual gaming’ gives people the option to squeeze a couple of minutes of gaming time in between a jam-packed schedule. This is in contrast to the ‘console gaming’ that takes hours at a time. As modern-day ‘casual gaming’ gained popularity, so did online gaming and gambling. As convenient as apps and games are, Lottery Games in the Philippines go to show how far casual gaming has grown. So, where did casual gaming even begin?
1) Accessibility Reshaped Player Habits
Puzzle games, Minesweeper, solitaire and a handful of other games were the only “casual” games available back in the day. They required virtually zero time commitment. The only engagement they required was a single click.
After the smartphone boom, gaming could be taken on the go for the first time. That meant players were no longer constrained to the desk by the gaming computer. Developers started to realize that games could actually be shorter with more frequent releases. With that mindset shift, they changed the entire casual gaming industry.
2) Sessions Shrank to Fit Real Life
Most adults don’t have two free hours for entertainment. Design of games had to reflect that. Short games that can be played in bits have taken over the mobile game market, and there is a good reason for that. These games understand that most of the players have very little time.
Five-minute breaks are still real breaks, and a lot of games are designed in this style, with a gameplay loop that is over even before the kettle boils. Games have shrunk, but their appeal didn’t, and it is reflected in their great success.
3) Solo Play Went Social
Casual games have made multiplayer a part of the solo gaming experience. Within an app, friends keep each other company by playing games and entertaining one another. Competitiveness has brought friends together even when they don’t have time to hang out.
4) Choice Replaced Scarcity
While mobile entertainment developed, there were once only a few puzzle games for adults. Now, there are many different types of games and activities to choose from. Different types of activities and streaming services, as well as interactive gaming, now compete for that spare time. Lottery games and similar games occupied that space and drew players who wanted to play games with some chance and a little strategy but did not want to go to a certain place to do it. In the past, scarcity shaped the games people played. Now, it’s more of a personal preference. As an example, someone may play a couple of rounds at a slot machine one night and the next night browse through the streaming options. For many people, those two activities fill an idle time in a similar way.
5) Rewards Snuck into Everything
Badges for completing tasks are not just in games anymore; bank apps and activity trackers do that too. As game mechanics spread outside of games, players are doing tasks related to games throughout the day, in both the literal and metaphorical sense of gaming. Many adults do activities that gamers do throughout the day, but some don’t even consider those activities as playing a ‘game’.
6) Progress Follows Everywhere
There was a time progress was device bound. Today, a game started on a device continues on another without progress loss. Parents have come to appreciate this over graphics. While working parents were once ‘sandwiched’ and ‘time-compacted’ a game can now start in a time gap and finish in another. Now commutes, breaks and sofa sessions can belong to the same game as the last session left off.
7) Stress Relief Drew Players
When adults were asked why they play casual games, responses went well beyond fun. Many described them as ‘mental reset’ activities, calling it a stress relief break after a tough work day. Casual games have arguably gone past their arcade roots with this shift from entertainment to a mental reset. That also accounts for the existence of low pressured games. People have no interest for games to take priority over time they should be resting.
Casual Gaming Grew Up Too
The days of the solitary player slouched over their desktop in the under-lit basement are past. Nowadays, you can play on a bus ride to work or on the subway on your way to your internship. Casual gaming offers easy accessibility and a variety of genres that you can play for minutes at a time or hours at a stretch. You used to have to clear your schedule for a gaming session and let everything else wait, but now you can play in between meetings or between classes.