I explain games and casual games throughout the digital games history

1. From outer space to your farm
Understanding digital games

2. Level 1
The beginning

3. Like many new technologies,
digital gaming started as something
out of this world.

4. 1962 1971 1971
Spacewar!
1st gen digital game
Computer space
1st gen arcade game
Magnavox odyssey
1st gen home console
The first digital games

5. In 1972 the spaceship has landed
In a local bar in Sunnyvale, California.

6. Atari
Former publisher of pinball machines pivoted to
be a developer and manufacturer of
commercially successful arcade games.

7. But what IS a game, really?
A game has many definitions and structures. In its base it is a system of rules,
objectives and a tangible outcome.

8. Here’s one of my favorite definitions:
“ A game is a series of meaningful choices” S. Meier

9. Why games are fun?
We love...
● Competition
● Self improvement
● Feeling of progression
● Pattern recognition
● Sense of autonomy
● Story/mystery
● Reward system (random/linear)
● Positive reinforcements
● Flow - Immersion
● Social interaction
● To feel smart
● What else?

10. Sense of autonomy, AKA meaningful choices
Are the heart of every game

11. What are the differences between the two?

12. ● Skill based
● Gives sense of autonomy
● Multiplayer
● Infinite variability
● Community
● Sometimes a skill game (depends
on the machine)
● Less sense of autonomy
● Single player
● Finite variabilty

13. Game design principles for arcades
● Super intuitive controls and objectives
● Endless, race to highscore gameplay
● Fairly hard
● Skill based games

14. The game design IS the business model
Insert coin
Play (1-5 min
approx.)
Die Continue?
Yes
Get your initials on
the leaderboard. (if
you were awesome)
Next player
No

15. Why “Continue?” is such an amazing selling point?
Loss aversion.
People hate losing stuff they already “own” the morse so when invested
time and emotion into.

16. The golden era of arcades
1972-1985
Space invaders
1978
Pac Man
1980
Street fighter II
1991
Donkey kong
1980
Asteroids
1981
10,000,000,000+ 8,000,000,000+ 6,500,000,000+ 1,120,000,000+ 500,000,000+
Link to arcade commercial

17. Who plays arcade games?
Back in the day the majority were young, competitive
males. But there were attempts to reach the other gender
as well..

18. Pac-Man was designed with girls in mind
● A game about an eating disorder, Pac-Man tries to avoid
the ghosts who haunt him for it.
● No shootings/killings involved.
● The settings (maze) appeals to both genders.
● This is actually a CASUAL game.

19. Pacman is the most profitable arcade of all times
* A note to game designers: Girls MATTER!

20. Arcade traction started to decline in 1985
As home entertainment consoles took over

21. Level 2
Game design evolves

22. Home consoles
NES
3rd gen console that revived the dying US market
Link to arcade commercial
1985

23. In terms of game design, what are the differences between the two?

24. ● Short gameplay
● No save games
● Highscore as main objective
● Monetization based on small transactions
● Long gameplay
● Save game feature
● Many different objectives
● Monetization based on one big transaction

25. Game design rule - the feedback loop
Repeat
Kill monsters Get treasure Buy weapons

26. Feedback loop AKA - the addiction loop
Dopamine Love!

27. Game design rule - the feedback loop
Dopamine strikes
when anticipating to
be rewarded
Random sized loot
(variable reward) -
causes addiction

28. Don’t you LOVE it when that happens?
(But more on candy crush love later on…)

29. As games started to get bigger
They appealed to what seems to be a niche gamer market
Until….

30. Enter the PC. Not a gaming platform.. yet.

31. Genres evolve on PC

32. Casual games first introduced on PC
1990 2001 2002
Bejewled
Downloaded over 150M times
The sims
Best selling PC game in all
times
Solitaire
The most popular PC game

33. O, and the internet...
2009 2004
Social game
Biggest social game, more than
11M DAU at peak. FTP
MMORPG
Most subscribed game with 7M
paying customers.

34. It’s always a “non gaming” apparatus to expand the gaming circles to “non-gamers”

35. Actually, tablets brought in a new audience
And now digi gamers officially span from toddlers to elders

36. Level 3
But what are casual games anyway?

37. What do you see here?

38. We love spotting patterns.
We also love to match things, sort things, put things in order.

39. Casual games take those daily brain activities
And use them as the main game mechanic
Match things Sort things Put things in order

40. This is why candies, fruits, gems and animals
are so commonly used. They offer a natural “matching” system

41. Casual games controls also need to come naturally

42. Not Natural
natural

43. And remember this?
Repeat
Kill monsters Get treasure Buy weapons

44. Casual games need a smaller, condensed feedback loop
Identify pattern
Decide on which
to act
act
Watch reaction
and get reward

45. Game design rules for casual games
● Use elements from real life (unlike space stuff)
● Super intuitive gameplay
● Design for small bursts of play
● Designed for totally different play environments
● Condensed feedback loop

46. Level 4
Mobile and the free to play market

47. Shifting to mobile (2009)
Fruit ninja
New mechanics for touch
screens
Draw something
First true mobile social success
Angry birds
Bringing puzzles to the people!

48. App Stores 2014
Candy crush saga
Top grossing, monetization
machine
Clash of clans
Top grossing, dumbed down RTS
game
Flappy bird
The app store phenomena of 2014

49. Free to p(l)ay market
If things are offered for free, why would anyone pay? Well...

50. Most do not pay. Others pay a little.
And a small minority pays A LOT. We call them whales.

51. Free to play - fishing for whales
● Game design emphasizes micro transactions
● Game design heavily shaped by data
● Strong use of “loss aversion”
● strong use of impulsive buy (usually to rush processes up)
● Finding the exact amount of player frustration

52. Some say that free to play killed the gaming industry.
I think it brought gaming to everyone.

53. From Arcade venues to our pocket, everybody is a gamer.

54. Gaming is…
Everywhere
“Everything in the future online is going
to look like a multiplayer game”
- Eric Schmidt, Google chairman
Donkey kong commercial Xbox 1 commercial

55. This deck was brought to you by
Dori Adar, Creative director at TabTale, gamer, talker, midnight toker.
Doriadar@gmail.com