Why I called myself a casual gamer

My first memory: My brothers put a cassette into a box. On a screen in front, horizontal lines appeared, flashing and scrolling. Eventually, this gave way to a white screen with black lines - my brothers were somehow controlling lines on the screen! This was a simple drawing toy on the Spectrum and I went on to enjoy the games I was allowed to play and saved up pocket money to buy one of my own.

My first console was a Megadrive, bought late in its life from a schoolfriend and I own every 'successful' console from NES to Gamecube, excluding xBox. Dreamcast and Gamecube were bought within 2 days of UK release (and GBA within a week of Japanese release).

I've stayed away from the current generation, though I'm interested in buying an xBox360 for Dead Rising, various xBox games and Braid and would love to get a Wii for Warioware and Super Mario Galaxy - which I successfully know next to nothing about - but money and time conspired against it. (Ironically, I currently spend too much time on certain flash games.)

I actually found Dead Rising's save system added significantly to my enjoyment of it (having played it for maybe 20 hours on a friend's console) yet I hate games that ask me to redo elements with no variation - a reason I stopped playing Resident Evil.

I admire brevity in games, but if I find one I love, I can find myself playing levels hundreds of times or replaying the game once every so often.

I desire simplicity of rules and controls, yet want the game to spin them into varied settings and if puzzles and other challenges remain simple for a long time, that bores me.

I prefer experience-orientated games rather than goal-orientated ones.

I've never been able to beat Street Fighter 2, but could beat Samba de Amigo on the secret 'Super Hard' mode, sometimes getting 100% hit rates.

Back when I was working at the cash'n'carry, I was willing to spend hundreds of pounds to fund my videogame entertainment.

I long to work within the games industry, yet when I answered Chris Bateman's questionnaire, I decided that I was 'casual'.

I believe that I want simpler, more immediate games. I can only thank those who choose to make their game shorter, rather than padding out the length - Luigi's Mansion and Pikmin seemed perfect to me, despite the slight backlash at the time.

Maybe it's a modern-day ADD-ish nature but I want a game to clearly tell me what it's about. I don't want to spend 3 hours immersing myself into a new world, only to find that I don't enjoy the mechanics. Let the start of the game clearly relay the ensuing experience.

Perhaps that's why I play so many flash games - they maintain simplicity of control and immediate feedback about what the game will be like. Brevity is the rule, rather than the exception, with many taking 20 minutes to complete.

I guess that's why I consider myself a casual player - I want simplicity, brevity and focused intent. Some quirkiness - to differentiate it from other experiences - is essential. To me, these seem to be things that 'hardcore' games are forgetting about, with sequels packing in new controls or features rather than refining those that exist (or even removing superfluous ones) whilst the industry as a whole tends towards iteration, tweaking existing ideas rather than risk time and money on previously unseen mechanics.

Lack of difficulty or a forgiving nature aren't strictly necessary - if I'm playing with novel mechanics and realise why I failed - with success remaining a definite possibility - I'm happy to fail 20 or more times before success. Cirplosion's final challenge and Unirally's Gold-medal stunt tracks are testament to that.

Simplicity, brevity and a clear focus on something new. Sorry for the lack of the 2nd in this post.

Signalling etc.

Computerised games are unique in that their mechanics and the current game status can be hidden from the player with bad design.

Board games and card games - by necessity - assume familiarity with the rules and mechanics before the game begins. Once it's in full flow, though, any hidden information will be as a result of cards being deliberately hidden or game-pieces being hidden in a bag.

With sports, there is almost no potential for hidden information. The status of the few toys that exist - position of other players, position/velocity of the ball etc - and maybe even their can be seen simply by looking in the right direction.

Conversely, with video games, the toys are merely works of fiction, brought to our imagination and recorded via computer processes. It actually takes effort to show the status of the toys. Furthermore, it can't be expected that players will have already familiarised themselves with the rules - as the computer plays the role of referee, there is often no need and in fact certain games - like Wario Ware - centre the entire appeal around unfamiliarity with rules.

In this environment, it is down to the graphics and sound - the two ways the computer 'talks back' - to not only give us all the information we need about the status of the toys, but also to explain the rules whether by using symbols with pre-existing meanings (Aliens are scary! Avoid! Lasers hurt! Avoid! Lasers kill! You can kill!), by simply developing an internal logic (all identical graphics behaving identically, groups behaving similarly - all food healing your character in many 8/16-bit games) or through other means.

An enemy can be shown by depicting something scary or perhaps by simply showing the movement of something chasing you. If it chases you, we may infer that it should be avoided!

In 'Candyland', a one-level platformer, we begin by jumping over a block and collecting lollipops. Ice cream also increases our points. A cake seems a silly symbol for an enemy, when it resembles the collectibles' theme so closely and has no distinguishing marks to show its sentience. (Though it moves, this isn't immediately obvious given the lack of either parallax scrolling or other foreground objects.)

Then we see a bomb with a jester cap. Despite floating in mid-air in an identical manner to other collectibles and a fairly innocuous appearance, it kills us instantly (as do any enemies).

Had the cake possessed macabre eyes and the jester been a ball of spikes, the signals would have been more effective in giving us the information they should.

Specially with Flash games that take 90s to complete, it shouldn't be expected that we begin by reading the rules and familiaring ourselves with arcane internal logic. Using the vocabulary of existing symbols that we have built up should be a natural move.