I am doing a podcast with my friends about games (check out The Adventure Mechanics here) and I decided that I need to try for accountability on actually releasing a game this year. To that end, I'm going to go through the development process to release a game. Here is the transcript from the seventh episode on how I'm defining the genre that my game is going to be in:
Welcome to the Adventure Mechanics Side Quest and today it's just me, Chandler. As I've gotten feedback from early playtesting, I found that I've kind of lost sight of my initial design. The initial design for CartograTour, what I'm renaming my prototype I was calling The Mapper, was for it to be a casual-style cartography game. As I've developed it, however, it's become more reflected the type of games that I've been playing, i.e. games that tend to be played more in rounds rather than as a casual experience. That made me realize that I never really went through and defined what a casual game was for me. So for this sidequest I'm going to be diving in and trying to explore what, exactly is a casual game.
So, what is a casual game? The most common definition I could find was a game that was easy to pick up and easy to put down. But what does that mean? Are sports games a sub-genre of casual games? Is a one on one fighting game? By this vague definition, they very well might be. That doesn't feel right, though. A sports game is pick up and play with relatively short time commitments, but if it's American Football or Cricket, the player will need to have at least some basic understanding of the rules of the game, which adds a bit of a barrier. A more complex game is a less approachable to new players and a casual game is supposed to be inviting. In the same vein, fighting games seem to fall flat in terms of complexity. Sure, just playing a casual round of Street Fighter may be quick to pick up, but the complexity of the meta-game can quickly turn off a filthy casual like myself. The competitive skill ceiling also makes playing with your more talented buddies far less interesting. A skilled player will stomp a new player way more often than that new player will be able to beat the skilled player. That's not really approachable as a casual game to play. I think that this limited definition of a casual game needs to be a little bit more fleshed out.
So, what do I think it means? Well, a casual game still needs to be easy to pick up and put down. But the controls also need to be intuitive, as well. If we take those requirements and rework the definition to something that encompasses it all, we can get to this first part of the casual game definition: A casual game is limited in scope and complexity. That means that a casual game won't have an overwhelming number of mechanics and won't have too many controls. Moreover, any controls that are in the game need to be as clear as possible, be it through instructions in the game or leveraging the player's intuitions. Any unexplained instructions will need to be intentional choices, not something that was overlooked in development.
That's great and all, but that now begins to include games like Diablo. Is Diablo a casual game, too? Is the core gameplay loop in it of killing, looting and equipping lend itself to a casual game? It doesn't really feel like it should. There's an urgency and agressiveness in the gameplay that doesn't really lend itself to a more casual game. So, to better define a casual game, I'll need to refine the definition again. It needs to have less urgency than a game like Diablo. So a calmer core gameplay loop is necessary. Twitch reaction and deep strategic thinking aren't really part of the core loop for most casual games. That means a casual game need to have a calmer core gameplay loop.
That takes the definition for a casual game to be a game that's easy to pick up and put down with limited scope and complexity that has a calmer core gameplay loop. Does that mean we have a good definition of the genre for CartograTour? Well, not quite. Casual games as defined will certainly include CartograTour, but it doesn't quite fully encompass the core of what CartograTour will actually be. After all, Cards Against Humanity could be called a casual game. What I envision CartograTour to be is something called a life sim. A life sim is a sub-genre of casual games that focuses on some specific aspect of life that the player may or may not be familiar with. If they're familiar with the core gameplay, we can leverage the player's experiences in real life to intuit what to do in our game. That greatly eases bringing new players into the game when they can guess what to do.
Just having that one definition doesn't really encompass all of what makes a life sim game, though. Could a puzzle game like Tetris a life sim? It currently fits into our definition of a casual game, but it doesn't really feel like it should be included in our definition for a life sim. Sure, you can play it alone and have a blast, but ideally, a life sim is something that's shared. A high score just doesn't feel like it's enough to me. So what if we add that a life sim has some sort of social aspect? That would exclude straight puzzle games from the life sim genre. But what does including a social aspect mean? The obvious answer is that it has people playing the game together. Two people playing something like Stardew Valley is obviously social. But if the multiplayer update wasn't added to it, does Stardew Valley still count as a life sim? I would argue yes. That's because having a social aspect doesn't necessarily mean that there has to be multiple players in the same game world. What about the interactions that the player has with NPCs? Trading, completing orders and being able to romance them all are something that we expect to do with people in our daily lives. That brings back the pre-multiplayer update of Stardew Valley back into a life sim.
Life sims will also need to have some sort of major goal. Sandbox worlds where the player can make their own goals are great, but a life sim doesn't really need to be open like that at all. Take Papers Please, as an example. It's a life sim of a very limited aspect of a person's life; their job. They don't have the freedom of doing whatever they want, they are living out the life of a border guard. This is a more guided goal meant to evoke a specific feeling. A goal that forces the player into the mental state of that specific border guard is acceptable. Our definition of a life sim needs to include this. A life sim ends up being defined as this: A game that is simulating some portion of a person's life with a social aspect and either open or directed goals.
Whew! That's a lot of defining! But, now we have a definition for what, exactly, I want CartograTour to be. It's going to be a casual life sim. In the next side quest, I'll be going over what that means for the game and if I need to adjust anything already implemented or change what I'm working on putting in. If you have any suggestions or want to use a different definition of what either a casual game or a life sim is, reach out to me on Twitter as @jcsirron. This has been The Adventure Mechanics and I'm Chandler. I'll talk with you next time.
