Fun vs. Casual At EA

Game Tycoon has up an interview with Todd Kerpelman, the Creative Director for EA's Pogo Games. Pogo specializes in the market of 'casual games,' and the site quizzes him on what it takes to make simple games fun. From the article: "If you want to focus more on casual games, I think it's a common trap for game designers (myself included) to come up with some idea that's innovative or clever, and we end up being so impressed by our cleverness, that we often overlook the fact that there's a simpler (and probably more fun) solution out there. So maybe the issue isn't that there's "fun" stuff that doesn't make for popular games, but there's 'clever' stuff that we often mistake for 'fun.'"

And then

[Konster]

First, you make fun games, then EA buys you, works your company into the ground until all the best talent leaves, then takes whatever is left and sells the same thing year after year after year with only minor revisions. Then the suits sit around in slack-jawed befuddlement at why the numbers are down, and business is dropping.

It's not like PC gaming is a new thing; it's been around long enough for companies to have a pretty firm grasp on what makes a game fun. And yet, the suits sit around in slack-jawed befuddlement at why the numbers are down, and business is dropping.