Dawn of the Geeks

On screens, but not store shelves: Casual games

Since the release of “Diner Dash” late last year, the hand-painted, drag-and-drop game quickly became the most requested item on major online game sites, including Yahoo Games, Real Arcade and Shockwave.com. Peter Seung-Taek Lee, co-founder and president of GameLab, said “Diner Dash” remained in the top five best sellers of downloadable games, showing considerable shelf life for a video game that never existed on a shelf.

“We wanted something that people can easily relate to,” Lee said. “There is something about very simple play that gives pleasure. You can just click on it and enjoy the game.”

John Welch, president and chief executive of PlayFirst, a publisher of casual games, including “Diner Dash,” said the $20 game had sold more than 50,000 copies and continued to sell about 1,000 a day.

And games like “Diner Dash” have become big business. Casual games–generally simple-to-play, short-duration games that are graphically unsophisticated–will represent about $250 million a year in sales, Welch estimated. They are a small but growing sector of the overall United States game industry, which is expected to generate $8.4 billion in sales in 2005, according to a forecast by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

For those who want to “break into the business” it would probably be a good idea to start small and not break the bank. Games like Tetris are rediculously popular and clones are pumped out by the dozens by amatures each year (I made that up, it’s probably not entirely true). My first big game was “Pimp’s Quest” for the TI-85. It’s spawed awhole new class of games and took only a month for me to code. You simply don’t have to spend much or any money to create a popular game. You just need the talent and a good idea. Games only cost money to make when you have to buy the talent.

Fortunatly for me, I’m satisfied digging through the dumpster so to speak for anything I need for my little projects that I can’t create myself. TMRGE isn’t costing me a dime to make. But the Real Time Software Rendering Tutorials are bringing in quite a few dimes every month. Unfortunatly, that’s literal. But, with a real project being built from the tutorials, hopefully TMRGE will bring in more visitors and more interest in what I’m trying to teach people.