Facebook’s recent announcement that the embedded game Farmville has more users than the whole of Twitter shows just how casually games have seeped into our lives . The proof is in the pudding as Farmville’s 69 million users earn Facebook an estimated £614, 150 per day, while Twitter’s revenue was projected to be £245,516 for third quarter of 2009. The realization that gaming has casually seeped into the everyday lives of many more people than hardcore gamers, is a significant one for the gaming industry.

The CEO of Electronic Arts, one of the worlds biggest games developer/publishers, John Riccitiello, believes that “with the advent of the new digital media landscape, we’ve seen a torrent of new consumers. Conservatively, if I add up mobile phone users who play games, social network people who play games, people who play PC games online in Asia, there’s at least a billion people gaming today. So we have five times the audience we’ve ever had, and it’s growing in leaps and bounds.” This integration of games into the more casually used devices, beyond consoles has important implications for how games are developed, as the wider populace interact with the more casual qualities of simple pick-up’n’play games. These qualities have allowed more and more people to begin producing their own games for mobile phones and web browsers. Casual games have clearly become immensely successful in the last few years with estimates suggesting that the casual gaming industry will be worth $13.5 billion by next year. It has even been suggested that the runaway success of the Wii was built on adapting these casual qualities to console gaming. The gaming industry has most certainly noticed it as Nintendo’s competitors begin to adapt their hardware to attract more casual gamers.

While the term casual gaming has become popular only over the last few years, it can be suggested that the concept has been around for 20 years. While dedicated video game consoles produced games as their ultimate end, Microsoft allowed their users to casually dip in and out of gaming with Solitaire, which is widely considered the first casual game with more than an estimated 400 million users to have played it since it’s release in 1989. This success along with handheld devices such as the Gameboy reaching 118 million units sold worldwide in 2008, may suggest, that there was always a market for those more casual about gaming as.

The advent of Adobe Flash games distributed by a web-browser begun the modern drift towards casual gaming as a new market market began to develop. The game Bejeweled has been downloaded more than 150 million times since it’s release in 2001, which is by no coincidence around the same year that broadband internet started becoming commercially available in the UK, with broadband penetration becoming a key driver in the distribution of casual gaming market. Apple realized the potential of digitial distribution and began producing iPods that could play simple casual games in 2003, the same year that Nintendo announced they were developing the Nintendo DS. High internet speeds, application simplicity and availability would eventually reach levels of dissemination where consumers who could previously not create there own games were distributing them to phones and browsers, yet it was the console market that next begun examining the profitability of casual gaming.

Upon the European launch of the Nintendo DS in 2005 the President of Nintendo, Satoru Iwata commented that with their new consoles Nintendo intended to cater for “the needs of all gamers whether for more dedicated gamers who want the real challenge they expect, or the more casual gamers who want quick, pick up and play fun.” This expansion in philosophy to include casual gamers was a winning stroke in the current ‘console war’ between the handheld consoles the DS and the PSP and later the home consoles, the Wii, Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3. In just 4 years since its release, the Nintendo DS became the biggest selling games console ever in the UK, passing 10 million units sold in December 2009. Celebrity friendly marketing in the UK helped in the in the breaking of this record, but it was the simplicity of the largely puzzle and crossword based games including Brain Training, Sudoku and Professor Layton that contributed to bridging the boundaries between gamers and non-gamers.

Nintendo quickly followed the casual yet phenomenal success of the DS by releasing the Wii in 2006. The Wii differed from its competitors the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3, in choosing not to rev up the graphics of its predessor the Gamecube, but instead to branch out to “bring new gamers and casual gamers into this industry” largely through the use of the Wii’s innovative motion tracking control-pad, the Wii remote. The scaling down of buttons, meant that those who were not used to which button is which in gaming could easily swing their arm in the arc of a tennis stroke in a tennis game, giving a more simple, accessible and intuitive control system for casual gamers and those outside of the hardcore. The strategy worked. As of October 2009, the Wii had sold over 22 million more units worldwide than it’s closest competitor the Xbox 360. The console has sold more than 6 million units in the UK in only 3 years and analysts have stated that its current worldwide lead in unit sales, even if the worse case “scenario were to occur, the Wii would still come out the winner, with some room to breathe.” This is a signal of the ongoing trend of good enough technology surpassing its more expensive competitors. While the Wii is first perhaps mainstream example of successful casual games could get, it was still within the console realm, giving it limited success to more casually accessed devices such as computers and mobile phones.

A key factor in bringing more casual consumers into the gaming industry has proven to be to allow gaming in short bursts, either on public transport or on work breaks. Suitably simple, playable games with no need to save were necessary therefore to emerge on devices, which could be easily accessed in these scenarios. In 2007 both the iPhone and Facebook began allowing third party development for applications on their platforms. The lines between games developer and consumer have begun to blur as the last year has seen an exponential rise in gaming on both platforms as developers with basic skills have gotten to grips with the possibilities and the challenges of the mobile phone and social networking platforms. One of the major players in social network gaming Playfish, was bought by EA for around $300 million in November signaling the enormous valuation of gaming on social networks. As previously mentioned Zynga’s Facebook game Farmville has more users than the whole of Twitter and makes Facebook an estimated £614,150 per day through micro-transactions. The social gaming company has also recently raised $180 million in venture capital funds and is doing well enough to advertise, during a recession, that they are hiring on a huge billboard going into San Francisco, without using any words.

In the space of only a year 18,554 third party developed games have sprung up for the iPhone App store. Former ATM software developer Steve Demeter, becem one of the most famous iPhone game successes by creating ‘Trisim’ in his spare time. He submitted it to Apple priced at $5, making $250,000 in profits in the first two months of it’s release. London has it’s own successes in iPhone App development, including Simon Oliver whose ‘Rolando’ sold several hundred thousand copies, with a sequel doing equally as well, this even lead to a recent article in the London Evening Standard newspaper heralding the “Triumph of the Apprepreneur”. The emergence of this trend has given opportunity to websites like iPhone App Freelancer http://www.iPhoneAppFreelancer.com/ to emerge which allows those with no technical no-how but good ideas to collaborate with developers looking for freelance work to create fresh iPhone Apps and games, celebrating the new found potential in the co-creativity of casual gaming.

The potential of this new gaming horizon is vast. So much so that EA’s Casual division refers to itself as Casual Entertainment rather than Casual Gaming. This vastness and expansion beyond the realm of gaming is reflected in the 2007 fact that an estimated 200 million people who do not consider themselves gamers, play online games per month. The demographics of these casual gamers also differ significantly from the stereotypes of hardcore gamers. They are 74% female and 71% over 40, while 88% said they relieved stress from playing casual games and 74% cited mental exercise as a benefit of games. Yet it is not just financially, through an enlarged demographic that the industry will strengthen, but through better games in allowing the additional ideas of non-developers to come through, as the Vice President of Zynga, Hugh De Loayza insinuates that Zynga listens to their users. “A standard console game developer, if he has a 30-year life cycle, he’s going to get out maybe 15 titles, and that’s it. You’ve got 15 shots to make your decisions correct. Here, you can make a decision on a daily basis and alter it, tweak it, and live with it for a longer period of time.” This potential to expand the gaming industry in terms of creativity, finance and demographic has finally been recognized by the more hardcore gamer consoles as they have begun to further embrace digital distribution as well as more casual control systems.

While gaming analyst, Jesse Divnich has blamed the casual gamer for the October drop in games sales, it can be suggested that the lack of a fresh stream of casual games could also be a reason, the games industry must now take this demographic into account. The December resurgence of Wii Sports Resort, gaining 17% in sales to take it up the UK Chart to Number 2, behind Modern Warfare 2, is evidence of the continuous casual demand. Divnich does however go on to suggest that Xbox 360’s “controller-free gaming and entertainment experience” Project Natal as the next “resurgence in the casual and non-traditional markets.” The inherent problem in mentally separating consoles from gaming specific devices is a problem that helped the Playstation 2 win its console battle as many consumers saw it as a DVD player also, yet it is now the battle that the next round of console wars appear to heading towards this.

Microsoft seems to understanding this at last with that controller-free system which can also be used beyond games. Only the sales will be able to tell if Playstation 3’s Motion Controller will be able to challenge it, yet the ability to dream further to appears to be Microsoft’s, purely in pre-release hype. All the console systems however, will have to some extent take the lead from their users who are becoming ever more vocal, and used to instantaneous tweaking and adjusting of their systems with the digital distribution via phones and social networks. In order to keep up with the casual phenomenal, the behemoth that the games industry will have to continue to look towards is the wider populace and how they wish to casually interact with entertainment and games.