{"id":2830,"date":"2008-02-20T08:38:33","date_gmt":"2008-02-20T12:38:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/?p=2830"},"modified":"2021-03-27T02:11:25","modified_gmt":"2021-03-27T06:11:25","slug":"gamelabs-zimmerman-says-casual-games-are-dead-sort-of","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/2008\/02\/gamelabs-zimmerman-says-casual-games-are-dead-sort-of\/","title":{"rendered":"GameLab&#8217;s Zimmerman Says Casual Games are Dead (Sort Of)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"initial-letter\"><p><b id=\"header\">by [name redacted]<\/b><\/p>\n<p>You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make money making casual games, Zimmerman said. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a broken business model for developers, with low royalties, a ton of middlemen, a high turnover of software, a hugely saturated market, and ever-increasing production values, therefore production cost. Finally, now that the casual industry is no longer just a little club in a back room, the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153big boys\u00e2\u20ac\u009d like EA have shouldered their way in, driving independent developers ever more to the periphery.<\/p>\n<p>On the creative end, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Casual games began with a promise.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d They were meant to be a meritocracy, Zimmerman said; smaller in scope, and therefore more conducive to experimentation than big-budget mainstream games. Instead, the field has \u00e2\u20ac\u0153almost become a parody of itself\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 The degree of shameless clones seems, to my eye, to be more prevalent than other sectors of the game industry\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not seeing that innovation is rewarded.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p><b id=\"header\">( <a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamasutra.com\/view\/news\/17499\/CGS_GameLabs_Zimmerman_Says_Casual_Games_are_Dead_Sort_Of.php\">Continue reading at GamaSutra<\/a> )<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by [name redacted] You can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make money making casual games, Zimmerman said. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a broken business model for developers, with low royalties, a ton of middlemen, a high turnover of software, a hugely saturated market, and ever-increasing production values, therefore production cost. Finally, now that the casual industry is no longer just a little club [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_front_end_style_editor":"no","ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"0","ocean_second_sidebar":"0","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"0","ocean_custom_header_template":"0","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"0","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"0","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"off","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,703],"tags":[179,676,391,380,97,27],"class_list":["post-2830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pubs","category-reports","tag-articles","tag-casual-games","tag-electronic-arts","tag-gamasutra","tag-gdc","tag-videogames","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2830"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7676,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830\/revisions\/7676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}