Progress

I've come to realized that when you have a full-time job, your free-time suffers, hence, the lack of activities on the blog.

However, on the plus side, being busy at work means that I am getting things done! If anyone is interested, I just wrapped up my first web game(!), did a bunch of ESRB submissions (think E for Everyone, M for Mature, etc.), AND learning from my peers.

A while back, I posted on my blog that I wanted to be a producer. Now that I am one, I just can't believe myself. Even on my worst day, I still have a pretty awesome job and strong co-workers who I can look up to.

Right now, my blogging is decreasing (due to time constraint) but my learning is increasing.

I am truly honored to being able to live out a dream.

QA: Very important

With my new job comes a FunPass to games on Gamehouse, which means that I can pretty much become addicted to any game that I want. (Trust me on this: Get a FunPass!)

I find that in the last month or so, I took a fancy to hidden-object games. I played Mysteriez and Mysteriez 2 on WellGamez's website and was immediately hooked.

I dug through many hidden-object games and found a really great game: Can You See What I See? The moment I saw the screen shots to this game, I knew it was going to be good. The production quality was amazing: The art fits - nobody Googled the objects, the games made sense - you knew what you were doing, and the zoom mechanics were spectacular. The mini-games were also amazing as well!

However, when I needed hints, I couldn't press the button to access it, when clearly, CLEARLY, I had three more hints left. The timer was ticking and my eyes were going blind from looking so hard, but I could get no help. It took me to stop the game, return to the splash screen aka the MAIN MENU screen, hit PLAY again, and finally able to access the hints.

Questions: Did someone forget to hire a tester? Is it just me? Did I miss something? HELP!

Are Casual Games a gateway drug?

Back when Casual Games first started its journey to become a bankable genre, the word “Puzzle” was usually associated with “Casual.” (Think the New York Times’ Crosswords, Rubik’s Cube, jigsaw puzzles, etc.) Then came the idea of playing these casual games on the PC. Solitaire, Minesweeper, Hearts were the craze in cubicles. A few milliseconds after that, BOOM! there was the Internet.

At this point, gamers are connected to one another, playing games such as Chess, Checkers, and Bridge. People were willing to pay $0.99 per minute to sign on to AOL on their 56K modem to play these non-console games, thus, the beginning o PC gaming. A couple of moments after that came an exponential growth of casual games. Titles such as Bejeweled, Puzzle Inlay, and Text Twist combined mechanics from both PC and off-PC games to create their own genre.

Fast forward to now. I’m currently playing Build-A-Lot and Build-A-Lot 2 (HipSoft) and I’m kicking myself in the butt! I swore up and down that I would never touch SIM games because I find them boring and too involved. Now I question if I would like games such as Zoo Tycoon, the Sims, and SimCity because I find the Build-A-Lot mechanics very entertaining and addicting. Heck, I might pick up Zoo Tycoon this weekend!

The question that keeps running through my mind is, “Are Casual Games a ‘gateway drug’ for other genre of games?” Looking at the games and the gamers’ trends, the conclusion seems to be that casual games are slowly evolving and players are slowly migrating with the games. Could this trend be because A) Game developers are running out of ideas? B) Game developers are mixing their genre together? Or better yet, mixing them up? Or C) The Casual Games demographics are changing from predominantly females to 1:1 male to female ratio?

Could I be moving slowly closer to playing first-shooters such as Call of Duty 4 or Halo? NAHHH! That’s just crazy talk…for now.