latest blog entry
Rockstar Casual Games
May 25th, 2006, By Duncan Gough
Could the most notorious game development company have just created a casual game?
Rockstar, creators of GTA, are set to release a table tennis game. Interestingly, take a look at this review snippet from eurogamer.net:
Superficially it’s incredibly simple. You learn everything in five minutes, and then it takes hours to master.
That, right there, is the de facto definition of a casual game. Simple to learn, hard to master. There’s more:
There’s a well-worked training mode, which explains how the four face buttons are mapped to backspin, leftspin, rightspin and topspin, then talks about positioning yourself and handling smashes, serves and the game’s “focus” special power meter, all the while it’s giving you a taste of the pace.
This is the domain of the best casual games, like Collapse. The ones that get it right have built in tutorials and learn-as-you-play difficulty curves built in. Plus, most casual games deal with games you’ve already played - cards, pool, darts, chess, table tennis.
Do a quick exhibition match to get the feel and you’re set. Everyone’s played table tennis anyway so it’s obvious how it all works and the game respects that.
Yup. Rockstar Casual Games.