To me it has nothing to do with how good you are at the game and what your real life involves, it’s more to do with how much of a priority you’ve given gaming within your life. For some people, they only play when they have the time (so possibly even once every other week). For others, they are more passionate about it, especially if they have a social network of friends within it, and they’ll play a lot more, every week or even every day if they get the chance.

BTW even though I’ve in a sense defined what I think a casual gamer is, I still agree with Eric that you can’t define a casual gamer as a target audience. It would be the equivalent of saying “We are targeting all people who drive blue vehicles.” It just doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t really narrow down your audience, thus you’re not really defining a target audience at all (which is what Eric was getting at).

Let me introduce myself.

I’m female. I’m a casual gamer. I’m over 20…way, way over 20.

I’m not a soccer mom. I’m someone who works for a living at a demanding job. I love MMOs. I really, really love MMOs. I’m actually fairly good at the ones I’ve played. I understand game mechanics and min/maxing. I’ve raided with top raiding guilds in the various games I’ve played in. I’ve even been part of the server or game ‘firsts’ with whatever guild I belonged to at the time.

But someone has to pay the bills, so I work and if I want to stay in a relationship (even if it’s with another gamer) some time has to be devoted to it. Oh, and I have friends too. Seriously…if you all think that what makes a person a casual gamer is a lackluster approach to a game or the fact that they aren’t very good at it. You are wrong. And if this is where most designers feel the divide exists it’s no wonder they totally miss the mark.

Well what if an MMO game design combined multiple perspectives purposely to take advantage of the diversity of play styles, audiences, and even platforms. For example, FPS games usually require a 3D graphic intensive environment, yet RTS games can suffice quite well with lower requirements in a 2D format. Even more so, certain strategy simulation games, say something like the old Hamurabi game have even lower minimal requirements. Here’s some examples of what I mean.

Say I’m an individual who’s not really into adventuring, roleplaying, or raiding but loves RVR battles and I’m an exceptional leader when it comes to 2D RTS interfaces. Well what if the MMO I played was designed in such a way that I could pop online and interact with my guild as a battle commander. I mean think of how WoW works. You come online, your buddies invite you to the group, and you’re transported to the battlefield. Imagine the same thing but from a 2D Flash-based web browser interface where I log into the game, get invited and transported to the battle, and can now lead it in a 2D RTS format. When I’m done, it transports me back to a set location in my home city and I close my web browser.

Or let’s say I really don’t have that much time at all but I love working the markets within MMOs, buying and selling goods for a profit, and seem to be exceptional at it (spending maybe only 30 to 60 minutes at day at it at most). Again imagine an interface where I could log into the game via a simple mobile PC text interface to buy and sell goods for maybe 15 minutes at a time, about three or four times a day (basically when I have the time in between things). Again if I’m part of a guild or let’s say a corporation within Eve Online, I could be an integral and valuable member of my corporation (community), even though I’m playing just minutes each day.

All said and done though, I think you’re still right. The game still has to be designed from the outset for these varying types of specific target audiences. Yet I’m still interested if you think this is a good approach or potentially bad one, in mixing different target audiences within one game.

I’m curious what you think the console audience list would look like? A lot of what I see suggests they would fit pretty closely into the “Traditional Gamers” category you identified.

Thanks!

I really agree. It’s far too easy to assume a lot of audience on simple terms, but if you actually want to profit it’s better to know who’s going to help you. ;)

Mind you, I’m working on a casual game where my example profiles are women, aged 40 to 60, don’t have the honed reflexes of the Nintendo generation, are constantly interrupted by the kids and home life, play to relax. It’s really helped me pick the features I want to focus on and the features I want to drop.