All this week, Gamasutra and casual site
Gamezebo have brought you keynote and panel coverage from Seattle's Casual Connect event, which covered a number of angles regarding 'casual games' today.
Some of the notable lectures from this conference included PopCap decrying cynically focused casual games in favor of wider-ranging, 'core'/casual crossover titles, and Nintendo and Facebook discussing their platforms.
The jointly covered Casual Connect lectures comprise the following notable write-ups:
Top 12 Social Gaming Trends
What are the past year's 12 most interesting and ground-breaking trends in social games? Playdom's Steve Meretzky and David Rohrl, plus Hit Detection's N'Gai Croal, gave a round-up.
Building Strong Brands In A Storm Of Competition
Developers can survive increasing competition and falling prices in the casual space by building strong brands, not by cranking out volumes of low-quality titles, says Last Day of Work's Arthur Humphrey.
The Fatal Flaws Of Flash Game Design
Flash game portal Kongregate's CEO Jim Greer and Developer Relations Manager Greg McClanahan discussed tips on what to do -- and what not to do -- in Flash game design.
What's In A (Game) Name?
Veteran casual devs from Reflexive, Rebel Monkey and more talk about the surprisingly key role a game's name plays in attracting users, globalizing a property and selling sequels.
How Corpse Craft Turned Real-Time Strategy Casual
A real-time strategy/match-3 hybrid full of the undead? In this report, designer Tim Conkling explains the thinking behind popular casual RTS
Corpse Craft -- both what he put in, and what he deliberately left out.
Nintendo's Prata On The 150 Million Untapped Gamers
Nintendo's Tom Prata talks about the 300 million active gamers worldwide, and "for every two players... another one waiting to join."
Facebook's Davis Talks Social Network Game Tips, Tricks
Facebook's Gareth Davis offers specific tips and tricks for what to do -- and what not to do -- to succeed with games on the popular social network.
PopCap CEO Roberts Praises Crossover Games
PopCap (
Peggle, Plants Vs. Zombies) CEO Dave Roberts explains why the casual biz should forsake "micro-demographics", and focus on creating crossover, quality 'core'/casual games.
[Gamasutra presented its Casual Connect 2009 coverage in association with Gamezebo (http://www.gamezebo.com), the leading editorial and community site for casual games across all platforms. The site features reviews, previews, news, and strategy guides for the latest and greatest in casual games.]
