Product Management Meets Pop Culture. A couple weeks ago, I attended a business conference on casual games.
There have been many good reports on key findings. Here’s my summary of interesting trends, plus a VC’s perspective on where things are heading. I’m particularly interested in the idea of meta gaming, and how that could be applied to businesses outside of gaming to drive engagement and reap benefits… New around here? Amazon moves into casual gaming in a very big way - Ars Technica. Video games remain big business, and casual games are becoming an increasingly large slice of the industry's pie.
Near the end of last year, online super-merchant Amazon.com purchased the casual game developer and portal Reflexive, and the industry wondered what fruit it would bear. We now know: Amazon is announcing the launch of its own casual games portal, with 500 games ready to download. For the first week, visitors will even be able to grab three games for free: Jewel Quest 2, Build a Lot, and The Scruffs.
That, along with the ability to try every game before you buy, should be enough to entice fans of casual gaming to check out Amazon's offerings. Youda Farmer walkthrough, review, discussion, hints and tips at Jay is Games. From the creator of Youda Camper comes another overtly-titled casual game: Youda Farmer.
In this resource management sim you play the role of a farmer growing and gathering crops and other food products to sell in town for profit. Using the money you earn, buy new facilities and upgrade existing ones, stimulating the town itself to open new shops and expand current ones. The world of Youda Farmer is divided into two major zones: your farm and the town. Each round of play reflects this division and takes part in two stages.