CES 2009: Perrin Kaplan on Casual Gaming

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CES 2009: Perrin Kaplan on Casual Gaming

Fri, Jan 9, 2009

At Wednesday's "Game Power" panels during this year's CES, attendees heard experts' thoughts on every gaming buzzword in the book -- from social, to mobile, to massive, and beyond. One such discussion centered around "casual gaming," that ill-defined, oft-maligned phrase that gets core gamers in an uproar, and puts dollar signs in publishers' eyes. Among the panelists for the session was Perrin Kaplan, formerly of Nintendo, now of Zebra Partners. Kaplan's is a name that savvy gamers will remember as being instrumental in the launch of both the Nintendo Wii and DS, both wildly successful gaming platforms, and both synonymous with what many define as casual gaming.

During the panel, however, Kaplan raised the point that, within Nintendo, the word "casual" never came up during the design for either device. Instead, the company's aim was to approach the "expanded" game market, demographics such as moms, grandparents, spouses, and most importantly, families. To some, this is still exactly what "casual" means; as the various panelists agreed, the original use of the term "casual game" referred to anything that game companies weren't investing much time and money in, namely, any game that didn't appeal directly to the traditional hardcore market. As such, there is still a stigma attached to the term: For many, a "casual" game still conjures images of hastily-published shovelware as a token offering to female players or the elderly.

As Kaplan explained to us, it wasn't that Nintendo was trying to shy away from casual gaming. "Casual gaming," said Kaplan, "at least, to me, and to maybe some in our group, was a thing that you always tried to achieve, and I think what Nintendo really set out to do was to redefine it."

The methods Nintendo chose to pursue, according to Kaplan, were those that would appeal to their oldest audience -- gamers who had grown up with Mario and friends, but were now adults with less gaming time on their hands."We needed to provide them a way to stay engaged, and if we provided the right thing, the family would want to play too, and then it starts to expand from there. The content of what it is, is a casual game, potentially -- depending on how you want to define that -- but I think it was more about expansion." Kaplan's own definition of casual games, as she commented during the earlier panel, are ones which can be picked up and played immediately, without requiring a large commitment of time. Games that can be played, as Kaplan described it, during "crimes of opportunity," when one is stuck in a line, or on a bus, or plane.

"Nobody said 'don't call it casual,'" Kaplan said of the Nintendo team. "I just don't think it was a word that felt right, or that we embraced. It also is a word that every other copany was using, and we were trying to do something really different. We didn't intentionally not use it, it was just that expanding the base of players was really what we were trying to do."

Whether or not Nintendo intended to avoid or embrace the term, both the DS and Wii became the poster children for the new casual gaming movement, leading many in the hardcore camp to insist that the company was abandoning its loyal fans. We asked Kaplan how she felt Nintendo's "expanded" market would affect the rest of the industry, and she remained optimistic: "I think it's really given people a lot of new hope that gaming can continue to grow, and become a really important part of people's daily lives. I don't think it's an 'if' and and 'or,' I think there's room for anything that's really good, and is satisfying to the consumer to engage with, and interact with."

To those who still feel a bitterness or betrayal over Nintendo's new direction, Kaplan reiterated that gaming need not be strictly one style or the other -- there is room for everyone to live and let live. "Maybe they have passion for a certain kind of art, and there's room for every kind of art," Kaplan said. "I think joy and entertainment is underrated. I think it's a really important part of people's lives. People are pretty stressed; they're busy, they're tired. I think that giving people permission to have that little slice of joy every day is a really good thing." Kaplan cited a favorite moment from her time on the Wii team, in which she got to see the fruits of her labor being enjoyed by an entire family as a means of finally relating to one another. "[A father] was in the room, playing, with his wife, and his two sons, and his eyes filled up, and he said, 'It's the first time my family has wanted to hang out together. Thank you.' It was such a time of struggle; the kids were teens, fighting with their mom & dad, and he was on the road... I just think that bringing people together -- how can that be anything other than great?"

casual games, CES, CES 2009, Interview, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Perrin Kaplan

This post was written by:

Jesse Henning - who has written 474 posts on GameCyte.

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1 Comments For This Post

Sean Hollister Says:
January 12th, 2009 at 1:14 am
It makes me wonder. Are we hardcore gamers greedy? Do we not want to share our experiences with others, because we would not longer be "l33t"? Or are we genuinely afraid that as Nintendo et al. go after the casual market, they'll forget about our need for challenging, innovative games?

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