When people say videogame platform, what pops into your mind? For many people they might picture a specific console, for others it might be a personal computer. Indeed, for many years, the videogame industry was dominated by console gaming. Most triple A rated game are only available on a console or on your PC. However, mobile gaming is increasingly becoming more popular over the years as accessibility and technology has improved. Heck, I love mobile games I think they’re great. Mobile games are easy to play and can be played everywhere. Despite the rise in popularity, mobile gaming still has not been able to rid itself of the label of “casual.” So what exactly is casual gaming and why are mobile games label as casual?

Angry Birds, Cut The Rope, and Candy Crush Saga. All three of these titles are mobile games but are mobile games just games you play on a phone? According to Gregory Steirer and Jeremy Barnes in their passage “Angry Birds: Mobile Gaming,” they “identify the four components of mobile gaming: gameplay accessibility, software accessibility, everyday ubiquity, and variable monetization” (Huntemann 217). Looking at the three games I mentioned earlier, they all have those traits. Gameplay accessibility can be defined as the skill/experience needed to play the game. All three games have simple controls and can be played by new and veteran game players. Since mobile games can be found on the app or google play stores, the second component (software accessibility) can be checked off the list. In terms of everyday ubiquity mobile games can be played everywhere. I mean let’s be honest here, who hasn’t played a mobile game while on the toilet? Finally, for variable monetization, all three games are free to play. Angry Birds makes money via in app purchases of game enhancements such as the Mighty Eagle. Cut The Rope and Candy Crush Saga implement an energy system that can be recharged instantly with real life dollars. So mobile games are defined basically as games that are easy to play, can be acquired anywhere, can be played anywhere, and are usually free to play. So why are they labeled “casual”?

Casual games are defined as “games that are easy to learn to play, fit well with a large number of players and work in many different situations” (Huntemann 217). What this means is casual game are games that require little to no skill and can be played whenever. This is one reason why mobile gaming was quickly labeled as casual. Let’s take a mobile game like Angry Birds as an example. Like with many mobile games, the controls in Angry Birds is relatively simple- your pull back the slingshot with your finger and release. Easy right? Well one of the few reasons for these simple control can be due to the technological limitations of a phone. You just can’t have the amount of inputs on a phone like with a console or PC. However, due to its simple mechanic, it takes little to no skill to play the game. Maybe that’s why Angry Birds was downloaded “50 million times, with total play time, according to Rovio, averaging 200 million minutes a day globally” (Huntemann 217).

Sure hardcore games have their appeals but so do casual games and mobile games. We shouldn’t label one as better than the other since they’re actually quite different. So no matter what the game, or what platform you play on, we shouldn’t criticize people for being a casual gamer or a hardcore gamer. At the end of the day, games are just games.

Citation:

Huntemann, N. (2019). How to play video games. NYU Press.