Now we all know the argument between what makes a casual game player and a hardcore game player and that particular debate is going to continue raging back and forth probably for the rest of the foreseeable future. And far be it for me to interject my opinion on that one. However, I have noticed something as of late which fairly amusing to me and as you know dear readers, my amusement is paramount to the inner workings of the universe.

Now what is it that amuses me? You ask, well my lovelies, let me enlighten you on this new source of merryment.

There’s this strange creature prowling around the internetz, especially on the social networks which is a curious being indeed. I really don’t think scientists have classified this one yet, but in mind, I’ll refer to this entity as the “Hardcore Casual Player”.

Yes, yes of course it sounds like a very good oxymoron, which I suppose it is, and yet I can find no better terminology having encountered this species in the wild.

Now we all know casual game s, especially on social networks like Facebook and Myspace are essentially short playtime games, you know x amounts of minutes or less. So taking Farmville for an example, you prepare your farmland, plant your crops wait hours to days to harvest, rinse, and repeat. Fairly simple formula for a game and yet can be oddly addictive, mainly due to it’s low requirement of brain use. You drop in, do your business like in many of the similar games and then off you go. Wham, bam, thank you Zynga-Ma’am.

Here’s the punch-line though, there are people, however strange as this is, who sit on Facebook for hours on end engaged in these games, either several over a period of time, or they just spend hours and hours playing the same quick game. I suspect this is an example of the Tetris effect we saw back in the day, but it still boggles the mind.

Many of these games, no matter how fun they may be, have the depth of a drying mud puddle yet they captivate people for unnatural amounts of time and have millions of players.

We talk all the time about replay-ability of games and some games try to highlight this aspect.  Yet these casual, low brain activity games seem to suck the time out of people in copious quantities without the major budgets, massive game worlds and deep stories.

I realize that I believe much of this is due in part to the social aspect of these games, they share with their friends, give them gifts, become neighbours and all the other cute little social bells and whistles that seems to be standard MO for these games. But in the final analysis, there seems to be comfort in repeating simple actions that makes these games so addictive. Sure they might have cute graphics and nice lulling music that doesn’t annoy sometimes, but just sort of fades into the background of doing the same basic chores again, even with your friends.

It’s no small wonder the market for social games is exploding more and more. People eat this shit up with their morning coffee and night time beer. It’s like reality TV shows, sure we know that eventually someone is going to be the only survivor or win the amazing race, yet people are captivated by the events that lead to the conclusion which is sometimes the real reward in user/watcher participation.

I sometimes wonder if we need to take a page from the casual game world and find some way to make our more expansive and yes grindy games just as addicting.

Which brings up another issue, people can spend hours on end doing quests and things on Mafia Wars, but they complain endlessly about the grind in MMOs. If you play an mmo in small does as you do a casual game, of course you’ll be less bored by the grind, but you won’t accomplish as much. So how then can we make the long term grind rewarding enough to entice players to do it as much as they can spend hours in casual games?

Quite a conundrum really, for which I don’t have an answer presently.

One thing I do know is that Hardcore Casual Players are a growing trend, a curious, amusing and bizarre trend but one we must be aware of and make allowances for as we continue to make games, be they epically massive games, or cute casual 4 minute fun blasts. There’s a change in the reciepe, and we need to find that secret ingredient again.