MomGamer #77: Confessions of a Hardcore Casual Gamer
Originally published on Gamerdad.com here.
January 12, 2006

I know it sounds silly, but often it feels like a secret addiction. Especially when you get out on the mainstream gaming sites and message boards. When the gang is all going on about the Fight Night 3 demo or the latest blast-aliens-to-green-goo, sometimes I don't pay as much attention as I might. I'm thinking about dropping shapes and making them disappear. Or that little librarian who needs my extensive vocabulary and word search mojo to keep the library from burning down.

Don't get me wrong. I love a good AAA title with the best of them. I love to dig right in and get my hands dirty. But there are some days when all I'm up for is a quick something to do while cooking dinner and I don't want to haul something out I have to really think about. And that's where these games have snuck into my life.

My Xbox360 isn't helping in this regard at all.

The gang in Redmond have included a feature in their setup called the XboxLive Arcade. Seems innocent enough. You have a place where you can download the sorts of simple games you find online in places like Yahoo Games or The Zone. You know, the stuff your mother plays. They even include an addictive little charmer called Hexic on the system hard drive.
For me and mine that turned out to be the equivalent of a guy hanging out on the playground handing out samples. Just a taste. But once you've started, you never get out.

It's totally integrated into the experience. You get achievements and gamerpoints for Hexic and Bejewelled just like you get for Need for Speed: Most Wanted or any of the other big titles. You can switch between the two different types of games on a whim without leaving your couch. And the system has leaderboards for your scores just like they do for the big budget games.

Up until now, casual games were an also-ran on consoles. Except for a the "collections" and "anthologies" or some spotty updated versions (I'm talking to you Gauntlett), there was no real way to get your hands back on the roots of gaming if you were playing on consoles. That always seemed weird to me. These were the games that were the most likely to handle the switch to the home environment well because of the similarities in control structures between the arcade controls and the console controller.

And I love seeing the old favorites back. I got to introduce my kids to Joust here in the comfort of my own livingroom. When confronted with knights on ostrich-back, their main question was, "Why?!" Once we got past the illogic of the whole thing they settled down to knocking each other around. They were quick to see the possibilities once they got their hands on it.

It's not just me, either. The kids are totally addicted to Geometry Wars and Wik: Fable of Souls. And well, last I checked I was in 503rd place on the leaderboard for the Endless version of Bejeweled 2. That's not going to get any better until I get some work done but it still feels cool to say (in a lifeless goob sort of way).

I'm not the most hardcore out there, though. You wouldn't believe the scores at the top of the list look like. I would really like to know what the person at the top of the list does for a living. They've been at that a LONG time.

You'll have to excuse me. I've got to get ten minutes between now and when I have to get my younger son down to the bus stop and that's just enough time to get another level in.