The term casual gamer brings to mind bored office workers or housewives guiltily grabbing five minutes of Mine Sweeper when no one is looking. But it seems this image is out of date. According to a survey by Macrovision, a provider of casual game services, 37% of "casual gamers" play nine or more "sessions" per week and a third of those polled admitted their sessions often last two hours. Eighteen hours of gaming a week is surely heading into hardcore gaming territory.
More intriguing is when these sessions occur: 73% said they play in the evening while 55% hit the sites on weekends. Here's what is happening. Casual gaming is the real next-gen. The sort of simple, intuitive puzzle games on casual sites such as RealArcade slip seamlessly between delivery channels, popping up on mobile phones, PCs, notebooks and interactive TV services with little reprogramming required. They're living the dream of always-on entertainment, while high-end console games exist in a ghetto, accessible to a few enthusiasts.
Casual game makers are flexible, react to trends quickly and are more tuned in to their audience than traditional console game publishers. The UK studio Morpheme, for example, once specialised in mobile titles, but recently set up a casual game download site and is converting its fun, accessible mobile phone puzzlers to PC. The company has even set up a MySpace page for a key character, Balloon-Headed Boy.
The videogame bigwigs are catching on, of course. Nintendo has launched its Touch Generations series of games, with titles such as Brain Training pulling in a new audience of technophobes. The Xbox Live Arcade service features plenty of casual puzzle titles to download, while Microsoft's Live Anywhere service lets Xbox users contact online buddy lists or order game downloads via a mobile.
An understanding is emerging that casual games are truly pervasive. They can be built in weeks then distributed across multiple platforms to cash in on trends. The marketing barely registers on the radar - targeted newsletters, online community buzz, clever exploitation of popular sites such as MySpace and Digg. People are led almost subliminally to superstar casual games like Bejeweled and Diner Dash and then can't leave.
"A lot of casual games are successful because you can get into a nice gentle rhythm that causes hypnotic zone-out over a period of time," says Morpheme's managing director, Matt Spall.
One day you will find yourself in a waiting room playing a block-sorting puzzler on your MP3 or phone, and you will realise: this isn't about bored office workers and housewives. It is about everyone. It is about you.
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