"Casual Gaming"

“Zombie Highway” by Auxbrain, Inc. is a game only available on Apple products. Although it is not as popular as games such as fruit ninja or angry birds, it is a reasonably popular game within apple’s applications. The game play of “Zombie Highway” itself is very simple, the player drives a car and shoots zombies that try to flip the car to crash it. Although the game can only be played by Apple products, the game would qualify as a “Casual Game” in many aspects because “Zombie Highway” is a portable game which can be played without putting too much effort into the game. But are “casual games” really designed to be casual? Through aspects such as wide range of targeted audience and simple game play, the game may be a casual game. But through the use of same aspects, a lot of casual games are made to be just as addictive as any other MMO games. The addictiveness within this simple and casual game lies within the idea of “Feedback loop”. The “Feedback Loop” refers to the small chain of events the players continuously repeat during the gameplay. For a lot of people, repeating the same experience over and over again would be a boring thing to do. But by rewarding the player with items which can only be gained through “Feedback Loop”, players can be addicted. This is the same case with “Zombie highway”. Although items such as guns and cars can be bought online, they can also be gained through accomplishing certain goals within the “Feedback Loop” such as killing over 2000 zombies or driving 20000kilometres overall. The fact that there are reward for accomplishing the same goal over and over again while there are no punishment for loosing makes the game attractive for the gamers. Through this, “casual games” escape their reasons of being “casual games”. This proves that the lack of depth in such games prove them very attractive and addictive.