My last session writeup for IMGDC is up on Gamasutra; I’ve got interviews to turn in and get posted still, though. Good stuff.

This one is all about Nick Fortugno’s chat on the casual view of the MMO genre. In my opinion, this was probably the most important talk given all weekend, and it was very sparsely attended. As usual, there are a ton of notes that got left out of the talk, especially from the end. Read on after the cut for more content from the talk.

I also want to say, Nick had an incredibly engaging speaking style. If you ever get the chance to hear him give a talk, do it! Good times.

Casually Multiplayer:

Pogo.com is a step *lower* than Battle Tetris or Dr. Mario. It’s a radical manifestation of the ‘alone together’ phenomenon.

Club Penguin is somewhat similar – it’s a virtual world but there is almost no activity/interaction. COPA prevents children under 13 to participate in unsupervised chat. Some worlds offer tree-based chat selection tools, Club Penguin just disallows all communication outside of emotes/throwing snowballs/etc. Wildly successful site, just the same. “Disney does not always make intelligent purchases, but at the same time they don’t make wildly stupid purchases either.”

Drome Racing Challenge – A lego-branded title that doesn’t actually allow you to ‘race’. Lego is hugely popular in Europe and they knew they’d get a lot of people, so the gameplay is asynchronous. The race happened in the server, with an assembled set of obstacles interacting with vehicle components. Interaction happened between canned ‘taunts’ that you put on your racer’s account.

Casually Online:

Exploring other distribution models is one of the biggest keys. Successful casual games don’t exist as isolated boxes or sites; most are on portals. Webkinz is the best example of casual/online blurring. The webkin itself is priced the same as normal dolls, so the VW experience is entirely a value add. Parking Wars is another version; asynchronous gameplay that has you parking in a space ‘on’ your friend’s Facebook page. “Probably the best Facebook game there is.”

Casually Games:

More than just 3D RPGs. The normal approach is “casual game slammed into multiplayer”. Some are, of course, questionable as games at all. His best example is Gaia Online, which primarily exists as a 3D interface on a forum structure. The avatars are so customized that they can’t animate walking anymore; there is just a blur where the avatar’s moving legs are. Offers chat and boards, and that’s an MMO to casual gamers. Offers a simple economy based on completing basic chores. No real multiplayer element, though they have some in the works. Gaia Cinema is typical of this kind of interaction: watching movies together with chat.

Nexon’s Kart Rider is probably the most important game in this genre. The game is so successful in Asia that “Nexon will happily sent people all across the world every year to tell people how they made Kart Rider so successful. Like, here’s how you balance items, here’s how you balance gameplay, and I’m convinced that Min Kim does that because Nexon just doesn’t care. They have so much money that no-one can touch them anymore. It strains the imagination how successful that game is for them.” It’s essentially Mario Kart with microtransactions.