Will Casual Eat Itself in 2009?

Grubby Games have just released My Tribe, their take on the casual sim genre that was lead by the surprise hit Virtual Villagers. I’m a big fan of Grubby’s work, especially the almighty Fizzball, and this game looks like another decent effort with some good reviews appearing.

Still, I’m a little bothered about the space they are in. Two years ago we were working on our own casual ideas. We’d spotted the casual scene before the big publishers but in the end it was too late to enter a market which was becoming very competitive, particularly with cheaply developed but reasonable quality Eastern European content.

Through our own site we offer some of the indie and casual games which we particularly like, but we only opened up our full site with the Cletus Clay announcement. Before going live, we checked out many of the latest casual games and were shocked to find how little had changed in the last 18 months.

The casual scene has always been full of clones, but right now it seems to be as obsessed with object finding games as it was with match 3 titles. The difference now is that there is massive portal competition, especially on price and with numerous subscription schemes. Is it even possible for developers to branch out but still get coverage on the major portals?

Will they be able to generate enough revenue from games which need to gain traction in order to be accepted? Pricing schemes now make margins increasingly tight, yet the cost of development can be much higher than in the past.

Talented indie developers like Grubby Games could find themselves marginalised, finding it hard to sell enough of more innovative titles to survive, yet also struggling to compete in the world of casual clones. I hope My Tribe does well, but I also hope that there is room for more than just clones in the still relatively young PC casual game industry.

Will 2009 be the year that casual ate itself?

TunaSnax have published a short interview with Grubby’s Ryan Clark in our features section.