2008-05-30

Today I'd like to talk to you about quite a controversial tendency in casual gaming market. A tendency which is characteristic of up-to-date industry, though some of you may be not really satisfied with it. I mean the fact that if you look at the range of games offered by large portals, you'll find there a lot of games that resemble one another like twins or at least siblings. I'm not talking here about sequels that are supposed to be similar, but about games from different developers which you can easily confuse, especially if you are not an expert in the field. So, a lot of similar games in the market - good or bad?

If you think about it, first it seems it's not that good at all. What's the sense of buying two or more similar games, if you can have the one you like most and play it all the time? For example, if you want a time-management game where you sell ice cream, you may choose any of Ice Cream Mania , Ice Cream Craze or Ice Cream Dee Lites , and enjoy it. And there is no need to buy or even download all of them. I'd better buy a couple of different games. But, if we look at it from the other side, we'll see that, at first, they still have some differences and you can always select the variant you prefer. For instance, Pirateville , Mysteryville and Christmasville have absolutely identical game play, and even their names are alike. But their themes differ, and your individual preferences are pleased here, as some people like pirate tales, some enjoy detective stories and for others the best present before holidays is a Christmas-themed game. So, each of the games will find its customers.

 

 

 

There is one more thing about it. Even the most creative developers can't invent new game play or new theme every day. But new games are released every day, and we expect that. So the only way to achieve such regularity is to make similar games with some slight differences. The best way here is to restore something that was well forgotten. Like, for instance, Magic Seeds , which strongly reminds Alice Greenfingers , or all the match 3 games, which differ very slightly. Can you tell the difference between Magic Match Adventures , Heroes of Hellas or Season Match ?

 

So, while at the first sight abundance of similar games in the market seems annoying, there are positive sides in the phenomena. And a lot of them!

 

 

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