I was making a new box for my gameboy games since the old one got to small,
so i was thinking while i was doing that, and i can't help myself thinking:
Isn't it a bit overkill what modern games do?
I see tetris, paperboy, lost vikings, spaceinvaders, what not.
There isn't much to any of those, not even to the RPGs like final fantasy,
but they are huge fun and most people agree, somehow i get the feeling,
many full-price modern games often try to hard, to be everything to everyone.
many modern games are fun, but often become work, there is to much to do,
to many things i want to do, while i could play paperboy for about the same amount of time,
while not getting bored or feeling too stressed, sure there are those old nintendo-hard jump and runs,
without safe function and what not, but still i be like "just one more level".
Is simplicity really the fail safe for games?
Are we moving into the wrong direction with 1001 game mechanics and meta-goals?
Same for board games, not to much to them either.
Sure, modern full budget games are fun also, i remember sometimes doing nothing else in a day than playing anno,
but then i know there are many that hate it, same for most modern titles.
Is a good simple concept fail safe or is that just one of those thoughts?

These days the games you're referring to would be considered "casual games" probably the sort that Popcap and Zynga specialize in. There's nothing wrong with that, they're a lot of fun, but they usually don't have much meat to them.

I think I've played all those games you're referring to, and they definitely are a lot of fun.

True, but where do we draw the line, between casual and the rest?
In the end you often have to play these old ones like tetris more in a hardcore manner to achieve something.
This may be a more radical example, but if you are going to watch, you may want to skip further to the end, it's 30 minutes long, that guy achieved a score of 999.999.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keeSEJG4XzU

Mega Man for gameboy for example wasn't exactly casual either, loads of level-learning and so on.
Monopoly can also last for hours, so can risk,
i heard about marines on the sea became so good that a session between them could last multiple days.

But yes casuals also are often simple but fun, but where is the line really?
Thinking about it - i guess it's also what you make of it.

It's usually casual because it doesn't require a lot of investment to know how to play, and the mechanics themselves are pretty simple. That doesn't necessarily mean that it can't suck up a lot of time trying to get good.

I think your idea of simplicity compared to modern games could be more accurately described as there now being an increased desire for realism in games.

For example, in Mafia II you got a nice realistic city to drive around, there were police cars to chase after you if you ever jumped a red light, or crashed into someone and ran off. The result was that you had to drive around the city very safely, and wait patiently at the traffic lights in a queue. It was just like being in a real traffic jam.

In comparison take the much underrated classic Wacky Wheels, where you could be a duck called Peggles, driving around a race course, picking up hedgehogs and shooting them at the other drivers. There was no attempt at realism, but it was fun. You could argue that Mafia II was a very different game to Wacky Wheels, but in both games I spent the vast majority of my time playing it - driving. One was fun, one was frustrating.

The better games that I see nowadays are those that make no attempt at realism, but let reality go and actually aim for complete escapism.

Where would you place a game like Battlefield 1942? The mechanics are simple and there aren't a whole lot of surprises or nuances to it, though using aircraft effectively takes practice. It was a bit of a resource hog for its time, requiring more than just basic hardware to get decent play out of it and thus putting it out of reach for many casual gamers with low-level hardware.. Teamwork can change how it plays, yet the 'lone wolf' player can be successful, as well. The basic premise - find the bad guy and kill him 'til he dies from it - is quite simple, as are the controls and such. Then again, there are a multitude of ways to accomplish the goals. Casual, complex, or somewhere in-between?

Well, to be honest, lots of games can be boiled down to just that, if you simplify enough. That doesn't really say much about the game in question.

I think both definitely have their place. I dearly love a well crafted casual game (Toki Tori comes to mind, for instance) but more complex games definitely have their place. When I'm trying to have fun, I love a superbly complex RPG or shooter that will really challenge me, but when I'm trying to chill after a long day I prefer casual gaming. I know this doesn't exactly address your question. I just think gaming has come a long way - we still have casual games that make gaming a nice relaxing activity for many people, but now we also have games so complex and detailed that gaming can actually be called a "hobby" instead of just a "past-time".

I meant that in comparison to say, a strategy game, wherein you gather resources, research tech, build a base or two, build a couple forces of multiple unit types, find the bad guy, dodge, feint, deceive, use a pincer trap or what have you, meanwhile paying attention to your own defenses, repair and upgrade your forces, replace your lost units, find the next enemy group, attack again, and repeat until he's toast. Or in a shooter like BF1942, you have a weapon, you see the bad guy, take aim and click the left mouse button, and hopefully he dies before he does the same to you.

In other words, you're killing-or-being-killed in seconds, unlike complex strat games or RPGs where it might take a bunch of steps and 10 minutes before you're fighting anyone because there are a lot of things to do before one gets to that point.

That's why I'm thinking there's a bit of a muddy middle-ground since shooters might not seem accessible to casual gamers, what with the fancy-schmancy graphics and higher hardware requirements, though they are fairly casual in the overall mechanics and with respect to access to the meat of the game.

Good thing i didn't buy mafia2 then.
Aside from hardcore simulations, realism in gameplay is just overrated. It's just not fun to me to get one hit and be basically done for.
We play games to be entertained, i hope people will keep that in mind in the future. Imho online shooters are a whole different kind, and exactly where problems with hedwards comment occurs,
or more specific: his definition of casual, he got a good point there,
but you can't really play them in a casual way, you get nowhere. On one hand, true, but looking at what really makes games tick is necessary.
You can boil WoW down to monster bashing and simple leveling,
but nobody will play it like that and it's not intended that way,
while there usually isn't much to it in online shooters in terms of game mechanics.

The boarders appear to be really flowing without to much rough edges.

I would agree in sandbox games (hello Red Dead Redemption) there is a ton to do, though you can plow through the main storyline relatively quickly. In big RPGs (hello New Vegas and Fallout 3) the same applies.

As a counterpoint, I think some Pokemon games have remained very similar over time and I don't think most people would call those small, even as far back as Gen II (I think Gen I might have been much smaller, not sure, don't think it had breeding).

I did play RPGs back in the day (e.g. Ultima III, Wasteland, Bard's Tale I-III, etc.) that were not small in the least.

There are small games, today though, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West tells a very small story. Nothing in this game is hard, really. The only thing to extend play is some DLC and achievement hunting (should you feel like that). Nonetheless, this was a bigger budget title.

I sometimes have just as much fun playing small, Live Arcade games as big games (sometimes more fun as I can actually finish them in one stretch). Limbo, Tomb Raider: Guardians of Light, and The Maw all come to mind. On the other hand you have games like Hydro Thunder that are great for killing 20 minutes and it doesn't matter if you don't come back to it for a month. I know I'm picking out Live titles, this just happens to be my preferred platform for this kind of thing, but these games exist on all platforms.

I don't think the point was about the size of the games, but of the complexity. FF8 was a simple game, there were a few tactics to pick up, a few bits of discovery as to what worked well with what. However it was not small (I think they guaranteed 50 hours + gameplay, and delivered).

The point is more around whether we need to have a few hundred different paths through skill trees / build trees, and a load of different advanced tactics, especially where it ultimately boils down to people trying them all out, then deciding you need tactic A -> B -> C to be better than everyone else. The complexity is then wasted, or they then nerf said tactic and we begin again.

Games with simple tactics are not necessarily small or large, just not so stupidly complex that they can't be consumed easily.

I have a feeling that today the "casual" stamp does not necessarily come so much from genre / complexity / etc. but from production values and distribution channels.

There are some genres which are only "casual" still (hidden-object games anyone?) but for the rest you can give examples of games that fall into both camps ( is the Westward games hardcore? is Alpha Prime casual? what about Gyromancer?). And where would you place indie and experimental games? Is Minecraft "casual" for example?

I have never liked splitting games into casual and hardcore, it is a very unhelpful labeling which for some people instantly gives a bad connotation and they will therefore never even consider trying them (this goes for both 'camps'). ...game racism?

I would argue that this prove my point about production values and distribution channels- I would guess that this game is classified as casual because it is developed and distributed by PlayFirst (who off course only make casual games...)