Alongside the complex console games for Playstation and XBox there are many little and much simpler games that everyone can play on the Internet, on mobiles or on interactive satellite TV channels.
These games are called “Occasional Games”.
Their importance is set to get increasingly bigger and a sign of that is that big commercial companies such as Nestle’, just to name one, are promoting their product with this kind of games over the internet or on free distributed CD Roms.
These games are commonly known as “Advergames”.
The narrative of this game is extremely limited. Their appeal is based on quick action and personal skills of the player and no story is actually required. What’s more, an important story can be detrimental to the real playability of the game itself.
As a matter of fact the most popular genres in occasional games are just puzzle or card games.
My project is to develop a simple game for iTV loosely inspired to The Lord of the Rings that theoretically can be really broadcasted, meeting all the industry tech standards of this platform and yet, able to tell the occasional gamer a real story.
I spoke with experienced game designers of occasional games in the company where I work, read books and played a lot of games over the Internet and mobiles trying to find a way to find the perfect balance between game playability and rich game narrativity.
