Good casual games interview

Gamasutra has a good interview with a coulpe of the guys at Reflexive about Wik, other titles, Xbox360 and PC downloadable games, and the increasing attention paid to casual gaming by the industry's collective capital.

The following quote is one of the best I've heard about the current trends in the space:

"we're not threatened. But the reason isn't because there isn't great talent coming into the market, or that there isn't worthy money or appropriately spent money, it's because the games industry is kind of like the book industry or the movie industry. People think they're going to win the lottery. There's always venture capital pouring money down some movie's throat.

"There's always money pouring down some game's throat as well, and casual games is just the latest place where someone thinks they can just walk in and win the lottery. The reality is it's as hard as normal games publishing. It's very, very hard. The competition is very, very good. The other games are very, very good. The psychology of the gamer is difficult to get a handle on and to try and understand what it is that you need to build to get into the market. A lot of people are going to lose their shirts. We struggled for a long time to figure out what we know now. I don't think it's something you can just get for a million dollars.

"There definitely will be a few [nascent] developers that emerge from it successfully, but the vast majority as always are going to die"

While not exactly encouraging, it's definitely accurate, from my perspective!