(Lie.)

I know a lot of people that would cry if they ever read that headline, but not me. Are social networks and iDevices good platforms for serious gamers?

I have no idea.

But, I do think those who are serious about developing games should be paying attention to what people are playing on the casual platforms. The platforms that cater to smaller games give developers the ability to push the boundaries, but still reach a substantially large audience and not necessarily put the company out of business if its a total flop. These are the ideas that are such a gamble that few would try to implement them into a full console game with a multimillion dollar budget, but they are extremely important to the evolution of the games industry.

In 2005 a group of students at DigiPen released their senior project for free online. It was an environmental puzzle game called Narbacular Drop, which won the 2006 Independent Games Festival Student Showcase. As you probably already know, this is the game which evolved into Portal. This is the essence of what I’m talking about. Instead of trying to make a successful game by emulating the best sellers, Valve found a gem in the sea of low-to-no budget experimental games, hired the developers and incorporated their vision into the Half-Life universe – and made an incredibly kickass game.

A game I’m looking forward to this fall is Ghostwire for the DSi. Developed by A Different Game, Ghostwire is the first augmented reality game to be released for the DSi. The basic gameplay seems to be to use the cameras and microphone to interact with ghosts that seemingly appear wherever you’re playing. The actual quality of the game has yet to be seen, but as a fan of augmented reality I hope this opens some doors for larger development. In particular, I’d love a fully developed augmented reality game utilizing Kinect’s camera systems.

Now, back to Farmville. I have never played Farmville, and most of my friends that do play are blocked on my newsfeed, but I can’t help but be intrigued by the universe Zynga has created. With over 61 million users, I feel Farmville is one of the few games that really utilizes co-op gameplay. Even with a (disturbingly) large number of shooters now offering co-op campaigns, very few actually require the players to work together to win. You can either play the exact same campaign alone or the secondary character is replaced with AI. However, in Farmville, you must have other friends who play the game and will help you out to succeed. This is what I want out of co-op. Now, I know there are plenty of MMOs out there that already require teamwork, but I want a campaign on my console that my friends can interact with.

So yes, I’d rather play a .99¢ student game on my phone than ever have to suffer through another $60 quick-time event. Again.