Online gaming – very much like making love to a beautiful woman

First dial her up, pop it in the slot, frantically press some buttons and hopefully you’re a winner.

Ironically since I started writing this blog I seem to spend more time writing about video games than actually playing them. My partner has never been a Playstation widow though, we have an agreement that we won’t spend the free time we have together doing separate activities. Unless I’ve really pissed her off of course.

Due to this arrangement I spend far less time playing time heavy online games, such as Halo or COD4, than I did when I was single. Instead I’ve spent far longer playing turn-based strategy games you can dip in and out of such as Advance Wars or the sublime Civilization Revolution, which probably makes me old – I’ll be on the flight sims before you know it!

However, I’ve rediscovered my online mojo with Dice’s Battlefield 1943, this isn’t a reviews site so I’ll spare you the details suffice to say it’s a stripped down squad based shooter available on PS3 and Xbox and it’s very, very addictive. It’s also download only, there is no single player component and it offers just four levels, its graphics are pretty enough but cannot really compete with its disk-based peers, such as Far Cry 2.

So what’s the appeal? Firstly it’s cheap at around £10, which makes it worth a punt – even to the cash strapped/risk averse. It’s simple and it’s fun and I can honestly say for someone for whom there aren’t enough hours in the day four levels is just about the perfect number. All too often the casual player can be overwhelmed when he/she plays these types of game which tend to be populated by a the much maligned breed known as the hardcore gamer. Typically when I dare to put myself through this I’ll drop in to one of many maps I don’t know or have only have a vague memory of and get picked off by opponents that know the maps like the back of their hand and call me things like “f**kin’ noob”... Or may be I’m just rubbish at video games but I find multiplayer shooters are generally a little intimidating.

Well does that make Battlefield 1943 a casual game...? Let’s think of games like relationships, you have to invest time and effort into them and in the gaming world I’m a serial monogamist. I’ve been going steady with Far Cry 2 for a couple of months now, it looks beautiful and I want to get to know it better but honestly, I’m just finding it a bit dull… Fallout 2 is a potential suitor that’s been waiting in the wings (or at least hiding in my cupboard – the pervert) since Christmas, I really think we’d get on but after Fable 2 I just don’t think I’m ready for that sort of heavy relationship again just yet… And that’s why I’ve got a bit on the side, Battlefield 1943 doesn’t want commitment, it just wants a bit of fun before we both move on, but it’ll never really go away, perhaps we’ll need each other again sometime. And that’s why I keep all my exes in a black plastic box under the telly.

Disturbing analogies aside Battlefield 1943 is cheap, short and relatively easy to master but does that really make it a casual game? Probably not, it’s multiplayer, it’s a shooter – neither of which give it the pick up and play appeal of titles like Tetris or Peggle that attract even non-gamers. Dice was never really a small developer and still continues to work on big budget titles even though this release suggests its owner EA has seen the potential in download only titles.

Casual games have been a driving force behind the unprecedented success of Apple’s app store and Sony is aiming to get a slice of that action through the download only PSP Go. Cheaper and shorter development times have opened up the market to independent studios that no longer have to sign up with a big publisher to secure marketing and distribution budgets. This is a step away from the AAA blockbuster titles that can make or break a developer, so all power to indies... Or is it? Oz-based blog Screen Play recently suggested that Microsoft is looking to limit the number of independent titles released each year on Xbox Live, whereas there seem to be no such limits on larger publishers re-releasing or remaking retro games on the service or ploughing significant development and marketing spend into “budget” titles such as Battlefield 1943.