Currently I am not too worried about defining casual games – it is a commonly used concept, and as such not clearly defined.

I completely agree that there are several dimensions to it, such as casual games as a type of game design, casual games as a distribution channel, and casual games as a way of playing. At the same time, I believe we experience these things as something of a packaged deal: To say, “I enjoy playing Counter-strike” refers to both the game design itself, the culture around the game, and the way I personally play Counter-strike.

In that perspective, trying to divorce the game design from the game playing (as the sociological approach is wont to do) is quite artificial. I think it is a bit more useful to say that a game design can encourage or support specific ways of playing, and that there may be a specific playing culture or set of user expectations in relation to a specific game, game genre, or even to something as ill defined as “casual games”.

Users that go to a site selling casual games will usually do so with a specific set of expectations towards what games will be on the site and how they should be played.

There are these games which we are calling “Casual Games” with properties like “small games, easily learned, and usually distributed over the internet” and so on (Zuma, Beeweled and Diner Dash being examples).

But then there is also the way how you play. You can play any game in a casual manner. You can play a quick “casual” Quake session. And you can try for hours “hardcore style” to compete with a highscore in Bejeweled.

On the Gamers in Society Seminar in Tampere last week Jussi Kuittinen, Annakaisa Kultima, Johannes Niemel? and Janne Paavilainen from the Game Research Lab presented a paper proposing a stricter use of the term Casual-in-Games. Probably you should exchange ideas (and keep me in the loop ;). Their paper is not published yet. If Kopenhagen an Tampere would come up with a casual games terminology together it would not only be industry interests forging the “casual” terms.

I have written some posts in my blog about casual games definitions: http://casual-game-studies.blogspot.com/search/label/definition