The Rise of Casual Games and Simple Entertainment

Casual games, those five-minute diversions you play for a quick break but somehow end up clicking away on for two hours, have become one of the fastest-growing categories of computer gaming.

While sales of boxed PC games at retail are on a steep decline—38 million games sold in the United States for 2005 compared with 47 million games sold in 2004, according to retail marking consultant the NPD Group—casual games are now enjoyed by an estimated 100 million PC users, according to comScore Media Metrix.

And this doesn’t include the tens of millions of consumers who play casual games on cell phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs).