David Roberts has seen a lot of things come and go in the games industry. The chief executive at PopCap Games, he’s attended the Casual Connect conferences since the beginning – and during a speech at the Seattle show, Roberts offered a good-natured rant, poking fun at the industry at large, and casual games in specific.

Developers, he said, have continued to make larger and more expensive games “for a smaller and smaller audience.” And he believes innovation has ceased in hardcore games, or, at least, “what I’d think of as a glacial crawl.”

Hollywood comparisons are often overused in the games industry, but Roberts said that these companies are locked into, with very few exceptions, “blockbusters with sequels.”

In his movie analogy, the casual space is much closer to indie studios. Not only that, but a company like PopCap can test out a couple of platforms before committing fully.

Roberts then elaborated on his man thesis – that the casual games industry will chase after every bright shiny new opportunity it sees. Four years ago, it was casual PC and Mac games for soccer mums. Then it was mobile games. Then it was flash games. Then the iPhone. Somewhere along the way, after Club Penguin sold for a fortune, it became free-to-play MMOs aimed at ‘tweens.

“And then, of course, this year, if you’ve been to any of the sessions, the new thing is Social.” Roberts said that the industry has gone from one bright shiny light to another.

He took aim at portals that have conditioned players to expect a game a day, and now players just care about the new game every day.

“I think we can break out of the games for moms box that we’ve built for ourselves.” But the casual games industry has a short attention span, he said. As always, “We yearn to try something more exciting.”

And each new, exciting thing has turned out to be something of a let down. “People realised that it’s hard and expensive to build games for 500 different handsets in eight languages,” said Roberts.

“I don’t think it was ever the pot of gold that investors thought it was for a while,” but, he adds, it’s still doing well. “It’s still brining people to gaming.” The best example of that is the iPhone.” But Roberts said there are too many apps, and still problems with discovery for new titles.

“We still have a lot of the free-to-play, Asian-style MMOs,” he continued. “Next year, I think you’ll see the ‘tween MMO corpses littering the landscape.” But they’ve been good, he suggested, because they’re pioneering business models and infrastructure that could well benefit the rest of the industry.

Flash game factories have taken a hit, said Roberts.  “The advertising business has killed a lot of that.”

As for social gaming: “This is the new ‘it’ thing this year.” Excitement is as high as Roberts has ever seen in the space.

“As I think about our bright-shiny-light problem, and our focus,” Roberts said, adding that he believes the industry is now better equipped to move things forward, “in real, tangible ways, all the bright shiny lights are all finally coming together.”

He also bemoaned how often there are discussions without ever bringing into the play the importance of the games. “This doesn’t get talked about much at conferences. It’s about the games.”  He said that, originally, the founders of PopCap were told that Bejeweled wasn’t even a game. And now the company sells one copy ever ten seconds.

Roberts also addressed the notion of crossover markets – where hardcore gamers can engage in casual titles. “Our first big success was Peggle.” He said the game was an unlikely success, because it’s filled with rainbows and unicorns.

But they partnered with Valve to create a special edition of the game for the Orange Box. “It drove huge amounts of excitement to the game.”

Internal research from PopCap shows that 57 per cent of internet users play games.  Roberts said the figure was “pathetic. That’s something we really do have to fix.”

PopCap has the goal of trying to create games for everyone.  But, the company realised, if you build games for everyone – the crossover market is everyone, too.”

“Steam for us is a surrogate for the hardcore industry, because they’re a very hardcore focused portal,” he said.  ”The crossover markets can really drive a lot of revenue.”

Roberts added casually that while PopCap hasn’t shipped anything for the Nintendo Wii yet, it is “working on it. We’ll see how it goes.”

“This industry should look at trying more things that haven’t been done before,” he concluded.

Words by N. Evan Van Zelfden