"Casual gaming" slammed by Rockstar exec

And he certainly doesn't mince his words

6 May 2008 12:05 GMT / By Verity Burns

With the release of the Wii, and to some extent the DS, casual gaming is at arguably one of its highest levels in recent years, with people who wouldn't usually pick up a gaming controller doing so for the first time, and using it only every now and then.

And what's the problem with that, you might ask? Well, a lot according to Dan Houser, one of the top execs at Rockstar Games, who thinks casual gaming is a bit of a copout – and isn't afraid to say so.

In an interview with NY Mag, Houser said bluntly: "Yeah, **** all this stuff about casual gaming. I think people still want games that are groundbreaking.

"We're hopefully going to prove that there's also a very big audience for people who want entertainment in another form, who think of games as being a narrative device that can challenge movies."

This is why, Houser says, Rockstar has never been a company to push games out one after the other. He says the company's focus has always been on creating a gaming masterpiece, or something that drives innovation, rather than a game that looks and plays like everything else on the market.

However, strangely, Houser doesn't seem exactly against the Wii either, which by Nintendo's own admission is a popular choice for the type of gamers Houser disdains. He said: "The Wii is doing something totally different, which is fantastic."

Now that’s sitting on the fence if we've ever seen it.