Bryan Cash (Schell Games), Jeremy Gibson (USC)
Of the top 20 Facebook games, 16 of them are sporadic-play games.
Animal Crossing is an example of a top-shelf console game that was designed for sporadic play.
Kingdom of Loathing is an example of a sporadic play Web game outside Facebook.
The old BBS games like "Trade Wars 2002" were good examples of the earlier generation of sporadic play games.
Fantasy sports are another good example. Actions are done, then you wait and see what happens. And it's been around since 1960.
Play-by-mail games peaked in the 1980's, starting with a PBM version of Diplomacy.
Play by mail chess added the wrinkle of research. People would research their moves in books, giving a new strategy that you wouldn't see in face-to-face play.
The stock market - You take time, make decisions, and then see how your decisions pay off. You can only interact in small moments.
Sporadic play does not necessary mean casual games. Sporadic games intentionally limit interaction, may not have the short learning curve, an have the persistence of sporadic-play games.
Sporadic games frequently involve asynchronous multiplayer elements.
Sporadic games target non-traditional gamers. Many games are sporadic in nature, but they are often not analyzed from that perspective.
"Skyrates" - a sporadic-play game developed by Carnegie Mellon technology center. All flight is in real-time, and things can take hours. It was up to you as to whether or not you would actually interact with the game.
The world is persistent, and interactions are brief. Your action queue is carried out by avatars while you carry on with your life.
Why sporadic games? It's all about respecting a player's time. Even if you have 20 minutes a day, you feel competitive because everyone has 20 minutes a day. It's not about player position but velocity.
It's also good for managing obsession. Players often play your game to the point of oversaturation. Games that allow you to play all you want also allow the players to get sick of it. "Always leave the audience wanting more".
Developer benefits are that the life of your content is extended, giving you time to develop more and develop based on consumption trends.
"Kingdom of Loathing" is a good example. They dole out content as the players want them.
You can still internalize a game as a constant "drip" of interaction.
The best example of non-casual sporadic play is "Eve Online" and their skill learning quests.
Revenue models can give the users a more lucrative use of time. Buy some experience points or "luck" today. They can also avoid the tedious parts of the game if they pay some money.
"Time currency" - points gained over time that allow the player to interact with the game.
Scheduling - groups of actions that will occur as time passes. Actions could be sequential or parallel. Who is doing the scheduling, though? The game could impose time limits, or the player could get them.
Events are based on "predicting the future". You must weigh the chances of an action and predict the state of the game in the future.
Multiplayer - how are players going to affect one another?
The future of sporadic play - Engagement customization - Could players customize their experience between sporadic and non-sporadic play, adapting to how much you want to play? Could the game work as single-player as well as multiplayer, and can these play styles work together?
How do you elegantly handle the desire to quit. Can you put users "on hold", ala Netflix?
Shared time currencies. Can action points be shared among games or players?
Can you allow community consensus, ala voting?
"Multi Engagement Gaming" - The same player can play the game differently across different devices.
I've been studying and dissecting these sorts of games for months, mainly the Storm8 games on the iPod Touch, but also looking at the various Zynga and Playmesh games. Playmesh is by far the least quality of the games. Storm8 does some pretty interesting innovations to overcome some of the balance issues. Zynga is the de facto king, as is evidenced by practically everybody on facebook playing mafia wars and farmville.
I play the Storm8 games, and feel they have done a good job. Unfortunately, I have essentially exploited the game in that I have spent all of the money I earned performing missions on various passive income items, so I get insane amounts of money just for letting the time pass. Money (or whatever resource is the equivalent) is never my shortfall resource, and I further invest passive income into more passive income generators.
The shortfall resource is always energy/mana/action points, which can only be increased at level ups and in earning certain threshholds, like the various games that have some sort of "mission mastery" concept.