In FPS, I would say that Battleground Heroes is asset-light. I would also say that Plants vs. Zombies is asset-light, especially in comparison to games like Defense Grid… or “true” RTS.

Asset-light can mean so many things, but IMHO the best description for a developer/designer would not be a concrete number of assets, but more how elegantly assets are used to create, as you say content, content, content. Asset-light just sounds better than asset-constrained.

I think lately everyone’s trying too hard with their paradigms and catch-phrases. The Chipotle bit loses me (partly because all of the establishments you mentioned in the previous article do not exist near my locale) and “asset-light” is just marketing-speak to make small, cheap games sound more attractive.

In whatever sense asset-light is used, it’s nothing new, just more prevalent and in the news lately (iPhone, Wii, etc.). Portable gaming has always been asset-light yet carrying big sales and quick / easy games on the web are as old as Flash & Java.

The problem IMHO is when cheap games oversaturate the market, the industry takes a belly flop. The first big example being the glut of cheaply made games leading up to the 1983 console ‘crash’, where most players migrated to deeper games (at the time) on computers.

It’s taken literally decades of focus on quality for the games industry to prove relevance, but now that we’ve had that, everyone seems eager to jump on the bandwagon of quick product for bigger margins. It hasn’t helped that some quite big and expensive projects have basically pulled their versions of Apocalpse Now, making the risk of big budget ventures seem higher than they should be.

Some of the examples are deceiving too. Popcap isn’t really asset-light, their games are approachable and deceptively easy to get into, but they know how to deliver good chunks of content. Look at how much is packed into Plants vs Zombies or Peggle.

This topic seems frustrating, especially coming back to the (shoot him again) messenger, because the problem with MMOs lately has been that they’ve failed to deliver on content, content, content. Of course they’ll be in competition with asset-light competitors, because they’re lacking in the assets that they’ve delivered.

That the cheaper made games are targeting the online market is no surprise, because it’s proven to be lucrative, even for the games that fail to live up to standards.

Sometimes the relevancy of an idea can be completely sapped away by the person saying it.

Regardless, I don’t know if you are focusing on the Barnett interviews or the issue I focused on, but The Passage is a very time-defined asset-light game. I haven’t played The Path yet, but it was on my radar awhile ago.

I do not think that time-defined, asset-light means that the games cannot be emotionally arresting or challenging. I don’t think he is ignoring personal engagement either. Take his horse race example from the Able Gamers interview. Sure, his example requires you be at a horse race for it to be personally engaging, but MMOs rely on guilds, groups, etc. to be personally engaging. It doesn’t just stem from the game.