Lee pretty much sums up my views on cricket games. Very satisfying to apply real cricket tactics to a test situation, squeeze the runs, force a half-chance and take it.
I should prolly defend my position a little more eloquently by elaborating on my quote you've used, I'm specifically referencing Arcade gamers and casual cricket fans. I think it's a given you'll find the majority of people that visit Cricket Gaming forums to be on the "high end" of any Cricket Producers target demo, that is it say, we're probably in the
minority for their target demo for the game. Therefore, your poll will reflect that. If you love cricket gaming (and cricket in general) you're going to enjoy bowling just as much, regardless of how well the game provides those needs for you.
We are the ones who enjoy the stats and 'beating' the game, modding it, playing it ad-nauseum when it's a over 5 year old game and still being upgraded every other hour by a user (Cricket07) so we're not exactly a good representation of what people like/enjoy in a MAINSTREAM cricket game. If Game studios targeted the high-end users like us, they would never make any money.
My comment regarding bowling was that GENERALLY speaking, your average gamer that would pick up a cricket game, doesn't really find the bowling aspect as compelling. That's not to say I do or don't, but whenever I've played online (very infrequently) a user has quit more often than not after they've batted first. Whenever I've played with friends, it's been a 10 over match that's primarily focused on out-scoring rather than out-bowling.
That being said...
I think the reason is simple; Cricket games more recently have eschewed the bowling/fielding aspect in favor of a greater, more compelling Batting simulation, which is disappointing. Cricket '13 SHOULD find a way to make the bowling aspect more compelling, more interesting for those same gamers that are picking up the game as casual cricket fans.
It's all in the mechanics and finding that equal balance. Since the game is called Ashes Cricket and not Ashes Batting. I think equal reverance and research should be put into making bowling a compelling element to the game. That would start (in my opinion) by drastically simplifying the control system from Cricket 09/10 and better AI batting so when you're playing on your own, bowling is more fun, less complicated but still has enough for us (the hardcore players) to enjoy.
It's all about balance.
Fielding is such a HUGE portion of the "Bowling" aspect that too needs to have some due-diligence put into making it more versatile and engaging. This again comes into play with the AI and simply having more fielding options than "Run after ball, Pick up Ball, Throw Ball back". Earlier cricket games let you select fielders (or automatically selected ones for you) to chase balls down. Since fielding is such a HUGE part of any teams performance these days (especially in regards to T20 Cricket) I would hope (nay, expect) any modern generation game to put equal effort into a versatile fielding simulation as well. Brian Lara Cricket is another example of fielding done reasonably well.
In short, simplifying the bowling whilst retaining enough flexibility with options, better controls and making it a more engaging and exciting part of cricket as it is in the REAL game, whilst giving us more flexibility with fielders and better animations/cut scenes and fielding and bowling AI in general goes a long way into making bowling and fielding equal to batting for casual gamers.
