No touching!

Photo from http://flickr.com/photos/chibong/2468961145/
Talking to a friend recently about my work he came out with somewhat of a revelation that hadn’t occurred to me before. Talking about Warfare 1917, he said to me:

“You know what I like about it? I can play it while I’m on the phone at work.”

Sure enough, you can. The gameplay doesn’t require the attentiveness of the average action game. His comment got me thinking, do people like playing games where they’re not required to give it their full attention ALL the time? The popular casual games of the last while seem to back the theory up, look at Desktop Tower Defense, Sonny, Age of War. Interact with them a little, then sit back and watch the result. I know with all of the aforementioned games I set off with the intention of only playing a while but the simplicity and lack of effort on my part keeps me playing for hours.

What  do you guys do while playing these types of games?

Are you a fan of these minimal interaction required type games? Why?