I am also reasearching casual games at the moment. Ive found a lot of articles about it from a year or so ago.

Is the market still quite 'hot'or cooling rapidly? I like the idea of the fact that casual games take a lot less time to make than big 3d games but still have good potential for earning while allowing for good ideas and creativity.

What is happening with Actionscript 3 and papervision 3d/sandy is really promising I feel for this market.....

its still the "hottest" market out there at the moment - so you can make good profit if you do it right. the only problem will be, that the big studios (ea...) and casual game portals already have their own experienced teams working on lots of games -> so the market is already starting to saturate pretty quick.
also a lot of middle sized teams working on aaa games in the past start to refocus on casual games. you almost cant reach their quality and efficiency as lone gunmen ehrm developer.

If you focus on good (maybe even new or mutated) game ideas, a handy gameplay and overall nice graphics you can make money even as a "one-man-show".
The sellingrates of casual games are growing (in nearly the same way the total playing time of these games lessen ) - good signes for the casual games market.

Your work (and more important your services) must be professional.
You have to be enterprising and have to follow the changerequest of the publisher/s.
Best way (for me) is to send early but good looking prototypes to publishers and work together on the product.

Multiplatfform and online availabillity is important for the current and more and more for the futur market.

AC3/papervision/java has a fast growing community papervision is under heavey construction and getting more and more interesting for the online 3d gamedesing.

Hi thats interesting, I thought the market would be quickly saturating and the big cos would be coming in.
I agree though a simple well thought out game could do well or what about a point and click idea such as that Mystery Huntsville one?

Mercury you say-
'Best way (for me) is to send early but good looking prototypes to publishers and work together on the product.'

How do you make sure they wont just steal elements your idea? I know film and book companies do not like receiving unsolicited ideas and synopsis as they could get sued by the creators if the publisher comes up with a similar idea.

We pitched our great looking casual game title recently to a big portal and the feedback was that the title that we made is a popular genre(match 3) but it
has extremely tough competition..and it got rejected
so be sure to have a REALLY solid game with the
coolest eyecandy,music if you want it on the portal...another thing is to add
some kind of a game progress map showing which level u r on...and lastly give the player tonnes of rewards within short time frames of playing

Working for/with publishers is a long-time and confidential process.
The best way is to support the publisher with a quality he can sell.
Then he don't try to assume/adapt you "genius" ideas.

Try to contact new publishers with eyecandies and advertise your game.
Don't tell him too much or too less - wait for his replay (and hope you can send him a demo/storyboard/synopsis).

We are part of the casual games market with many many many many many game designers (and even more ideas).
(In the most cases I think my ideas are that unique and ingenious, but after a small reasearch they're not )

Probably, it is good to look at certain examples:

http://www.casualgamesassociation.org/for_professionals_recognition.php

These are the winners of a casual game competition of the established casual publishers (and producers? I don't know.)

My guess from what I saw on some of the casual game portals like BigFishGames, your game has to be extremely polished, zazang mentioned some points, another is, the game play and help system must be extremely intuitive.

I am very cusious for instance how this one will make its way on the portals:

it one the fourth price for being the "most innovative" entry of the contest: "Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble!" and its made by Mousechief Co. USA.

Well I had the idea if I could earn enough from commercial work to take some time to make a point and click adventure/puzzle game.

Has anyone heard of the puzzles Samorost and also the similar one Haluz?
I love the style and weirdness of these games, does anyone know if these earned the creators anything?

Great Link pappenheimer, thanks a ton man

Never explored casual games in full before so this would be a good start.
Great that they have down loadable magazines.