How'd you find Kongregate?

This can also serve as an introduction thread.

My name’s Mike and I’ve been hanging out here since Raph Koster (www.raphkoster.com) blogged about it back in November. I hope in the future to start my own web based company with a few friends from school, so it’s been a really useful experience chatting with the brains behind this one. Before coming here I hadn’t really been a big fan of flash games, mostly because I don’t like the web design of places like addictinggames or newgrounds, but the streamlined design and community aspects of Kongregate have really appealed to me.

How’d you get here?

I found a link on Fazed.net about a week back. I’m always keeping an eye out for new games sites, but they’re usually add laden with nothing interesting. I’d have to go to several different sites for a game each. I really like the idea of Kongregate’s kongregating. I’m not a huge fan of chat, but the people here are great. Of course, now I’m inspired to make my own games, but I’ve got no idea how (or talent. That could be a problem…)

Ok, I guess I can’t really say how I found Kongregate, but I can say how I founded it.

I worked at Pogo for over 4 years before this, which is Electronic Arts’ web games site. Pogo does a good job at having chat, badges, profiles, and other community features, and has some really good games. But since all the games are made by Pogo programmers or contractors, there aren’t very many really original games on there. So I figured a site that combined Pogo-style community with games uploaded by the developers could be great.

I quit Pogo/EA in May and started Kongregate. I asked my sister Emily to help with the business plan and she liked the idea enough to quit her job, too. Then we found some great web and Flash programmers, a really talented web design team, and Greg our obsessive game scout/developer relations guy/community manager/copywriter/whipping boy.

And then you guys found us, and now it’s one big happy family. Ok, small family so far, but growing.

I was just walking around the city one day when I got sacked and brought into the Kongregate office. Luckily I was a pretty good programmer so they decided to employ me instead of doing God knows what…

That and I used to work for Jim at EA/Pogo.

DrNero told me about it and it was the love on the first sight.

About a year ago, I was finishing up college at UC Davis. I’d majored in psychology, so the world was my oyster. Oh, and I wrote videogame reviews for the campus newspaper, too. As soon as I graduated, I got a contract job with NHN, which runs ijji.com. I did a lot of random stuff there, from transcribing research studies to writing internal reviews of their games. All was good—especially with the assortment of hot Korean chicks in the office. But a contractor’s schedule proved to be a little too sporadic to support rent in the Bay Area, so I applied to a Craigslist ad for employee #4 at Kongregate. In proper alignment with a movie cliche, I was offered a bunch more work at NHN the day after my interview with Kongregate. But by then I had already heard Jim’s ideas for the site, and I liked it so much that I turned down reviewing video games in an office full of hot Koreans to work at Kongregate. Endorsements don’t come much higher than that.

My name is Andreas Zecher and I am a design student at the University of Applied Science Potsdam (Germany) currently working on my diploma: A computer game about the basic principles of games. I heard about Kongregate via the GameSetWatch Blog. I thought, cool they also have this competition, only to find out, only people from the US can participate. So it’s very nice that competition is now open for developers from all over the world! I really liked two things from the beginning: The interface design of Kongregate (everything clean and user-friendly), as well that you can actually talk to the people behind it, give feedback, and the feedback is actually considered and taken seriously. This is something very rare to find over here in germany. Companies here are doing everything (advertising, discounts) to get you as a customer, and when you have become one, they do everything possible (literally no service at all) that makes you want to leave again.

found Kong from a techrunch article about making money with adverts on your flash games (MochiAds) then saw some related articles and one was about Kong so i uploaded the two games ive created so far. I really liked the fact that you can get a feedback directly from the players and talk with them on the chat. That’s what i wanted to do on my own website but yet, there isn’t enough players for that :p now i really love it, chatters are so fun and i can ban people now gnnnaahhahahahaha

Greg invited me, and instantly fell in love with the site. :D

I’m a game/web designer and since the last 3 year I’ve been working on middle size flash game. Sometime as a illustrator, programmer or conceptor. I work on 11Somerset.com a few years ago and I’m doing the same kind of work today on other liscence project. I’m a part time gamer and I’m always looking for new idea and game dynamics on the web. I took a very interesting link on Fazed and, I too, fell for Kongregate. I like the idea of a fun, clean flash portal with strong community tool. Kongregate make me want to create games of my own so I could share it here. Looking forward to this site adventure.

I followed a link from Sirlin.net some time in November. He claimed to be working on some type of CCG meta-game for the site, to be coupled with a xbox live style reward system. This sounded so incredibly awesome that I immediately clicked on the link. Well, that system wasn’t up yet, but the flash games here were way better than anywhere else, so I stayed around anyway.

Hey, I’m a game making person. I also moderate Newgrounds, this site, and run jmtb02 Studios (jmtb02.com) and FlashWiki (flashwiki.net), a growing wiki supporting the global flash community. I work for Armor Games, and go to school at UC Davis (where Greg was from).

Greg emailed/IM’ed/PM’ed me and told me to check out this site, so I did. I was pleasantly surprised in a Flash game site that wasn’t like every single other one, so I decided to stick around and see what was up.

Raph Koster blogged about it a few weeks back. I came here and spent more time than I really had to give playing Fancy Pants Adventures. So I stayed.

I found it while following a link from the game guy’s blog at download.com

• Jim’s article on Experimental Gameplay Project about Kongregate.
• some blog which? i really don’t remember

I found it on the FreeGamesNews Blog, via the article “Kongregate: The next generation of free online games portals?” I was definitely intrigued by the profit-sharing idea and also the game contest. I have high-hopes for this site, and plan to contribute to the Flash gaming community here.

shrugs... I knew this weird guy named ‘Greg’ from this online community called Triple Triad Online… and then something about him living in a city with the the highest cost of living in the country and needing a job and this new gaming-oriented thing… ;-P

I met Jim and Emily at the Casuality Game Conference last June as they were looking to spread the word about Kongregate to Flash game developers. We were instantly excited about the plans for this site and jumped on board when the private alpha hit. Looking forward to the meta-game and game challenges that are planned for the future!

My friends told me about that after hearing that TheSwain and jmtb02 was in there. LOL

I read about it on download.com and am now addicted to the site. Some very nice people play and chat here and the games are well made and fun. That’s one of the many reasons I spend time here.

I found Kongregate through Mateusz Skutnik’s webpage www.rewolucje.com for the game Mars Raider. This was back before the Guest feature was up, so I opened some inane account “qwerty” or something to play the game. I didn’t think all that much of it. However, I decided to go back and play the game again one day, February 8th 2007 to be precise. The site had much improved, and voila! I liked it. I saw there was a friendly chat going on (I believe it was about the game Darts, mainly between gamegrl and vynx – I have quite a memory, don’t I?) Anyway, I decided to join (again, this time with a real account) and see just what this Kongregate was all about. I immediately found the community to be welcoming and friendly, the games to be wonderful, the page design was great – just the gaming site to have picked out of the many sites to join. (and btw it kicks newgrounds’ butt.) Gotta love the points system, I can’t wait for the mini stock market. So anyway, here I am today. I have officially been on Kongregate a month :)

I found Kongregate through Digg.com and been using proxys to play it in class since…

i found a link a website in january and signed up imediatly, because they had games on their site i had never seen before. This is honestly the best gaming site on the web.

I found it through digg.com

Nice of you to say sprint, Emily and Jim Greer will probably appreciate that. I agree anyway.