In Latest Branded Entertainment Play Toyota Brand Teams With Kongregate to Teach Players to Become Developers
YORK, Pa., Beth Snyder Bulik, October 16, 2008
(AdAge.com) — A hip young brand has to get in the game — video gaming, that is. And this week, Toyota's hip young auto brand Scion added video–game development to its branded–entertainment portfolio.
We talk about the service's new tutorial/toolset, Kongregate Labs.
Kyle Stallock, October 14, 2008
(1UP.com) — With new distribution models being constructed, the growth and subsequent broadening of the industry, and ballooning budgets "forcing" traditional publishers and developers to continue releasing games with "proven concepts," there has been a dramatic increase in independently produced content. In fact, some of the most critically–acclaimed titles of the year were made by development teams that could fit comfortably in old–fashioned phone booths.
(The Wall Street Journal) — The videogame business has traditionally been about big game developers, big budgets and blockbuster titles. Now it's also about guys like Joe Rheaume.
(Joystiq) — We hook you up with two different kinds of games in the JFGC. The first are just titles that we hope you'll think are fun. The second are ones we've been paid to post about by the Chinese government to make the English–speaking world less productive. Posting about Kongai … well, let's just say if you want to go to a fancy meal that will cost no more than 457 yuan, you don't even need to worry about it. We've got you.
(Tech Ticker) — Kongregate has been called the YouTube of gaming because it's so addictive. Time magazine recently named them one of the 50 best sites. TechCrunch has lauded them as a major suck of time. Sure, we can't get enough but will it ever be a scaleable or profitable business?
(Tech Ticker) — Jim Greer already had it pretty good. The mild–mannered founder of Kongregate had snared money from the Valley's elite Web investors including Jeff Clavier, Reid Hoffman and Greylock — despite more than a few of them claiming they weren't too bullish on gaming.
Some are as useful as a GPS device, others aren't that useful but give you something to do when you had nothing planned for the day. Put them all together and they become TIME.com's 2008 picks for the best the Web has to offer
Anita Hamilton, June 20, 2008
The Web is a gamer's paradise. Kongregate is our current favorite for its fabulous arcade of free Flash games (most of which tend toward the testosterone–laden shooter and action genres). Games on Kongregate feature better animation and graphics than the simple HTML–based games you'll find on sites like Addicting Games. All 5,000 or so of Kongregate's titles are submitted by independent developers and get rated by other gamers. If you're feeling friendly, you can chat with people online as you play. Other cool Flash–game sites include Armor Games, Nonoba and OneMoreLevel.
(Mashable) — The 2008 Webby Award winners were announced a few scant hours ago. Given the amazing amount of social media and blogosphere award winners announced (not to mention the sheer volume of nominees and categories in general), it'll probably be 2009 by the time I'm done with this post, but I'm going to take a crack at summarizing all the award winners you'll be interested as an ardent and frequent reader of Mashable.
(TechCrunch) — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has invested $3 million into user-generated casual gaming site Kongregate through Bezos Expeditions, his personal investment vehicle. Kongregate CEO calls it a "super angel round," although technically it is a B1 round (the startup raised $5 million in a round led by Greylock). Bezos Expeditions won't be taking a board seat. Greer says:
If we had done another venture round, we would have had to raise $12 million to $15 million [to satisfy current the target equity stake that would be required by new VC investors]. We don't need that to get to profitability. We still have $6 million in the bank of what we've raised so far, including Bezos' money.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — Comedian Eugene Mirman held court Sunday night during the South by Southwest Web Awards, keeping the audience laughing as he handed out prizes to the creators of 2007's best new or redesigned websites.
After much deliberation, the Develop staff name the 25 people reshaping the games development business as we know it…
Jim Greer
Kongregate
Greer founded and is CEO of Kongregate.com, an online portal for Flash games that is driven by community features and encourages developers to upload their own creations. The site has helped give joint focus to both the user–generated games content and Flash development scenes, turning people like Paul Preece (developer of favourite Desktop Tower Defense) into stars amongst those in the know and also targeting a mass of games players. Lessons learnt in 17 years making online games for big industry names — Greer worked on Ultima 7 & 8 (Origin), NetStorm: Islands at War (Activision), was in charge of web games at Shockwave.com in 2000 and moved to Electronic Arts in 2001 as technical director of pogo — have helped build a destination on the web that really does reward developers with profits from innovative short session games that players love to play.
(New York Times) — Two months ago, I was drowning in video games. In the pre–Christmas onslaught, games pour into every video game critic's office as though blasted out of a fire hose; you need waders to slosh around in them. Then at the end of November the fire hose is shut off, a couple of final games drip out and there is a deafening silence until next autumn.
