Articles by Tim

Hi, thanks for dropping by. If you are interested in a lively community around mobile casual games why not register to play, score and make friends. Please go to http://www.playyoo.com/common/registration.html

Animation magazine has reported on Cartoon Network’s successful launch of its Ben 10 Alien Force Game Creator which has seen more than 20 million game plays in its first week. Molly Chase, VP and executive producer of Cartoon Network New Media says “Our online fans are building and sharing this game and enjoying an unprecedented level of interaction with both a favorite show and their fellow fans. We see this type of game as a wave of the future for the online gaming market and have already begun work on expanding the experience to feature another popular network franchise.”

One of the more challenging games submitted to the Playyoo launch contest was Think Fast by Izam. It’s an educational game that challenges players to solve math questions, quicker answers are rewarded with more points. Our initial reaction was "What a great idea!".

Now, according to ReadWriteWeb, a book has been released by MIT professor and director of MIT’s Scheller Teacher Education Program Eric Klopfer which makes the case that mobile games can augment other education tools.

Adobe has announced its “Open Screen Project” aimed at ensuring a consistent rich internet experience across a broad range of digital screens including mobile devices. Part of this announcement reveals that licensing fees for Flash will be removed in the next major releases. Adobe expects this to cut a year off it’s previous forecasts to get Flash Lite penetration to one billion devices, now by 2009 instead of 2010.

According to my calendar 2009 is next year……

Game Creators seem to be all the rage lately. We recently found Dick Dynamite over at gotoAndPlay(), this game allows users to create their own levels in an arcade style game reminiscent of 80’s games such as Pacman and Atomic Bomberman.

Sploder’s Game Creator is another we’ve been playing with and it provides a lot more flexibility in creating its space shooter. It allows users to shape the playing arena, add a variety of goodies, baddies, health and weapons.

As with most Game Creators it’s a joy to see the creativity unleashed when users have access to easy to use game creation  tools.

Games on Deck have published an article on Playyoo titled “User Generated Games Are The Next Big Thing” in which they discuss the rise of casual games and user generated content “The next logical stage is the democratization of game design-where just as anyone can play games, anyone can now create games.”