Playyoo News

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We’re pleased to announce the release of version 1.0.09 of Playyoo. There are some significant changes here, but they’re mostly under the surface. We’ve made some fixes, and some enhancements, to the algorithm driving the Game Stream, which is Playyoo’s way of getting games to you. The biggest change is that the “sushi belt model” is now working. After you play a game from your main Game Stream channel on your phone (the default view), it is removed. You can find it afterwards in the “Recently Played” channel, and if you really like it, you can add to your “Favourites” channel. The idea here is that every time you access Playyoo on your phone, you’ll be presented with a new game to try.

You may notice a few other changes. For example, if you have ticked “Auto-accept pick of the day” in your Game Stream settings, unless you’ve played it before, then the current pick of the day will show up at the top of your game stream.

The Game Stream viewer navigation has also been changed, as shown below:

You can reset your Game Stream to recommended defaults by using the settings illustrated here.

We’ve got some good stuff in the pipeline, and we’re aiming to address a lot of the issues raised during the survey we carried out a while back. We’re always pleased to hear feedback, positive or negative (although we like positive even more!).

We’ve been a bit quiet recently on where we’re going with Playyoo, so here’s quick update.

Although on the face of it Playyoo has many similarities with other user generated content sites, we need to do quite a lot of heavy lifting behind the scenes to make sure we deliver correctly configured games to each phone model we support. Web developers get frustrated having to deal with browser incompatibilities across a handful of browser / operating system combinations, but mobile software developers have to deal with literally hundreds of devices on many, many networks. This was one of the initial challenges we set out to solve with Playyoo, and we’ve spent a lot of time on it.

For the first version, we had a lot of support from an external partner, who I can’t name for various reasons, but who I’d like to express our thanks to! However, now we’re on our own, with a relatively small in-house software development team working on enhancements and new features.

The first thing we’re tackling is to greatly improve the game selection process, which powers the Game Stream, to give users more control over it, and to provide better results out of the box. We’ve got a whole stack of other things lined up, many taking into account user feedback from the last few months.

You should see some changes starting to appear in the next few weeks or so, as we get back up to speed with development and releases.

We always appreciate and listen to feedback, good or bad, either here, by email, or on the forum. We’re pretty excited about the directions we’re going in with Playyoo, and I hope you will be too!

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.”

Santoki’s game Sketch Mini has featured in Forbes list of Ten Cool Games for Mobile Phones.

“U.K.-based Web site Playyoo.com is a social network where user-generated content demonstrates the beauty of simplicity. Developers and gamers alike can upload and download games from anywhere in the world for free. Players control a stick figure in “Sketch Mini” as he tests his courage and dodges wrecking balls. The game runs on devices supporting Flash Lite, notably including recent Nokia and SonyEricsson phones, plus some LG, Samsung and Motorola handsets.”

Afzainizam Zahari currently lives and works in Singapore as a teacher, his game Think Fast came in 8th place.

The Game

About Izam

Izam has a strong desire to boldly go where no man has gone before (except maybe the depths of a volcano). He is a dreamer/artist/inspirer/performer/animator/game creator/mac user and an overall charming person. Before he became the fountain of knowledge to adolescents, he was busy creating animations for television programmes, web development and mobile games for PDA. All of which were done using Flash. More information about the man and his strange escapades can be gleaned from his blog

The Interview

WordRap

Tell us a little about yourself.
I am Afzainizam Zahari and I am from Singapore. I am currently teaching Science, Biology and Multimedia to secondary school students. I majored in Biology and did a minor in Multimedia in National University of Singapore. I have been involved in multimedia development since 1999 when I was first introduced to Macromedia Director. I learnt about Flash and immediately I fell in love with it.

How did you become a Flash Lite developer?
Back in 2000 I knew Flash was the way to go for rapid multimedia development for offline content as well as for the web. Flash 5 was released in 2001 and I never looked back. In 2002 I started to create mobile applications and games for the pocket pc platform. I enjoyed the experience tremendously.In 2004 when Flash Lite was introduced I got really interested in the possibility of having flash games on the Nokia series 60 platform. I decided to create a simple boxing game for the Nokia 3650. I was forced to re-learn Flash 4.0 Actionscript syntax. Flash 4.0 has quite a number of limitations but then Flash Lite 2 was released a year later. It was quite a relief because I can make use of Actionscript 1.0 and up. However the phones back then in 2005 was mostly able to support up to Flash Lite 1.1. So it was still quite a challenge for me.

You are interested in casual games, tell us why?
I am a strong supporter of casual games. Personally I find that I have very little time to sit down to play a full game on the video game console. Casual games that make me smile and tickle my brain cells work for me. I find it a rewarding challenge to be able to figure out the likes and dislikes of casual players and create a game that will interest them. These are the people that have very limited time to play, but once you catch their attention, you’ve got a winner.

Tell us how you came up with idea for this game.
The idea of Think Fast came from a personal situation in a chocolatier. My friend and I were calculating the prices of the various chocolates on the shelves. I challenged her to find out who is faster at calculating mentally. I lost.She’s a Mathematics teacher by the way. So..Anyway, that immediately gave me the inspiration to create such a game with cute and colorful characters trying to get chocolates from the Lollipop tree. It was a joy to create the game right down from drawing to scripting.

What other games do you like on Playyoo?
Playyoo attracted an amazing number of polished and well developed games. I was blown away by some of them. I really like Bog Frog. It was the kind of game I find it hard to put down until I solved the puzzle for each level. I also like Sketch Mini. It has that really cool animation which simply made me smile. It is a joy to play.

What are you currently working on?
I am currently working on a game called Journey Man. This game was conceptualized when I was 10 years old with 2 of my childhood friends. We never got around to creating the game because we went our separate ways ever since we went on to secondary school. I guess its about time I close that chapter of my childhood by creating the game that we have always wanted to create back then.

What do you think Playyoo can offer to you as a developer?
As a developer I really hope that Playyoo can be a platform for me to showcase the games I create to a large audience easily. And from there, maybe obtain a certain amount of revenue from players who really appreciate the games that I created.

Do have an advice for other game creators how to win a contest like this one?
You have to create an original game that captures people’s attention (in a good way). A great idea for a simple game, with simple user interface that people can simply jump in and play straight away. People don’t really like to be bogged down with too many instructions or having to learn so much just to play a simple game. Keep it really simple. User experience is very important.