mobile games

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

Last month’s scandal at Gamespot undoubtedly rattled gamers and loyal readers who turned to the site for objective reviews. If you’re not familiar with the story, Jeff Gerstmann, Gamespot’s longtime editorial director, was shown the door- presumably after giving a negative review for Eidos’s Kane & Lynch, which had spent a significant amount advertising on the site. Kyle Orland provides a great summary of the story over at Joystiq.

But what does this really tell us? We already knew that the interests of corporate sales & marketing and editorial departments can often clash. And in the age of marketing spin masters and PR gurus, it’s wise to take any “objective” review, post, or article with a grain of salt.

With the emergence of Web 2.0 and the collaborative web, we all become published reviewers (sometimes objective ones, and other times….). Online communities share ratings and commercially-untainted recommendations. Of course, it’s naïve to think that community-created reviews cannot be manipulated, however there’s something wonderfully honest and open about letting anyone with computer access and an Internet connection offer their opinion.

And at Playyoo, we take community input seriously (after all, we’re looking to you to determine who wins it all in the Playyoo Games contest).

When you browse for games, you can sort by the community’s top-rated games. Or, take it to a deeper level, and limit your focus only to those games recommended by your friends (the ones you really trust). Or just take a peak at what your friends are playing for ideas. But remember- you can never know for sure if you’ll like a game until you take it for a spin yourself.

David had the idea of the game creator as a means of enabling everybody to be creative. And he has such a disarming voice according to the girls next door. Please watch and enjoy the walk-through. You never know and end up creating casual games and winning the contest.

PS: and please don’t forget those games are going to be played on a mobile handset.

With the launch of Playyoo beta, there’s definitely an excited energy at the office - coupled with the inevitable stress from long nights and one too many espressos. And all these frazzled nerves got me thinking about an older (well, 2003) study conducted by the Utrecht University on the effects of game play on the job. (you can read more about the study here).

Scientists followed a group of 60 employees at a Dutch insurance firm – half were allowed to play up to an hour of simple computer games like Solitaire a day, while the other group wasn’t so lucky. And sure enough, the employees that played felt better about their jobs and were more productive. So, a round of solitaire can help break up a long work day, give the brain a break from complex work, and help people be more effective (think recess back in elementary school).

So, go ahead. Take a time out from your hectic schedule and try out a game or two on our beta site. The experts say you should.

After many months of development, we have released the Playyoo platform for mobile social gaming into public beta. Don’t ask how much blood, sweat and tears went into it yet (probably more to come). We decided to release our baby straight - without a private beta - into the wild just before the holidays.Remember, it’s still beta so please be patient and expect some bugs and glitches. And yes, please provide us with feedback. It’s you who are telling us what is missing, what doesn’t work and what’s in the way of excellentuser experience.

So please go on, spread the (beta) word, enjoy playing the games and, if you are feeling creative, participate in the games contest by making your own games.

Thirty-five years ago, Nolan Bushnell and Atari brought us the world’s first successful video arcade game: Pong. I came across a short radio interview (PONG: The Ping Heard Round the World) with Bushnell where he talks about the “rebirth of casual games,” likening it those early days.

“The rebirth of the casual game structure is very reminiscent of the early days of pong where pong really was every man’s game and then it went to Street Fighter where you had to push 13 buttons with all 13 of your fingers and rip the spine out of somebody. Violent games lost the women; and the complexity lost the casual gamer. Now we’re coming back full circle to games that are casual that can be played over the Internet.”(and over mobile phones, of course)

Leaving aside any social comentary on violence in games… At Playyoo, we wholeheartedly support the rebirth of the casual game- and renewed interest in developing high quality games that anyone can pick up, play, and enjoy. Simple doesn’t have to be boring.

But where I might deviate from Bushnell (at least how Bushnell was portrayed in this interview) is that the resurgence of casual games does not have to be at the expense of their complex counterparts. It’s not an either-or situation. People have diverse preferences and ideas for entertainment. And individuals themselves are too complex to play one game type day in and day out. If I pull out a deck of cards to play solitaire, it doesn’t mean I don’t like playing Risk (I haven’t actually played Risk in years, but that’s not because of any card playing).

In short, the world is big enough to accommodate strong markets for casual, complex, and any other genre of games. The key is to make sure there are high quality games of all types to meet the wide range of preferences.