I like Kongregate. The badges and chat are pretty nifty. There are some very creative and just all around great games on the site. Desktop Tower Defense and Endless Zombie Rampage are two that come to mind. Granted, DTD isn't exclusive to Kongregate, but the achievements for it are. Unfortunately, there are a lot of really crappy games there, too. Despite that, I still like the idea of the site. I've been putting my C++ knowledge to use learning Actionscript so I can make my own crappy games to contribute to the Kongregate community.

Crap, I just realized the game I was thinking of was the Boxhead game (similar to EZR). My mistake.

"Something tells me these won't be the topics available for debate in Argue (About Everything)..."

You'll actually be able to enter in whatever argument you want to, so I'll be looking forward to seeing that topic when Argue launches and playing you a round. ;)

Meh. I'm more excited for Wii Ware. I like flash games, but I'm a console gamer at heart.

This article is... interesting. What do Mochi Ads have to do with ANYTHING here? Plenty of the games on Kongregate use Mochi Ads, and most of the games SPONSORED by Kongregate use Mochi Ads! The funding of indie games that Kongregate is doing has absolutely nothing to do with the Mochi business model, nor any other existing model for that matter. Refer to the Kongregate forums for more actual information: [www.kongregate.com]

The opportunity here being offered to independent game developers is unlike anything else in the industry.

Hey Ian -

I think there's enough room in the Flash games world for both broadly distributed games (Mochi-style) and a destination site with community features. As Burzmali points out, a lot of people do like the achievements. As we add more multiplayer and co-op games I think more people will get into it as well. Having said that, we'll be putting games in more places as well - social networks being the obvious ones.

By the way, there's nothing stopping any of our premium game developers from broadly distributing their games after the year of exclusivity on Kongregate is up. It's a pretty unusual deal to get funded to make your game and retain the rights to it and the sequels.

I think they are horribly named. At first, I thought this post was about a Mortal Kombat convention.

I like Kongregate. I try to get all the badges and cards they come out with. Plus, the ccg will be more of an incentive for people to play the games, rather than the typical youtube attitude of "ROFL OMG"

@Floral: i thought it was about a new giant monkey game.

I play games at Kongregate as well. I used to surf to multiple sites to get my quick flash game fix, but Kongregate satisfies my need better than others with a constant supply of new games and the meta game of achievements/badges ala Xbox 360.

I'm not sure how they will monetize my eyeballs, however, as I rarely if ever click on advertisements.

This is so surreal. I used to work at adultswim.com (hence the Swim in my name), and I was friends with Chris. He was a big part of me getting my foot in the door there. He was always really talented and capable, it's really cool to see him getting mentioned on all the game sites. I hope this venture works, I haven't checked out Kongregate since he moved out to SF (don't tell him!)

Let's debate it here then :)

I think Kongregate offers some good value to both players and developers - assuming it eventually reaches critical mass. If it does, then players can always rely on it to provide new, quality games (ranked by the masses - the critical masses). So players will come back regularly. This is great for developers, because this gives them access to an eager audience. If they release a game on Kongregate, there's a good chance someone will play it just out of curiosity, and if it's good, they'll rank it highly (and proceed to attract even more eager players). So getting a high rating on Kongregate can get you a lot of exposure - for free.

As for making a living with Kongregate..eh, I am suspicious of that. YouTube Partners don't make a full living really. But who knows..maybe the Flash games industry is different than 5-minute videos..I can definitely see people playing Flash games for half-an-hour, leading to more ad-visibility time, which may translate to more developer-revenue? who knows.

@djcoffee:

Regarding making a living off of the games, I think we're talking about two different things here. First, there's the current setup on Kongregate with content-providers getting a cut of the ad revenue. The real topic at hand though (and more to what Chris's comment about "making a living" is referring to) is the new Premium Games Program, which is a whole new animal. They're funding game development up to $100K per game with this program, so you're going to see some larger-scale, multiplayer-centric games coming out of this.

Also not quite sure how MochiAds factors into this topic... I'm also a fan of MochiAds and have used them in games, but bringing in $100K from a MochiAds-like model would be pretty difficult!

Eh while you occasionally get amusing flash games that distract you for a while, flash games are only flash games. They just don't have the substance of an actual game and are limited by the technology. While I might play flash games from time to time, I'd never pay for them. They're just not worth it. Sure you get games that are born in flash and manage to go further (Alien Hominoid for one) but that's pretty rare. Good luck to any flash game author trying to make money, let alone enough to make a living out of with their work.

Good ol' SwimTorrent. I'll miss him on [as].com, but it's good to know that he seems to be doing well.

@Gavelwrench: hmm $100k + profit cut certainly is better than ad-revenue. that could easily support 2-3 developers for a year, making one helluva flash game. not to mention profits later on. certainly something i'll keep an eye on...

@Odin: eh..it's a bit early to speak i think. remember what people said about online video like 5 years ago? online video sucked balls. but now? geez we got HD streaming over the net! and plus, the idea isn't to make you pay for it. just to make you (err convince you) to play it for a long time.

and even if the tech doesn't get much better, the mass market (non-core gamers) is apparently willing to pay for games like Diner Dash and Bejeweled. not to mention games on their cell phones. those games are definitely Flash-able. so, i don't think the technology is the limiting factor here.

and what about DS games? i bet you, soon, the simpler DS games will be Flash-able (like, advance wars?).

Up to level 11 on Kongregate (and a lot of that comes from the time I went back to game 1 and worked my way forward through the list, ranking most of them) and I have to say that a lot of these games are tripe. However, a few of them are excellent, and this is a good way to weed out the crap from the awesome. Besides, having all these Flash games in one place makes it simpler to find them - I don't like having to search the web for something to play if all I want to do is kill 5 minutes.