Nickelodeon plans to develop 600 games in the next few years. Most of the titles, it sounds like, will be web-based games, with nearly a third popping up on Nick.com alone, Yahoo reports.

The games are part of a $100 million investment by MTV Networks. MTV plans to spend $500 million on creating games for its websites through 2009 as well.

The whole thing is tied to the advertising packed into sites like MTV, Nick and Nick Jr. according to the article. Other games will allow player to try before they buy or include micro-transactions to make money.

Nickelodeon's Game Plan: 600 Casual Games Being Developed; 185 Games Planned For Nick.com Alone [Yahoo]

On Developing a Passively Multiplayer Online Game

Last month, we mentioned something called PMOG, a passively multiplayer online 'game' of sorts, developed by GameLayers. One of the developers of this little experiment is Merci Victoria Grace, and she's over at Terra Nova for a guest writing stint; she's put up an interesting little article explaining what's going on with PMOG: how it came to be, how it's been implemented, and the challenges that come along with the 'game' design:

We're now in the beta of our second public version. Both versions were implemented as Firefox extensions that follow players as they surf the web. The players provide the game with access to their browsers; the game provides the players with weapons, writing instruments, a gifting system, and a self-generating RPG character.

We started out to make a casual, massively multiplayer online game that took place alongside the rest of a player's online life. To do that, we had to answer two questions. One: what kind of interaction that occurs alongside the Everyday can we provide to players that they'll accept? And two: how can the game provide players with a set of behavioral summations that they could reasonably attribute to their decision-making process?

It's worth a read through, even if you have no intention of throwing your hat into the PMOG ring.

Human Data as a Playfield: The Passively Multiplayer Online Game [Terra Nova]

News University Games

News University offers free online training for journalists and would-be journalists. You just need to create an account. They've got a few games as part of their courses, which you can play for free if you create an account.

The games include Be A Reporter, about the basics of journalistic research, verification, and writing toward deadline; Run Your Newsroom, a game about managing and motivating people as a newsroom chief, and Covering Hospitals, a game about the unique features of reporting in the health arena.

If you play Be A Reporter, maybe sometime you too can grow a fashionable and effective journalistic mane like Crecente's.

News U [NewsU.org]

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