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Posts Tagged ‘Gaming’

PostHeaderIcon Social Networking and Gaming Collide

Casual games are making connections with social networks to make a play for even bigger audiences.
The reach of online casual games is already impressive: One-third of people ages 6 to 44 have played them, according to market tracker The NPD Group. Globally, casual games on PCs, game systems and handhelds, played online and off, generate about $2.25 billion annually, according to the Casual Games Association.
In the past two months, two new online gaming hubs, Cafe and Mytopia, have launched with features that let players connect with friends on the Web and through various social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, as well as Bebo and Hi5.
The website Cafe features drawing game Sketch-It!, along with the more traditional Concentration and Sudoku; players can buy game “boosts” and outfit “Mini-Me” avatars. Mytopia focuses on traditional games such as backgammon and dominoes, and also has virtual currency for prizes and upgrades.
Two popular existing networks, Zynga and Social Gaming Network, have begun adding their games as applications on social networks. More such combinations are on the way, because the revenue potential from advertising, subscriptions and virtual items is enormous. It’s a huge audience, and there are a lot of different experiments on the Web taking on elements of gaming and the traditional social network.
Social Gaming Network, which opened in August, has seen its WarBook game attract more than 33,600 daily users on Facebook since becoming an application last fall. You have free access to all these users looking for fun and engaging experiences with their friends. We’re connecting them in ways that wasn’t really possible before.
Over the past two months, since gaming hub Zynga made its games such as Texas Hold’em and Scramble available on Facebook, its audience has grown from 1 million to 2.3 million players daily.
Historically, games such as Popcap Games’ Bejeweled helped fuel casual games’ growth in versions for the Web, cellphones, handhelds and game systems. Electronic Arts’ Pogo rose as a dominant casual games hub that began offering subscriptions (currently 1.62 million) as well as downloadable games.
New social communities specifically geared for gaming like Zowned have risen. Zowned allows members to mingle, create profiles, learn about the latest and greatest information on upcoming and current games. Members can view and share pictures, videos and music. Zowned has a very large arcade where members can play their favorite Java games. Although in its infant stages the Zowned website and community may very well set the standard for social gaming communities in the future.

Bryan Braning is an internet marketer and team member of the Ultimate Gaming Community Zowned.com

Grab your gamer tag today at Zowned and Get ZowneD!

PostHeaderIcon The Rising Mobile Gaming Fever

When you have a lot of time to kill or you are waiting in a long queue or you need a break from the work, the best option is to play a nice entertaining game on your mobile. These days, you’ll find more adults than teens interacting with mobile games. Consumers between the ages of 25 and 34 not only download more games than any other age group, but also play and purchase them more. Female gamers are also starting to become a part of the mobile gaming community.

Mobile gaming is so popular that people have actually become addicted to them. One of the primary reasons why mobile games are in high demand is the casual, comfortable and interactive gaming engagement they provide. The gaming industry is constantly working on creating innovative games with intricate and enhanced gaming features. They are constantly struggling to make this addiction a complete burning passion for people.

There are variety of mobile games found in different categories of racing games, puzzle/logic/skill games, action games, arcade games, role playing games, card and casino games, adventure games, strategy games and lifestyle games. To match different people’s needs, developers design single player or multi player games based on various technologies that include (eg. Embedded games, SMS/MMS games, browsing games, J2ME games, BREW games and native OS games.

One major problem faced by the publishers and developers of mobile game is describing a game in such a way that it attracts the customer to make the purchasing decision. They are mainly sold through network carriers / operator’s portal/ distributors by attracting user by their text descriptions and appealing screenshots. There are some well known and established play patterns that decrease the perceived level of risk for the buyer which includes (game play mechanics that are instantly recognizable) such as Tetris, Space Invaders or Poker.

On the other hand, platforms and technologies for mobile gaming have significantly improved. The available memory size, processor capacity, display size and resolution on mobile phones have all improved with time thus enhancing the overall gaming experience for the user. Nowadays users find latest interesting java games already fitted in mobile phones at the time of manufacturing. Many websites provide mobile games along with their free/trial options, allowing end users to play it for some time and if they like it they easily can purchase it. Apart from these mobile games can be also downloaded by using infrared and Bluetooth.

Juniper Research indicates that end user generated revenues for both one-time downloads and subscription/rentals of mobile games give a substantial market of $5bn in 2007 and it is expected to grow nearly to $16bn by the end of 2012 . Mobile gaming industry is not only creating numerous opportunities for game publishers and game developers but also opening new doors of great entertainment for users.

Sarah Shaukat is a technical writer who has written extensively on mobile phone applications, softwares and games. Most of her writings are on Latest Java Games and Entertainment Software.

PostHeaderIcon Kenplay Free Games – your Free Online Gaming Source

Looking for funny online gaming sources?. It can be quite tedious to dig results in Google for hours at a time in order to find games which appeal to your tastes. Most of today’s gaming sites provide hundreds to thousands of flash and java games but most of them are pretty boring. Most of the time your searches are a race against time since your gaming time is limited to the amount of leisure time you have available.

Today’s online games are mostly java and flash intensive, the plug-ins required to run such applications can be found easily and most of the time the sites and applications themselves point you towards the right download page to get the browser plug-in, so you are covered in that department.

Among the funniest online games we have “License Quest” and “Rocket Weasel”, first one is about car racing, the racing is against time and obstacles but there is an unexpected variable, there is a hot traffic officer which shows up just when you are about to take on a hard turn or curve, not only she shows up at crucial times but the things that she starts doing are just, shall we say “amusing”; this will sort of remind you of your brother (if you have one) trying to make you loose a game you know you are about to win, it’s simply hilarious.

The second game which is called “Rocket Weasel” is completely different form the former, as the name implies it is about firing a weasel which is tied up to a rocket straight to a target which sometimes can be hard to hit. Its a lot like target practice with the differences that you can bounce against the walls and if you do not hit the target after bouncing a couple of times your weasel gets evaporated (yeah, the rocket explodes). There are several levels to this game and from level 3 you will find it increasingly difficult to find and hit the target, sometimes you have to shoot randomly just to find the location of the target. A quick tip here, when you see the red arrow stretch to it’s maximum you can fire the weasel really far and once it has contracted itself you will definitively won’t go so far.

Besides these two games there are virtually hundreds more which can be enjoyed in your spare time, so sit back, relax and start firing those weasels away!

KenPlay.com offers a huge variety of free games for you to play with. Whether you like to play Mario or you want to Play Tetris, you are sure to find something you like!

PostHeaderIcon Free Downloadable Mobile Phone Games to Transform your Mobile Phones Into Gaming Consoles

Mobile phones have grown from a mere communication device to the heights of popularity by integrating advanced features like media players, mega pixel digital cameras, internet access, and every other entertaining feature you can think of. In today’s scenario, a mobile phone is not own simply for its communicational abilities but for the advanced features that it possesses. One feature that stands out from the rest of the features is the gaming feature as it attracts individuals of every age group alike.

All of the recently introduced mobile phones come with built in animated games for our entertainment. But since the number of built in games provided by the manufacturer is limited to only a few, a time will come when you will get bored of them. Also most of the times the games provided by the manufacturer are quite boring. Since you do not have any control over the built in games, then how can you play your favorite games on your mobile phones.

This is where the latest technology comes to your rescue. You can now download games of your choice from the Internet itself. But what do you do when your mobile phone have no support for the internet. There are some online resources which first let you download the mobile phone games onto your computer and you can then download or transfer these mobile games to your mobile phones using a data cable or Bluetooth transfer.

If your cell phone has the support for internet then you can simply download cell phone games using WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). Mobile phone games are sometimes referred to as Java games because almost all of these games are developed using the Java platform. You can find all types of mobile phone games like casino games, sports games, action games and puzzle games for your mobile phone.

Today with mobile gaming horizon gradually brightening with highly engrossing 3D games that have the ability to run on a multi-player format, the world of mobile gaming is readying to present a new tomorrow. A tomorrow that is full of advanced and exciting mobile phone games that will transform each mobile phone into a gaming console.

By now you must have started to think, how you can actually download these games. Will you need to empty your pockets for downloading these mobile games? This is where HOVR an online mobile gaming store comes into picture. HOVR offers free downloadable mobile phone games for mobile phones of all makes. You can directly download HOVR’s free mobile games to your mobile phone or you can choose to download on your computer. You can also point your phone browser to http://wap.hovr.com to directly download free games to your phone.

Mike Nicholson

Mobile Gaming Expert