latest blog entry
That was the year that was
December 23rd, 2005, By Duncan Gough
This is my ‘review of the year’ post, feel free to skip it. For me, though, it’s been pretty interesting. First of all, both WordSlider and Jewel Thief went live. Both games have been knocking around for a while so to see them released, tracked with Mochibot and, most importantly of all, popular, is a real relief.
On top of that, from an idea that started out very early in the year, Millions Of Games is leading the casual games social bookmarking charge at a time when plent of other services (blink, diigo, simpy, etc ) are trying to compete with now Yahoo! enabled del.icio.us. The more social bookmarking grows, the more it seems that building a niche bookmarking service like MOG was the right thing to do, I’m sure that we’ll see more niche social bookmarking services before long, most probably as part of other Web 2.0 applications though. As for MOG though, having architected, built and grown the only folksonomy of casual games has been a huge achievement. I can’t wait to see where MOG leads us too (hopefully to another mention on Slashdot and del.icio.us/popular/).
With regards to the other games sites, Playaholics received an early Christmas present in the form of a big story on digg.com, namely the ‘Best Flash Pool Game Ever’ for Lightning Pool, a game that we created well over a year ago now. Chickstop, too, has gone from strength to strength, notching up over 10,000 users in December.
Obviously, for me it’s been a year of gaming but given the Xbox 360, PS3, DS and PSP coverage, gaming is sure to remain popular for a while. I’d say that 2005 was the year of portable gaming with the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP leading the way. Having just bought a PSP I can happily say that 2005 has been the year of gaming in the living room, the study, the train and the kitchen too. The right game on the PSP makes it the ideal portable, casual gaming device.
Besides gaming, it’s been the year of Ryan walking and talking as well as a well earned 3RD sense conference taking place in Sydney, Australia with a side order of Hong Kong on the return. Christmas was spent in Newcastle and New Year here in Dartford. Roll on 2006.