Students who look to the Internet for a distraction during class now have a new place to turn. Kongregate.com, a Web site many are calling the YouTube of video games, made its public debut last week. Much like YouTube, Kongregate allows independent video game creators to upload their games to the site, where users can play them for free. Jim Greer, CEO and founder of Kongregate, said his Web site is perfect for a college student’s schedule. “We’re hitting that half hour that you’ve got between classes or on your break from work,” Greer said. “You’re not going to go fire up ‘WoW’ or ‘Gears of War,’ but you do want to play some games … and we want to be the right place to do that.” Greer, who has done work with the popular “Ultima” computer games and Electronic Arts’ gaming Web site Pogo.com, said Kongregate currently offers over 350 games, most of them created by high school and college students using Adobe Flash. “The top half, those are great,” Greer said. “And the top ten or twenty, those are really something original.” The most popular of those games is “The Fancy Pants Adventures,” a side-scrolling game in the mold of “Mario Bros.” and “Sonic the Hedgehog,” created by 21-year-old Brad Borne, a New Orleans native currently attending Spring Hill College. Borne said he first started creating video games while bored during class in high school. “The very first thing I ever did was program games at Jesuit for the TI-86 calculators,” Borne said. “It made me want to actually make something.” Borne said Kongregate is a perfect Web site for both independent game developers and Internet game players. “Kongregate is definitely the most developer- and player-centered site that I’ve ever seen,” Borne said. “They’re definitely doing something different, and I’m pretty confident they’re going to move far with their plans.” Developers such as Borne are able to earn money through Kongregate’s ad revenue-sharing policy, which Greer hopes will eventually allow game makers to make a living from their contributions. “Nobody’s on a level yet on our site where they can quit their jobs and do it, but we’re trying to change the business a little bit so that they will be able to,” Greer said. “By paying out a share of our revenue, we can let more of these developers start doing this in a more serious way.” Borne says he currently makes around $5 a day from “Fancy Pants” but expects that number to rise as Kongregate gains popularity. “Kongregate’s actually trying to do everything they can to support independent game developers,” Borne said. “You can make a good game while in school, but you can make a great game if you’re making a living doing so.” Greer said that although he does not think Kongregate will ever reach the popularity of YouTube, he does think his Web site has a bright future ahead. “To make a game that’s worth playing takes a higher degree of skill, so you’re not talking about millions of people [like YouTube contributors], but I do think you’re still talking about tens of thousands of people worldwide,” Greer said. “Eventually we think we’ll have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of games.” Greer said the trend of creating independent Internet games will add much creativity to the video game market. “It’s a lot easier to do something original in a flash game,” he said. “In a hardcore game, because you have to spend $10 million to get it to the level of graphic polish and the scale that’s expected of a console game, you can’t really try something very experimental; you can’t try some crazy idea, because you’re bidding too much money.” Greer said Kongregate – like YouTube – is part of the growing Internet media trend in recognizing the profitability of allowing users to create their own content. “People are realizing that creativity flows both ways and to try and own and control the whole process is going to put you at a competitive disadvantage,” he said. “It’s part of a larger trend in not just gaming, but in media in general.” Many students on campus were excited upon hearing about the new Web site. “I think that’s a very good idea,” said Sarah Masters, textiles, apparel and merchandising sophomore. Masters said she was excited to hear about Kongregate because she loves playing games on her laptop during class. “I get on Facebook, and I get on eBaumsworld,” Masters said. “I’ll play any kind of video games, especially really easy ones because I’m not very good at them.” Douglas Walker, history freshman, said Kongregate would be perfect for a college gamer’s tight schedule. “If I’m playing at school, I’m usually playing a game that doesn’t take very long because I’m between classes or something,” Walker said. “Those kinds of games would probably do well on a site like [Kongregate] since you can just access them and play them fast.”
—–Contact Michael Mims at mmims@lsureveille.com