Social networking is becoming more intimate with gaming as time moves on, and new websites like Kongregate.com, a flash-based game website promising to reach out to players and developers, hope to capitalize on this trend. But does Kongregate really offer anything new?
Social Networking meets Gaming
Online social networking has become the hot topic of choice for companies providing online services. With the seemingly overnight successes of websites like Twitter hogging media websites and taking up a lot of mainstream media, it is no surprise that everyone from CNN to Microsoft is offering their own twists on social networking. Gamers, too, want in on the action, and understandably so. Online gaming, arguably gaming itself, has always been a social activity, but good matchmaking systems are rare, leading to communities that feel less coherent than one would imagine.
Enter Kongregate. The goal of Kongregate is to offer a online community where gamers and game developers can come together. The Kongregate mission statement nobly proclaims that Kongregate's "mission is to help indie developers make better games and earn more money doing it." That is goal that few gamers would scoff at, but it will go unfilled if Kongregate is no fun to use. So how does it stack up?
| Games Library | Rating  |
With a few rare exceptions, flash-based games don't tend to hook the player in for long periods of time. Kongregate, or any website with many flash-based games, is going to present games which can be completed in thirty minutes or an hour, and there are some that may not be entertaining for more than a few minutes. To compensate for this, flash-based game websites are supposed to offer a huge variety. The entire point is to be able to jump in, play for awhile, and jump back out.
Kongregate passes the basic library test with flying colors, probably thanks to its goal of being friendly towards developers. As of July Kongregate boasts over 16,000 games and rising. More importantly, cross-referencing Krogregate's selection with that of other flash-based game websites did not reveal any serious gaps in Kongregate's library. In fact, it seems that Kongregate often has games that other some other websites are missing.
| Site Layout | Rating  |
Given the huge library associated with flash-based game websites, and the dependence on advertisements for revenue, the layout of such a website is a big deal. A website which is poorly put together is going to make it hard for the player to navigate through the thousands of available games. Advertisements can also be a problem. Websites like Flashgames247 and Flash-Games.net are horrid when it comes to advertising. Banners are everywhere, distracting from the games and the libraries. Kongregate, on the other hand, never lets the advertisements become the centerpiece of the website. They're defiantly there, taking on the form of banners at the top of every page, but they don't become so distracting that it is hard to enjoy a game. Kongregate also has high-quality advertisements which may be of actual interest, unlike some other websites which are spammed with ads for Civony and IMVU.
The only problem with Kongregate's website is its library navigation. The search functions work fine and the website does an excellent job of outlining those games which are the best rated and/or most popular. There are no sub-genres listed, however, nor any apparent attempt to break up the games among finer lines than "strategy" or "action". Only fifteen games are listed per page when browsing, and there is no way to change that. It would have been great to be able to view games in a list format with perhaps fifty on a page.