You guessed it, GGE has hit the 15,000 users mark, just a couple short weeks after reaching 4,000 games. The user tally includes over 2,500 developers. That should be an exciting number for those looking to find people to work with on their game project. It’s also an exciting number for gamers, as they have a chance to play an assortment of innovative titles that are fully developed or in-progress. Developers also have a chance to reach a broad audience of gamers, which, if my elementary school education holds up, approaches 12,500 users. And that doesn’t even include visitors who aren’t signed up to the site.

Don’t worry. With the help of our army of developers and gamers, we’ll snag those visitors eventually too.

GGE’s user base isn’t the only thing growing exponentially: over 4,000 unique game pages have been created since the Experiment began. The total includes 799 Mac games, 49 Amiga games, 36 cell phone games, 245 Xbox games, and 10 Amstrad CPC games (what is that anyway? anyone?)

Nearly 300 games can be played instantly in your browser using the Play Now function, and hundreds more can be downloaded and played for free. Thanks to everyone who has added a game (or 30) for helping GGE reach this milestone! Let’s continue to make the Great Games Experiment the place to go to find any game from any platform, new or old.

Coming soon: 5,000 games

Classic games have been imitated since Pong. Asteroids came only a few years later, but is constantly being retrofitted for new audiences. Look up Asteroids on GGE and you will receive no less than 25 results, from RoidRage to Rock Dodger. The following are just 2 unique adaptions of the classic space blaster:

Asteroid’s Revenge is played with literally the same graphics and art as the original. So what’s new about it? This time around you play as an asteroid, smashing into the evil spaceships that have decimated generations of innocent space rock. The idea alone makes this game worth playing. Combined with the tried and true gameplay (reversed, of course) of the original, there really is no reason to not spend a few minutes with this game.

Echoes certainly does echo the look and gameplay of the original Asteroids, but the adrenaline infusion of fast-paced confusion that this iteration inflicts on the player is something entirely new. Step 1 of the instructions let you know that the game is as straightforward as the original: “Shoot Stuff.” It’s step 2 of the instructions that makes you worry: “Die.” And that’s exactly what you’ll do; but not before you blast away and hordes of space debris is what can only be described as survival, rather than attack.

Earlier today, Iamthefox became the 10,000th user to sign up for the GreatGamesExperiment. To celebrate, we’ve decided to give Iamthefox his choice of any 2 games from the GarageGames Game Store!

Congrats to Iamthefox, and to the first 9,999 users, for helping make GGE a success! Along with 10,000+ users, GGE is also steadily closing in on 4,000 games. We’ll keep you updated on further milestones as the site and community continues to build.

A veritable bevy of new Play Now games have been added to GGE in recent days. Two of which–Indestructo Tank and Dolphin Olympics–have been gnawing away more of our time than their simplistic gameplay would suggest possible.

How do these games pull this off? Some of it has to do with the simplicity of course: the arrow keys are all you need for either game. In Indestructo Tank, your Tank doesn’t actually have any weapons. Instead you use your tank to crash into and destroy as many enemies as possible, stringing together huge airborne combos along the way. Much like a Hummer, your only weakness is your fuel consumption. Run out of fuel before you pass on to the next level and you’re finished.

Coincidently, Dolphin Olympics contains no weaponry either, and the gameplay is essentially the same. In fact, you can almost use the same sentence to describe both games: You use your [dolphin] to [launch] into [the air] and [pull off] as many [sick tricks] as possible, stringing together huge airborne combos along the way. There’s a time limit instead of a fuel gauge in Dolphin Olympics, but you get the picture.

Another factor that keeps us four-keying our way to massive scores is the inclusion of online high score tables with multiply categories. Well, we could never be skilled enough (or have enough spare time) to even attempt to approach the Everestian heights of the current high scores, but it does allow us to compete against each other at work. And seeing frustration contorting a coworker’s face as they fall just short of besting one of the (very few) record I currently hold is like manna for my soul.

I could go on about the similarities between the games, and why they’re so addictive; unrealistic, but consistent and satisfying physics; simple, but difficult to master gameplay; instantly accessible and recognizable controls… but maybe you should just try them for yourself–Mark just beat my combo score on Indestructo Tank, so I gotta get on that.

Or, to be more kid friendly: really, really clumsy sumo wrestling. Sumotori Dreams is really just a demoscene, consisting of two self-balancing physics rigs facing off against one another in a sumo ring.

The game itself is very simple, but the true beauty lies in watching the rock ‘em sock ‘em-esque wrestlers as they attempt to get to their feet and bow to each other. If they’re not on solid ground, they’ll stumble around with their arms flailing until they regain their balance or take a hard spill. Adding to the already enormous pleasure of watching the AI look like Charlie Chaplin in a room full of banana peels is the breakable barriers surrounding the ring. A wrestler, in an attempt to regain its upward mobility, will fly off the ring and crash through one of these barriers, only to vainly try again to stand and instead stumble on the rubble recently created underfoot. Sometimes it takes over a minute for the wrestlers to regain their composure and bow respectfully.

The realism of the bumbling bots looks real enough at times to remind one of America’s Funniest Home Videos. Someone should hire Bob Sagat to narrate. The controls are simple, the matches are quickly over, and the self-balancing bipedal warriors are a hilarious and impressive technical feat that may lend themselves well to serious research in robotics.

Describing it as “a little bit gamer social network, and a little bit (indie) rock ‘n’ roll,” the PC Gamer article explores what makes the Great Games Experiment tick in a page-long feature. An overview of site-specific features is given, as are comparisons to other game-related collaboration sites. The article ends with questions about what GGE could mean for the future of community-driven gaming and game development.

Space Trader, a popular GGE game, receives the royal treatment in the magazine with a screenshot of the game in action, as well as a lengthy quote from one of its developers, Phillip Daigle.

To see the article for yourself, check out the May issue of PC Gamer, available now in newsstands.

Ah, imperatives. Nothing gets people moving (or clicking) like a good command. A graphic commanding you to PLAY NOW is even harder to ignore. The Games section of the Great Games Experiment now has a Play Now button that overlays the game image for every immediately playable game, allowing you to bypass the game page itself and hop right into playing games on your browser.

We want GGE to be a one stop source for information on games, including descriptions, reviews, and comments, but we also want users to have the ability to simply play games. I’m already at the stage where I automatically hit the Play Now button for every new game that looks interesting. How can I not? I’m just doing what the button tells me.


Play Now games that I’m playing now:

Dirt Bike

Diesel and Death

QWERTY Warriors

Apparently I’ve been feeling nostalgic for Excite Bike.

Cheers,
Dylan

The Great Games Experiment has finally been released for public consumption today. What does the official release mean? No more promo codes, no more limited beta invites, and no more purposeful containment of the beast that is GGE. The front page has changed to allow direct access into the site, even if you’re not a member. We’re nearing 3,000 games, and it’s time to allow the world to have access to all that the Great Games Experiment has to offer.

New to the site? In a nutshell, GGE is a social networking site for games, gamers, and developers. By providing a free resource for developers to network and promote their own games, users have an opportunity to play games that can not be found on other aggregation sites. Along with indie games, GGE hosts games ranging from free Flash games to old classics and mainstream commercial titles.

Ratings, recommendations, and popularity statistics for each game ensures that the cream of the digital crop rises to the top in dynamic fashion. Tags, friendships, and comments supply a more personalized means of distinguishing the exact types of game a user wants to play. The games themselves can be downloaded from their individual game pages, and many are even available to play instantly in your browser. Personalized gamer badges let others know what games users are playing, and can be added to blogs, forums, and social networking sites by embedding the provided html code. All of these features add up to a centralized location for a large audience with a specific focus on the gaming industry.

That’s a pretty big nutshell, but then again, the Great Games Experiment is a pretty big nut.

Even in it’s betanian infancy, GGE has the ability to help devs and games “blow up.”

One of the most satisfying aspects of trying to get the site off the ground has been finding great, little known games and devs and simply giving them some love on the “Featured” sections at the top of each tab on GGE’s main navigation bar. Sometimes we just happen to play a cool game that we (mired in our own subjectivity) think more people should know about. Or, as is the case lately, someone wins a contest and gets some free pub.

Either way, someone or some game is getting much deserved recognition that they wouldn’t otherwise get, and it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside — kind of like beer, minus the hangover.

Featured games and developers have been among the most viewed on a consistent basis since we began running the features. The future possibilities are tantalizing. As our community grows, heretofore unknown games have a chance of truly getting blown up by their exposure on GGE, generating sales and even publishing deals based greatly on the popularity of the game. If the band Ok, Go! can blow up because of a youtube video, why can’t a great game on GGE do the same?

But as fun as it is to choose which games get that extra boost of exposure (I prefer to pick the awesome ones), that’s not what GGE is about. We won’t always be choosing these games; it should be up to the community. Once we amass a solid user base, responsibility for the feature sections will be passed onto the users in one way or another.

In the mean time, keep checking out those featured sections. They’re going to be full of contest winners for the next couple weeks, so if you think these winners aren’t up to snuff, then prove you can do better. For an unfair advantage, remember my helpful tip: I like games that are awesome.

Cheers,
Dylan