As of today we’ve broken the 20,000 mark in registered users. Hopefully most of these users have found some great new games or at least been able to reminisce on some of the classics they have enjoyed over their gaming years. I know I’ve found some awesome games here as well as finding oldies from my past saying, “hey I remember that game, it was awesome, I should play it again”. There is still so much room for games to be added. Just the other day someone added Tetris. How was Tetris not in the database already?

We’re still getting registrations and I still see news articles and blog posts pop up from people who have just found out about GGE, which is really cool because I’m sure they’ll find some awesome games here. And because I know people like to look at pictures in posts here is a cute little bunny.

-Dr Wiley

So today is the beginning of Indie Games Con 2007. We’ll be starting the event today with associates and friends around Eugene and the world. This is going to be short because its the beginning but check back as we’ll be sure to have many images and a lot of cool info from the event.

Tomorrow really kicks the event off with Alex Seropian, the initial founder and the President and CEO of Bungie. Who went on to start Wideload Games. After that its good times hanging out and getting to know people in the industry. Check this link for a full schedule of the events and stay tuned.

I’ll be back!

The people over at HermitWorks Entertainment have announced a playable preview of Space Trader. Because I’m tired and its getting later in the day I’ll just post some snippets from the Press Release below:

“HermitWorks Entertainment Announces playable preview of Space Trader™

Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada (August 8, 2007) - HermitWorks Entertainment, an independent game developer, has announced today the playable preview of their action-trading game Space Trader is now available to the public. Space Trader’s innovative game design lets players experience fast paced trading with intense combat.

About Space Trader
Players assume the role of Space Trader in an alternate future universe. Their goal is to make as much money possible within a time limit. Players make money by leasing cargo ships, traveling to planets and trading with merchants. Merchants trade anything from iron ore to organs, finding successful trade routes between these merchants is the skill of the Space Trader. On the planets surface shady informants reveal the location of black markets while legitimate merchants are extorted by underground gangs. Players can turn a blind eye to these transgressions or hunt down the gangs for rewards and return stability to the markets.

Pricing And Availability
The playable preview of Space Trader for Windows is available at http://www.playspacetrader.com .

The full version of Space Trader is available for Windows and can be purchased at http://www.playspacetrader.com for $19.95 (USD).”

Now that you all know, you should play the demo. Strange, I don’t have anything else witty or funny (at least in my mind) to add to this post. Guess it’ll just be informative.

The GarageGames official blog launches today cleverly dubbed GarageBlog. There you’ll find coverage on cool new games, GarageGames news, interesting information, GGE coverage, analysis by some of the super geniuses of the game world and much, much more.

Check it out, keep checking it out, and let us know what you think. It’s pretty spiffy and you’ll get the heads up on what’s going on in the world of GarageGames and beyond.

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.

GarageGames, Great Games Experiment, and My GM Game are proud to sponsor the first Game Development Competition.

Beginning on Wednesday, July 18th game developers will be able to submit their games into the competition which runs for two months until Tuesday, September 18th.  The contest theme is comedy, so developers are encouraged to get their humor in gear and integrate the funny into the game.  Personally, I like a game with humor in it so this should be fun.

You can find more information about the competition including rules and guidelines on the contest site.  All game entries must be posted on GGE so be sure to check back often to get a glimpse of the new games that are competing. 

Prizes and Voting

At the close of the competition 10 finalists (chosen by a group of judges) from each category will be chosen and thrown into a public vote to determine that category winner.  That means its up to you guys who wins!  Categories include RPG, RTS, Puzzle, and more.  For the full list head here. 

Finally, winners of each category are matched against each other for another vote to determine the Grand Prize Winner.  The Grand Prize Winner will receive the entire Torque Suite (TGB, TGE, TGEA), winners from each category will receive a Torque Game Engine license from GarageGames.  The Combustion Ent Choice Award will receive 1 Year Free Domain Name sponsored by mygmgame.com. 

Hopefully we’ll see a lot of entries and a lot of cool games from this on GGE.  I’ll be voting, hopefully laughing (let’s see if you’ve got what it takes), and enjoying new games, and you should too. 

Get your gaming development tools ready and make those games funny.

Remember!!!

-Dr Wiley

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

To honor our rockin’ new orange GGE t-shirts, We’ve gone ahead and released our first GGE application on the new Facebook platform.

This app is true gamer bling, with quick and easy integration of our Gamelist Central into your Facebook profile

If you don’t have a Facebook profile yet, I strongly suggest you fire one up

Head here to add the GGE Gamelist application to your profile.

If you don’t have a GGE account yet, then I just died a little bit inside, but head here to get started

There’s plenty of cool stuff coming down the pipe so don’t miss the party!!!

–Sean

This Friday brings you a more simplistic Friday Round-Up. The number of games on GGE is growing steadily everyday along with the number of users. Keep submitting those games and further developing the GGE catalog. The real highlight of the week is the soon to be available facebook application.

The application itself is completed and ready for use and is just awaiting approval from facebook (however that works) before it is available to everyone. The application simply implants your gamelist(s) into your facebook profile and makes it easy for others to link directly to your GGE profile.

So keep an eye out and we will let you know when the application is readily available for everyone.

GreatGamesExperiment T-shirts!

Below you can see some beautiful photos of the GGE crew and some assorted GarageGames employees sporting the brand new, extremely comfortable GGE T-shirts. Like what you see? Let us know what you think, and you may be able to get your hands on one.

That’s all for this week. I would just like to add that great users make GGE a great site, and we have some great users.

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.