10,000 games uploaded in 200 days represents a ground breaking achievement for YoYo Games, a start-up games company which looks set to shake up the booming casual gaming industry with a fresh, innovative approach to games creation, publishing and distribution.
The site (www.YoYoGames.com) hosts exclusively user-generated games, community-submitted content with a community based review and ratings system highlighting the very best of these games, and allowing them to rise to the top.
“Since we launched in May last year we’ve been amazed by both the quality and the quantity of games that have been created by the YoYo Games Community.” said Sandy Duncan, CEO of YoYo Games. “We have often been referred to as the ‘YouTube of Games’, and with this incredible volume of content, we’re starting to believe this ourselves!” mused Duncan.
The YoYo Games website is designed to make it easy for game developers to upload, rate, review and share their games with a fast growing community of casual gamers.
Unique to YoYo Games is the “Game Maker” software, now in its seventh release. “Game Maker has been empowering people, often with no previous programming experience, to create sophisticated casual games since 1999” said Prof. Mark Overmars, the creator of Game Maker and one of the founding members of the YoYo Games team. “Game Maker is undeniably more powerful and flexible than Flash and unlike Flash has been designed from the outset to be an environment that is uniquely purposed for game development.” he added.
In the inaugural Winter game creation competition for the YoYo Games community, the winning game, Frozzd, is a highly original two-dimensional platformer, set amongst frozen and slightly malevolent planetoids. The creator of the charming “Wubbly” universe explored in Frozzd, is Netherlands based developer, Jesse Venbrux, who, at just 20-years-old, worked solo on the project. He wins the top prize of $1,000 and community kudos for his efforts. The runners up list reflects the global nature of YoYo Games user base with fantastic games emanating from Russia, Australia, and the Americas.
“Frozzd is more than just a visual and technical achievement, it’s living proof of the creativity that can be unleashed by the Game Maker community” said Michel Cassius, co-founder of YoYo Games. “More than just games, YoYo Games has created the world’s largest single games developer community with more than 75,000 registered developers from all over the world, ranging in age from under 8 to over 80”, he added.
