Kongregate Gets $1M, Launches User Generated Games
Nick Gonzalez
17 comments »
We covered Kongregate when they were in private beta, but they’re officially public with a new wad of cash from some big names to back them up. They’ve created a gaming community around Flash games developed by other users, and are announcing a “nearly” $1 million angel round, including funds from Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Joe Kraus (Excite/JotSpot), Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC) and Richard Wolpert (Disney Online), among others.
Kongregate is about user generated games and the competitive gaming community around them, which sets them up to be a really sticky site. CEO Jim Greer compares it to XBox Live for Flash games. Players can chat with each other during game play, create profiles, earn points, and get special achievement bonuses as they progress up the ranks. You don’t have to be registered to play the games, but you do if you want to chat and gain levels. My favorite game on the site so far is Warbears, where you play some bad ass teddies on a mission to save hostages by incapacitating baddies.
Currently players get points for uploading games (big points), completing game challenges, rating games, leaving quality feedback, and referring Kongregate to other players. You get achievement icons by accomplishing challenges, like finding all the hidden items in their top game, The Fancy Pants Adventures. In the future, players will get some rewards for each level-up, which may include new options for personalizing their profile, unlocking the ‘labs’ category on the site, or special offers from Kongregate and its advertisers. The achievements you get from points and challenges will also unlock cards for a special online card game (set to release in May) they are developing in-house.
Developers who upload their own games get more than points. Kongregate will also share 25%-50% of advertising revenue generated from the games with developers.
There are many competing Flash game sites. The giants are Pogo and Miniclip, which support multiplayer games along with a host of downloadable versions that users unlock for a fee after a trial period. Another very large site Newgrounds (500K uniques/day) and Cafe.com come closer. Newgrounds runs on user generated games and has a point ranking system, but doesn’t have Kongregate’s revenue share or chatting. Cafe.com has all downloaded games, with power-ups and avatar attire you can buy. Another startup Bunchball, used to allow embedding of the flash games on other websites up until last week.
Great idea and best of luck, the confluence of retro and Falsh games should work out well for them. The revenue share seems a little stingy but I don’t know what the competition is like.
Congratulations to the Kongregate team!
I love Fancy Pants.
Nick, you say Bunchball offer games as widgets, but they are scrapping this functionality. If you look at any embedded Bunchball widget it is carrying a warning about discontinuation - see TechCrunch original coverage at http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....your-blog/ for an example!
Thanks Ivan.
I hope people using flash games sites have some really good anti-virus on their computers, free flash games are notorious for trojans and malicious javascript code. Player beware…
And good luck policing this if you are the site that hosts them.
1mm is probably not too much; for a company like this. As for getting points for giving them your flash game; that sounds kinda lame. I want cash
- Maybe even producer rewards like metacafe - depending on number of plays of the game …
-Rbowles
Flash games will be just as huge as flash videos if they can truly create incentives to produce. Check this video out as an example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnRw0-d3lJw
It’s a good idea and I think that one of these sites will become popular/successful.
Congrats to Kongregate!
Micah
http://www.thosestupidgames.com
Rack -
Nick -
Thanks for the kind words!
Rack - Maybe you missed this sentence:
“Developers who upload their own games get more than points. Kongregate will also share 25%-50% of advertising revenue generated from the games with developers.”
JohnnyRocks - If Flash really spread viruses everyone would have them, because Flash ads are everywhere. A Flash game can’t do anything that a banner ad can’t.
One more Flash based which is pretty good…
http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/
It was private alpha, not private beta
Kewtr: The revenue shares are not stingy. Most flash portals only offer 20%-30% on average, sometimes 40% max if its an exclusive. Getting up to a 50% rev share is great, especially for a site as easy to use as Kongregate.
Wish there was one that offered revenue sharing with the players.
Congratulations Jim!
Creative people who may or may not know Flash can take advantage of the technology in Beta offered by http://www.digitalbrix.com to design games online.
GameBrix - the Collaborative BUILD|SHARE|PLAY| game development platform from DigitalBrix provides creative people with no programming knowledge to partcipate in the user generated game creation process. At GDC 2007, DigitalBrix demonstrated the use of the technology by creating the extremely cloned Richochet game concept in 20 minutes which took 8 hours in the Tech face off challenge.
Sign up for Beta at http://www.gamebrix.com No software downloads, No installations, No GateKeepers, No excuses - Get your game online today!
DigitalBrix’s first round is funded by serial entrepreneurs.
Hi,
I love Kongregate’s web site design. Do you know who designed it?
Thx