Despite the fact that males have long accounted for the majority of online gamers, there is a surprising shortage of casual online games directed at men aged 25-45. Beyond fantasy football and online poker there is little variety, with nearly every game failing to take advantage of advanced graphics or any interactivity beyond clicking “all-in”.
World Golf Tour is looking to fill this gap. The site has launched a free, full-featured Flash game that offers 3D graphics, an advanced physics engine, and user-customizable characters – it’s not as good as EA’s Tiger Woods series, but it’s going to be close enough for most people. The site launched a beta version last year, and is now introducing a new course, expanded customization options, and multiplayer support.
CEO YuChiang Cheng says that his team recognized early on that it wouldn’t be able to compete with EA’s massive development team and art department, so it took a few innovative shortcuts. To create the game’s graphics, the WGT team went to the famed Kiawah Island Golf Resort, where it took geo-tagged photographs spanning the entire course. The team then went through and mapped the photos to a 3D model, which makes the world seem three dimensional while telling the physics engine how each part of the photograph should affect the ball. Using technology similar to Google Earth, WGT allows users to move through the course by seamlessly displaying photographs that are adjacent to each other. The result isn’t as immersive as the 3D worlds crafted by EA’s huge dev team, but it’s very impressive.
While users will be able to play games on their own, the game allows for multiplayer sessions, and tracks stats across all games to produce a network-wide leaderboard. Along with the game itself, the WGT homepage allows users to create profiles, befriend and challenge other golfers, and participate in massively multiplayer tournaments. Tournaments will include cash prizes as well as virtual goods prizes, like new clubs and clothing that can be used to customize an in-game avatar. WGT will generate revenue through microtransactions for these virtual goods, as well as sponsorships for their virtual tournaments.
World Golf Tour will likely do very well – it’s polished, free, and will appeal to millions of golf fans. It may not stand up side-by-side to a console game but its target audience won’t care, especially given the fact that WGT can be played from nearly any browser with no download.
For another casual golf game, check out Wii-like iGolf on the iPhone, which we demoed last month.
YuChiang showed this to me before on video, and I was stunned by how good it looked. I am now even more astonished how smooth and how great looking it is when i actually tried it myself! I wish there were more tips on which clubs to use, and better feedback on how to improve the swing, but all in all, it looks like a fabulous effort even at this stage. (And a serious, serious damage to productivity.)
that is a truly awesome site. i’ve got it bookmarked and i’m sure i’ll be playing numerous rounds there. awesome…
how do u go on the website
tall me on msn tall me how or sent it
a good model , copy it
They have stolen the logo from weblin.com
Thanks for turning me on to this. I’m enjoying it so far…I suck, but I’m enjoying it!
looks good for a flash game
Neat game, anyone know how to hit or swing the club. I have been duffing the ball around
I checked out the beta and was very impressed. Should be great for folks to totally waste3 hours a day. Highly recommended.
Congrats to the WGT. This is an insanely good target market.
They need to get some tournaments going. Skillground.com offers Utour and they’re popular because of their tournaments.
Tournaments = titangaminginc.com
Yikes-it crashed my system
This is going to be the next big thing in gaming, when you see the “next gen” RIA games with Silverlight 2 & Flash 9/10. When you I see things like: “The result isn’t as immersive as the 3D worlds crafted by EA’s huge dev team…” it no doubt true. But where they do not innovate is in gameplay.
When was the last time you saw a great innovation in gameplay of Madden? Adding a passing cone or some abilities once a year and collect 1/4 a billion? Plus games don’t cost 60.00 either….selling direct or making money with the “economy of free” can earn you just as much. Games like Braid, Snood or Bionic Commando are examples of some games that would do real well as RIA ports.
Absolutely love this website. It is so addictive and also ties in meeting people through the multiplayer function from around the us and beyond. A win this epic can only be summarized with “f##k yeah.