In early 2007 David Scott created a game called Flash Element TD that was an overnight sensation, reaching 2 million plays in only two days. A few months later, Paul Preece (a friend of Scott’s) decided to see if he could replicate the success of Flash Element, and went on to create Desktop Tower Defense – a game so popular and addictive that we said it should be banned. That June the two paired up to create a gaming company called The Casual Collective, and has been toiling for over a year to produce a crop of games that is now ready to make its public debut.
Tonight The Casual Collective is launching with eight games (four of which are brand new), all crafted by Preece and Scott, and many of which seem to be every bit as addictive as their now-classic games. Available games include Minions, which is reminiscent of a streamlined Command and Conquer, a platform game called Buggle Stars, and updates to Flash Element TD and Desktop Tower Defense. Some of the games are notable for their multiplayer support, allowing up to twelve players to simultaneous play (while asynchronous Flash games like Chess are common, large fast paced games are much rarer).
The site also includes support for social communication, offering a news feed featuring high scores and game invitations (though the founders emphasize that The Casual Collective has no intention of becoming its own social network). At this point social items are restricted to within The Casual Collective, but in the future the site may support distribution of high scores and other updates through other channels, like Facebook’s News Feed.
The site plans to monetize by offering bonus packs for certain games at around $2.25 per game. Each bonus pack will offer extra options or characters to enhance gameplay, but all games will be free and fully playable without the packs. The company will also be able to collect advertising revenue on its games as they get syndicated across the web, as it has integrated its own advertising platform. The Casual Collective has raised $1 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners in seed funding.
The Casual Collective will see competition from countless other Flash game developers, but the founders are standouts in a pool otherwise primarily composed of mediocrity. It may take some time for The Casual Collective to catch on, but with two hits already available and more likely on the way, I won’t be surprised if we have to ban the entire site for wasting too much of our time.
It takes time to start a game because it’s waiting for other players to join in.
Nevertheless the aesthetic designs are superb.
I don’t think Casual Collective is quite the sure-fire hit you make it sound like it will be. Their launch titles are nice, but they have a long way to go to catch up with Kongregate. The biggest difference between the two is that while Casual Collective seems to be developing all of their own games in-house, Kongregate just serves as a distributor for other developers (in fact they either bought or have exclusive distribution rights for the original DTD these guys built). While some of these games aren’t that great, there are dozens of real gems on Kongregate, and more are appearing all the time. Unless Casual Collective manages to turn out a large of number of really successful games, Kongregate will always have a title advantage. And Kongregate’s social features are among the most advanced on the web, let alone the casual gaming space.
After all this gushing I should mention I have absolutely nothing to do with Kongregate other than being really impressed by their product and more than a little addicted to too many of their games
Yes; but, they get their money from in-game uprades not advertising like Kongregate. So they could still place their game on Kongregate and make money.
Great. Desktop Tower Defense = major time sink. So this means more ways to distract from my work. Thanks, Techcrunch.
Mark – Kongregate is a great site but i’m not sure that simply aggregating 3rd party games is any longer a sustainable business model for a new games portal. Even sites like Mousebreaker and Miniclip realised that they needed to create/license unique content in order to stand apart from the thousands of flash game aggregation sites out there. I definitely think that there is a place for developers creating a game portal filled with their own unique content.
Great work sells… Important thing in gaming is it should be likable, Viral and good enough to be addictive. It seems that have it covered. I say they will be sure success.
desktop tower defense helped me lose a job. thanks guys!
I agree with Jim. You don’t have to have thousands of little simple games. A small number of successful original games that can’t be found anywhere else might just bring you the same amount of traffic.
I think David and Paul are doing it right. They found a product (line) that they can be successful in and built a company around that. They’re intensely focused on what the products should be and they’re starting off small rather than some huge all-encompassing vague plan.
Ahhh yes, I remember getting into the beta of the Casual Collective a few years back now …. glad to hear they’re doing very well.
Now thanks to Crunchgear, winter will consist of me staying inside and playing this game again… good job guys!
Desktop tower defense is better than most whatever gen console games now!
http://www.nonoba.com offers any flash developer free access to their entire multiplayer infrastructure. This operates simultaneously, not just asynchronously. Someone has developed multiplayer asteroids for example. It also takes care of the lobby, high scores, achievements etc – even in game payments if you want. The developer only has to worry about the game play, the graphics and the flash programming.
Yeah, thanks for telling me about Desktop Tower Defense. An hour just vanished.
Yes, I, too, have also just lost an hour defending my tower.
I don’t think they want to compete with Kongregate “title wise” but from what I’ve seen so far. They are getting smarter and better at marketing and distributing their title games… Sometimes giving agony to us back at the collective
On a side note.
They aren’t just great TD developers. You should check out their other games on the CC other than the head liners.
Looks good hopefully they will add these games to Fupa.com
Yea… CC is one that i will stick with till my computer blows up. Keep it going Guys.
Thanks for the great review and comments guys. It is true we may never have the volume of games sites like Kong and AG have, but we believe ‘quality is king’ and in developing all our own titles and distributing them far and wide we may just be able to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the bigger, traditional, flash portals. And unlike them our main aim is game plays, no matter where they take place, not hits to our site.
The aim of the site is to support the more enthusiastic player of one or two of our titles who wants extra content and community features to enhance their experience of the game (vs someone who just wants to play them all and move onto the next site/games)
Great website, started playing just a fewweeks back.
Although, despite TDPro being a great game in my opinion, I shall be sticking with minions
It owns!