Nickelodeon's casual gaming sites go social

AddictingGames is one of the most popular sites for casual games experiences for younger players in the US, while Shockwave was one of the very first casual games sites.

The new features being rolled out include profile pages and high score rankings, friends list and avatars. The sites will also gain a chat feature.

Both AddictingGames and Shockwave already boast some community features these will be upgraded by the end of 2008 to the newer, more unified system.

It will be AddictingGames that gets the 'create and share' function, which lets players personalise games that are launching later this year - the games are Moto Rush Extreme (where players can create tracks and customise vehicles), Pencil Racer 3 (which introduces a new Toolkit and mission-based gameplay), and music game RiffMaster Deluxe which lets players created songs in-game and then email them to friends.

 "Our users want more direct ways to communicate and interact with one another around the games that they love," said Dave Williams, SVP and GM of Nickelodeon Kids and Family Games Group.

"We have been actively building and releasing social networking and community features into our sites over the past few months and plan to accelerate the pace in the coming months based on strong initial results."

Famously, Nickelodeon has made casual games a high-profile target for its gaming expansion: it previously announced plans to develop 6,000 casual games for its sites in the coming years form a spend of $100m.