Kongregate opens doors to browser gaming

"Increasingly we've been having success with games that are a little bit larger and more persistent," revealed Kongregate's CEO and co-founder Jim Greer, speaking to CasualGaming.biz yesterday. "By that I mean Flash-based MMOs, or strategy games and so-forth. There we're still Flash games technically, but with a payment system that has seen a couple of games make really quite good revenue."

As a result, Kongregate is opening up its popular website to developers creating browser games that are, relative to Flash, more substantial, and capable of generating revenue outside of the portal's traditional advertising-based model.

Games makers will be able to build projects in their chosen back-end and developer framework, which Konduit will then integrate with the existing and newly introduced features Kongregate is to offer.

Greer explains: "The architecture of the way we're opening ourselves up is technically not dissimilar to the Facebook Application platform or Open Social. Basically we can open up a frame on our games page and that points to the developers' servers, and then we give them our APIs for things like accessing accounts, finding friends, awarding achievements, using our virtual items locker, a payment system, and so on."

Studios preparing a release for Koduit can build games in a number of web frameworks, such as pure HTML, Unity, or any other system that can run code in a browser using Javascript, Actionscript, or REST APIs.

Konduit is free to use, and run on a revenue-share service, meaning developers use Kongregate's payment system, from which the portal takes a cut, which currently stands at 30 per cent.

Describing the social gaming sector as a "broad space", Greer told CasualGaming.biz that that he is confident Kongregate's repositioning will leave it capable of thriving despite the challenges of the market.

Kongregate, which courts some 8 million users with an impressive 22,000 games, is to continue to offer a catalogue of titles covering both the core and casual, and is hoping that its new effort will increase its standing as a key destination for online players.