Ask any gamer: There’s nothing better than sitting down for a few rounds of Match 3 or Asteroids. But what if your ship or your gems could look like you? Or your grandkids? Or a favorite celebrity? Wouldn’t that be a bit more compelling? Kickplay.com, which launched today, is counting on it. Users of the site, who pay no fees, can personalize a bevy of classic games like Solitaire or Connect Four with pictures from their hard drive, or from a large collection of images other users have shared.
Ask any gamer: There’s nothing better than sitting down for a few rounds of Match 3 or Asteroids. But what if your ship or your gems could look like you? Or your grandkids? Or a favorite celebrity? Wouldn’t that be a bit more compelling? Kickplay.com, which launched today, is counting on it. Users of the site, who pay no fees, can personalize a bevy of classic games like Solitaire or Connect Four with pictures from their hard drive, or from a large collection of images other users have shared.
“There’s a huge number of casual gamers our there and there’s a huge number of people who want to personalize themselves on the Web,” says Kickplay.com founder Kendall Kunz. “So we believe there’s a ton of people out there who’ll want to personalize their own games.”
There are other similar sites on the net, but as far as Kunz knows, his is the only one that also allows users to integrate their own sound clips. Allowing their community to create a shared reservoir of images for the games is another unique feature.
Once users have created their game, they can pick a name and description and then share it in a variety of ways. They can shoot a link to their game out to email in-boxes, or they can actually embed the game on a web site or on an online community site like Facebook.
Kunz is counting on the site being a hit with its current feature set, but he says the concept also has room to grow. For instance: At the moment, users can only upload from their computer, but in future iterations Kunz hopes to allow the use of photo sharing services such as flickr to customize games.
“We’ve thought very deeply about what the other applications for this sort of thing are,” Kunz said. “Two of the other areas we’re looking at right now are e-greeting cards and our images.”
In the end, all the games and features are designed with the same idea in mind. Kunz doesn’t want game personalization to be the end of a user’s experience – he wants it to be the beginning of bringing people together.
“Personalization and socialization are what the site’s about,” Kunz said. “We want to make the games sort of the conversation.”
Gamezebo Presents: Joel-O-Ween
We thought there’d be no better way to demonstrate the cool features of Kickplay.com than to create a game of our own, featuring the smiling face of Gamezebo’s president and founder Joel Brodie. Enjoy!
