Website Review: Kongregate

This is my first review, and it's going to be on my favorite website ever, Kongregate.com.

Kongregate is a flash game portal, a website that hosts games primarily created in the Adobe Flash format. They also host games made in the Shockwave format, but Shockwave games generally aren't as popular as the Flash games.

Kongregate, started by Jim and Emily Greer, offers so many new and innovative features that you'll think the next flash game portal you come across was made in the prehistoric era.

First off, Kongregate has one of the strongest internet communities I've ever seen. This is the case for numerous reasons, the first being that they have a chatroom implemented next to every game. This allows you to talk to people while playing a game with virtually no interruption, and if text appearing on a screen disturbs you for one reason or another, well, you can just turn it off. Aside from the chatrooms, there are other community-based features, such as the forums. The forums on Kongregate are always active and full of life. If you are a developer looking for some help with code, an artist looking for a collaboration, a debater looking for a debate, or just a normal person (sorry, not everyone is special), then these forums are right for you. There is a place for everything on these forums. Despite the apparent lack of topics, the forum moderators are fairly lenient on what you post in what topic, and if there appears to be a more appropriate topic, they'll just move it.

So, after going into all the chatrooms and posting on all the forums, you're bound to have made some friends, right? Well, there's no need to worry, Kongregate allows you to add friends to a list of friends! That's right, you can stalk keep track of all your friends you made on Kongregate! No more thinking "Wow, I really like that guy/girl, it's too bad I won't be able to talk to them again." but now, you're able to say to yourself "Wow, I really liked that guy/girl, and now I'm able to hunt them down find them on this website forever!" Also, if you happen to be that guy/girl, and this person is bugging you, you can just mute them.

Although the community is strong, perhaps internet socializing just isn't your thing, and all you want to do is play games. As of writing this, Kongregate has over 5,250 games, all of which are free. Sure, some are crap, and a handful are stolen (they are usually removed, though), but beyond those, there are many legit, amazing games to play. One feature unique to many of the games on Kongregate is that they have the Kongregate API implemented into them. Essentially, this allows for various high-score lists, badges, and challenges. The high-score feature is implemented into the game by the game's developer, and due to it's flexibility, it can track nearly anything in the game, allowing for an extensive number of different types of high-scores lists. More exciting than the high-score features, though, are the badge and challenge features. Badges are very similar to an Xbox 360's achievements, you complete a task, and you get rewarded. In this case, you get rewarded with a badge, and a certain number of "points" depending on the badge's difficulty. The points, like gamerscore, generally show your level of dedication to games (although they can be earned via referrals). The badges are created by the website's community manager, Greg, and are usually very fun, and sometimes challenging, but entertaining nonetheless. Like badges, Greg also creates challenges. The difference between badges and challenges is that challenges reward you with a card as opposed to a badge and points. This card is used to play with in Kongai, a collectible card game (comparable to Magic: The Gathering) that is a metagame (A game formed from other games) of Kongregate. Kongai is being designed by David Sirlin, a master game producer, and is a very promising incentive to visit the site. As of now, Kongai is not officially released yet, but it is late in the beta testing stage.

Beyond what there is at Kongregate, there is also what there is going to be. Currently, Kongregate, as a whole, is in the beta stage, and before they are officially out of beta, they have a few things they want to work on. Right now, they are funding games, which will become "Premium Games." These will be free games exclusive to Kongregate, and are expected to be more fun and innovative than a game from the average developer. Also, they will be implementing some form of pay-to-unlock features into these games.

Although the "Premium Game" developers are getting a lot of funding, Kongregate has never forgotten about the average developer. Kongregate pays anybody who puts their game onto the website. They get paid on a basis of the number of impressions a game receives (basically, how many people play it). Also, there are weekly and monthly contests paying out a total of thousands of dollars a month. Kongregate should be an important website to any developer because of the income it provides.

Now, as amazing as Kongregate is, it still has its flaws. As active, fun, and exciting the forums are, in order to format a post, you must use a fairly unpopular formatting language. This, however, has been addressed by the team behind the website, and is planning on being changed. Also, technical errors sometimes occur, but not very often. They could be as major as the website not working at all to not giving you a badge you earned, however, as I've mentioned earlier, Kongregate still is in the beta stage, and that should allow for some forgiveness and leniency. Besides, if you provide them a screenshot of you achieving the badge, they'll give it to you.

Overall, Kongregate is an amazing site to visit. The benefits greatly outweigh the very few problems with it. I have never seen a website that could cater to so many different types of people and bring them into an environment where they interact with each other to have one common goal, to have fun.