Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. Shareware is often offered as a download from a website. Shareware differs from freeware, which is fully-featured software distributed at no cost to the user but without source code being made available; and free and open-source software, in which the source code is freely available for anyone to inspect and alter.
The history of video games began in the 1950s and 1960s as computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations on minicomputers and mainframes. Spacewar! was developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) student hobbyists in 1962 as one of the first such games on a video display. The first consumer video game hardware was released in the early 1970s. The first home video game console was the Magnavox Odyssey, and the first arcade video games were Computer Space and Pong. After its home console conversions, numerous companies sprang up to capture Pong's success in both the arcade and the home by cloning the game, causing a series of boom and bust cycles due to oversaturation and lack of innovation.
The video game industry is the tertiary and quaternary sectors of the entertainment industry that specialize in the development, marketing, distribution, monetization and consumer feedback of video games. The industry encompasses dozens of job disciplines and thousands of jobs worldwide.
Video game development is the process of creating a video game. It is a multidisciplinary practice, involving programming, design, art, audio, user interface, and writing. Each of those may be made up of more specialized skills; art includes 3D modeling of objects, character modeling, animation, visual effects, and so on. Development is supported by project management, production, and quality assurance. Teams can be many hundreds of people, a small group, or even a single person.
Reflexive Entertainment was an American video game developer based in Lake Forest, California. The company was cofounded by Lars Brubaker, Ernie Ramirez, James C. Smith and Ion Hardie in 1997. They developed nineteen games independently, published two games, started distribution of downloadable casual games on their online Arcade, created a division of their Arcade entirely devoted to Mac games for Mac users and started hosting ad supported free online web browser games. In 2005, Reflexive's Wik and the Fable of Souls won three awards at the 2005 Independent Games Festival which included Innovation in Visual Art, Innovation in Game Design and the Seumas McNally Award For Independent Game Of The Year. In October 2008, Reflexive Entertainment was acquired by Amazon.com. On February 3, 2009, Amazon.com began hosting casual game content for internet download.
GameSpy was an American provider of online multiplayer and matchmaking middleware for video games founded in 1999 by Mark Surfas. After the release of a multiplayer server browser for Quake, QSpy, Surfas licensed the software under the GameSpy brand to other video game publishers through a newly established company, GameSpy Industries, which also incorporated his Planet Network of video game news and information websites, and GameSpy.com.
A mobile game is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone, tablet, PDA to handheld game console, portable media player or graphing calculator, with and without network availability. The earliest known game on a mobile phone was a Tetris variant on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device from 1994.
PopCap Games, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Seattle, and a subsidiary of Electronic Arts. The company was founded in 2000 by John Vechey, Brian Fiete and Jason Kapalka.
A casual game is a video game targeted at a mass market audience, as opposed to a hardcore game, which is targeted at hobbyist gamers. Casual games may exhibit any type of gameplay and genre. They generally involve simpler rules, shorter sessions, and require less learned skill. They do not expect familiarity with a standard set of mechanics, controls, and tropes.
Peggle is a casual puzzle video game developed by PopCap Games. Initially released for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X systems in 2007, it has since had versions released for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, the Nintendo DS, Windows Mobile, iOS, Zeebo, and Android; the game has also been ported as a Java application, and an extended minigame incorporated into the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. A sequel was released in September 2008, titled Peggle Nights. PopCap, a subsidiary of Electronic Arts, announced Peggle 2 at E3 2013.
HipSoft is a Redmond, Washington-based developer of casual video games founded in 2002 by three of the original founders of Monolith Productions: Brian Goble, Garrett Price, and Bryan Bouwman. HipSoft has made over a dozen games, many of which have become popular in the casual gaming industry. Its games have been translated into many different languages and are distributed and sold worldwide through websites and retail outlets. All of the games are available for Windows and most for Mac OS X, and are being developed by partner companies for the Nintendo DS, mobile phones and other platforms.
RealNetworks LLC is an American technology company and provider of Internet streaming media delivery software and services based in Seattle, Washington. The company also provides subscription-based online entertainment services and mobile entertainment and messaging services.
Boomzap Entertainment is a casual games developer registered in Singapore with a virtual office environment. It was formed in 2005 and has released 50 games to date that are ported on various platforms. Boomzap has developed for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, Nintendo DS, Wii, iOS, and Android. Its games are available on games portals such as Big Fish Games, Yahoo!, WildTangent, GameHouse, Google Play, Amazon, iTunes, Steam and others.
Shockwave.com, or Shockwave, is an online and offline video games distributor and game portal. It is owned by Shockwave LLC, based in Los Angeles, California, United States. It was launched by Macromedia on August 2, 1999, to promote the company's Shockwave and Flash players, both used on the website. As of 2005, the website had 22 million users. By 2010, it hosted more than 400 games in a variety of genres.
In the video game industry, digital distribution is the process of delivering video game content as digital information, without the exchange or purchase of new physical media such as ROM cartridges, magnetic storage, optical discs and flash memory cards. This process has existed since the early 1980s, but it was only with network advancements in bandwidth capabilities in the early 2000s that digital distribution became more prominent as a method of selling games. Currently, the process is dominated by online distribution over broadband Internet.
Sherman3D is an independently owned video game developer team founded by Sherman Chin in April 2003, which develops bright and colorful anime inspired video games.
Video game monetization is a type of process that a video game publisher can use to generate revenue from a video game product. The methods of monetization may vary between games, especially when they come from different genres or platforms, but they all serve the same purpose to return money to the game developers, copyright owners, and other stakeholders. As the monetization methods continue to diversify, they also affect the game design in a way that sometimes leads to criticism.
Video gaming in Finland consists of video game industry of 260 active video game developer studios, roughly a dozen professional players and countless enthusiastic amateurs.
The popularisation of mobile games began as early as 1997 with the introduction of Snake preloaded on Nokia feature phones, demonstrating the practicality of games on these devices. Several mobile device manufacturers included preloaded games in the wake of Snake's success. In 1999, the introduction of the i-mode service in Japan allowed a wide variety of more advanced mobile games to be downloaded onto smartphones, though the service was largely limited to Japan. By the early 2000s, the technical specifications of Western handsets had also matured to the point where downloadable applications could be supported, but mainstream adoption continued to be hampered by market fragmentation between different devices, operating environments, and distributors.
Friday Night Funkin' is an upcoming rhythm video game developed by Funkin' Crew Inc. and released on Newgrounds in 2020. The game is developed by a small group called The Funkin' Crew Inc., which consists primarily of Cameron "ninjamuffin99" Taylor, David "PhantomArcade" Brown, Isaac "Kawai Sprite" Garcia, and evilsk8r. The game is also open-source. It shares some gameplay features with Dance Dance Revolution, PaRappa the Rapper, and the "Dance Contest" minigame from Club Penguin, and borrows aesthetic influences from Flash games. The game has been credited with driving users back to Newgrounds, a site that rose in popularity in the early 2000s.
