Casual Online Gamers Thrill to Pajitnov Puzzle Games

Thanks to Wired for its article discussing the rise of casual, Web-based online gaming from websites such as EA's Pogo.com and Microsoft's Zone.com. Particularly interesting is confirmation of post-Pandora's Box projects for an extremely famous game designer: "Today, Tetris is the model for how to reach the increasing number of middle-aged and elderly Americans online. The creator, Alexey Pajitnov, is a designer at Microsoft, where Gates & Co. are hoping he can repeat his magic." The piece names Zone.com games Mozaki Blocks and Hexic as Pajitnov creations, although they're not heavily promoted as such, and explains of Mozaki Blocks: "MSN's marketing team took Pajitnov's Atari 2600-style lo-res math game and sexed it up with an Eastern flair: smooth, rounded tiles, Chinese letters... [and] a gong-shaped progress bar."

Comments

What?

[Lobo]

How could these games compare against Cat-A-Pult

Gong-shaped progress bar

[mwvdlee]

Just what every game need; gong-shaped progress bars really make a game play much better.

Re:Gong-shaped progress bar

[b1t r0t]

Um, if it's "gong-shaped", how can you still call it a "bar"? Bars are long, narrow things. Gongs are round things. Pie are not square.