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Another Web-Based Game Targeting Casual Gamers Launches
News.com is reporting that Mytopia, another casual-gaming network, has launched into public-beta. More than just a regular game with virtual rewards, Mytopia encourages exchanging points for real-world prizes like iTunes or Amazon certificates. "Since Mytopia is centered on "classic games," the offering--Sudoku, chess, backgammon, hearts, spades, dominoes, bingo, and poker--is a bit of a yawn, though the company has said new games will be added on a monthly basis. On the flip side, the familiarity of those games may be a draw to players who don't want to learn a whole new set of rules. Indeed, Mytopia is targeting a thoroughly non-"gamer" demographic."
can be easily converted into $$$ on eBay. These constantly sold around 90% or sometimes even 95% of the face value.
Anyway this concept is not new. Cases Ladder has been doing this for years.
"The New Age. The New Beginning."
until someone gets hooked and dies after a 3 day binge?
~Vexed and loving it!
I don't think they're going to beat out games.com. First of all they have the domain games.com. Second, they have EVERYTHING. They even have Monopoly! And third, I think games.com has some sort of win cash by playing games. Never really looked into it but it sounded cool. I don't think this new one is going to beat them out if they simply try to beat them at their own game, no pun intended :-P
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
I presume they misstated, and you actually pay to get an ad-free version of the site.
Otherwise...is this a slashvertisement? Yet another of hundreds of online gaming sites...what's the news for nerds in this? No, seriously, I really want to know.
... but how about annual subscriptions to your favorite porn site? That might add a few users!
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
How long until someone codes a bot so I can get free shit?
This sounds a little bit like kongregate with a little more multiplayer to it. Kongregate has some better sounding games though, and a steady flow of them. The redemption thing sounds good, except with the obvious point of how security will deal with the private information.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
I mean really... one thing that playing games over an extended period of time seems to cause (especially in the case of first person shooters) is a problem with my eyes... I seem to have problems tracking distances and movements for a short period of adjustment as I retrain my eyes to work in a 3D environment rather than a 2D representation of 3D.
Isn't "Myopia" a type of optical malady also known as near-sightedness? Granted that "Mytopia" and "Myopia" are two different words, but they are similar enough that the mind will draw a connection between the two whether "liminally" or "subliminally." (Yes, I know there is no word liminally... I just like playing with words and it does effectively get the point across.)
Does playing this game make you near-sighted?
here's my free ad campaign slogans for you:
1. "stare at the screen forever! get your myopia on mytopia"
2. "mytopia: you would think it's an amalgam of 'my utopia'. it's actually an amalgam of 'my dystopia'. sorry for your forthcoming displeasure"
3. "welcome to mytopia. if you are looking for the hallucinogenic substance exchange 'mycopia,' you are on the wrong site, click here"
4. "welcome to mytopiary.com, the site for lovers of small shrubs and all things related to small shrub erotica! the mytopia website burned through all of its funds on a shameless ad plug on slashdot, and went bankrupt, and we bought their domain for $29.94"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Like Kings Quest? Dune 2? Battle Chess? Super Mario Brothers? Castle Wolfenstein? Pirates!? Rampage?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Like tic-tac-toe, or global thermonuclear war.
This (visually) looks amazingly similar to the Imagination Network
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001081.html has a screenshot comparison I saw earlier this morning.
1. Write sudoku-playing bots 2. ??? 3. Prizes!!!
Jeff Atwood wrote a post about this yesterday. Apparently, Mytopia is a lot like Sierra's ImagiNation Network from the late 80s/early 90s.
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
...for generating traffic for news.com or why on earth didn't you include the link to Mytopia?!!
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
That mytopia looks a lot like myopia which means "short-sightedness"? Anyone find this fitting?
OK, this upstart will achieve NOTHING unless he somehow gets an idea of how to dethrone the inexplicably popular NEOPETS from its throne of bones. I "played" Neopets for more than a month back in '04, when I was out of a job and homebound, and it singlehandedly made me want to get out of the house and get into the real world (no small feat). And Neopets remains popular despite the fact that one of its main pet types is sacreligious to one of the world's most respected religions. All aboard to Krawk Island! Avast and set sail to Meridell!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
new casual games portals are ten a penny. who cares?
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
the mytopia domain has 0 contact information and a whois on the domain produces a hidden registration if this was legit company/startup and all above board why would they hide their contact info behind a registration proxy ? perhaps we should look harder at them and see where they get their games from i wonder if evservers (their US based host) is aware what they are hosting the DMCA does still apply in the US
1. Obtain highest rating in all games on Mytopia
2. Get Geek Card Platinum
3. ???
4. Profit
It doesn't even allow me to login...weird.
I was not able to access the games on that site using ff under Feisty. Anyone else have any luck using GNU Linux to access that site?
The site is flawless:
Code: UsernamePasswordDontMatch
Authentication error
Pretty sure I can type correctly.
Slashdotters are usually Democratic/Leftist by nature. That's the culture, and I am proud to be a democrat, proud to be black, and proud member of the American Criminal Leftist Union.
the flash is served from the domain dams.realdice.com
a whois on that discovers the owners name and a dropbox address in carson city with rather a seedy past.
the name i got was a "Guy Ben-Artzi" a google on that name brings us to this company based in Israel
where he is apparently the VP of Research & Development of a electronics firm (seems to be a busy chap) of course this might be someone else but the evidence seems to point to him
the realdice site has an affiliate program where you can earn thousands apparently.
seems this chap is rather industrious, a look on a domain explorer reveals quite a few domains hosted on that IP all related to gaming (specifically mobile related) and all with the same casino games theme and hidden whois
blackberrymultiplayer.com
dreamin.com
games4treo.com
gamesfortreo.com
gamesforwindowsmobile.com
heartsmultiplayer.com
javamultiplayer.com
multiplayerblackberry.com
multiplayerbrew.com
multiplayerchampionship.com
multiplayermobile.com
multiplayerpalm.com
multiplayerseries.com
multiplayerwm.com
sudokumaster.com
sudokumultiplayer.com
windowsmobilemultiplayer.com
wmmultiplayer.com
certainly a busy "Guy", iam sure i could find out a lot more about this man but so far he is looking rather a dodgy person with an affinty for gambling and hiding his info (hardly suprising looking at the trademark names in his domain collection
ttfn
Anonymous
Can't even log into the site.
Did a good job harvesting my email though! Now I'm sure to get 1,000,010 spams a day instead of just 1,000,000!
paintball
Not the story, this post. I have to use the story as an excuse to plug my own favorite casual gaming site, Kongregate. The cute thing about them is that most of their games are user uploads. Many of these have rough edges (my personal favorite time sink^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hgame, Desktop Tower Defense, has hand-drawn icons and sound effects that seem to have been done by somebody with a microphone and a talent for silly noises), but that just adds to the fun.
Looks kind og like Sierra's ImageNation network
Yay! Yet another place where I can play checkers, hearts, or some rip-off of Scrabble that still isn't Scrabble. Games.com used to be really good. I could play Sorry!, Monopoly and other boardgames with friends online, but now it's mostly a portal for demo downloads of single player games. Give me an online web service that allows me to play Monopoly, Clue, Life, Trivial Pursuit, and Stratego on a virtual game board against friends OVER the Internet and without downloading Windows software; and I will happily pay a subscription. Otherwise, I hope this site crashes and burns. Yes, new free game portals actually does anger me.
And this game is casual enough that not only does it cater to casual gamers - it was also coded in a very casual matter. I can't say much for my ActionScript programming (probably horrible at best), but at least I got something to work in a playable manner.
This is such a boring approach to online games. I think much better would be a service that aims to run ANY turn-based game. Create a language to describe the rules of play, table setup, and optionally an AI. Provide basic concepts such as a deck of cards, a playing surface, and a set of game pieces. All you'd have to do is write a few example games, and the users would do the rest, coding up every standard game, and inventing many of their own.
Making it profitable while keeping it open and user friendly is a bit more complicated, but definitely doable. I was thinking of starting something like this, but since I don't think I'll have the time anytime soon, perhaps someone would like to take the idea and run with it.
I prefer Kongregate for casual gaming (read: gaming at work). Honestly, though, is there really that large of a market for this?
It's odd that such a site would launch and gain publicity without having anything new to offer!
Battle City