About Free Online Games, the Best Games to Play, Flash Game Developers & Publishers (Free Online Games)

Free Online Games

The free online flash gaming market has exploded over the past 5 years to comprise of a countless amount of game developers and publishing websites. The former is in more limited supply than the later, yet even flash game developers are steadily becoming in surplus supply as more companies realise the profitability in providing free online games as an advertising platform. Publishers are in greater supply with a huge amount of games websites offering the developers material, indeed some games developers also offer their own publishing websites such Ninjakiwi and Armor Games. These are two of the more popular and innovative gaming developers.

Ninjakiwi create flash games under their own small in house team of developers, they are owners of the very popular brand of games known as Bloons. The first Bloons game was introduced back in mid 2007 and the series has become so popular as a free online game entertainment brand that the games have already been played hundreds of millions of times. If you compare such an audience exposure rate to something like the most popular video watched on you tube, it is easy to see why advertisers are turning to free online games to reach an epic audience proportion. What's more intriguing is the demographics behind casual game players, some may think that it is mostly children that play these games, they would be wrong, the majority of people who play the games are young adults, with such a specific demographic being clear, free online games make great appeal to companies selling products around the young adult age range. That's not to say that children don't play these games, as mentioned the more popular games receive millions of plays on a daily basis and a substantial amount will still be played by children.

Of course with free online games holding such huge advertising appeal, games are starting to be designed more cleverly. Developers are now creating games targeted specifically at age ranges, including teens, young adults and mums.

Ninjakiwis' list of games is expanding rapidly. As their brand has received greater exposure over the past year they have branched out from their original success of Bloons to produce other games with different concepts, some have been received with more enthusiasm than others. Some of their game successes include:


Bloons Game Series - Including the player packs, more bloons and even more bloons, tower defense games, hot air bloon, bloons pop 3
Boombot Games - 1 and 2
Hotcorn Games - 1 and 2
Potion Madness
Powerpool
Replay Racer - 1 and 2
Rings
Shinju
Sinta
Zeba

Ninjakiwi as a free online game provider has established a loyal fan base with their range of games being published across countless gaming websites including their own. One of their advertising platforms is through a website called Mochiads. This website provides a major platform for both game developers and game publishers to earn revenue from publishing games with a small advert being shown whilst each game is being downloaded by the viewer. Developers and publishers get paid every time some one plays a game they have made or a game that is being published on their own site. Mochiads reaches over 50 million gamers, this is a whopping amount.

The other free online games developer previously mentioned, Armor games, is the larger of the 2 developers. Instead of using in house game developers, Armor games sponsors independent game developers, funding their creations and offering revenue share across their advertising platform. Armor games has a much more extensive range games than Ninjakiwi and has funded the creation of some very imaginative games, a list of some of their best games is compiled below, each game is very much worth trying:


Armed with Wings - 1 and 2
Pillage the Village
Sonny
Hedgehog Launch
Strawhat Samurai
Rocket Man
Fancy Pants Adventure - 1 and 2
Gemcraft

Armor games offer a wide range of flash games available to play on their website, yet their games have been published across hundreds of other sites. Free online games have become so popular that as soon as a quality game is created, many websites snap it up and publish it for their own audiences as well. Rather than attempting to restrict a games distribution, which is virtually impossible over the internet for something as intangible as a flash file, it is much wiser to use the popularity of a game to embed advertisements within the it before it is officially released, then the adverts are shown millions of times throughout the online gaming community, this way everyone wins.

There are a lot of other quality game producers, such others include Crazy Monkey Games who follow a very similar model to Armor Games and have sponsored the production of such hits as the Boxhead Games Series and the Last Stand 1 and 2.

Some developers move away from the free gaming side and develop their games using other platforms other than flash. The games they produce are of much greater depth and graphic capability and are charged for, as they are only available to download and play on your desktop requiring separate installation. This is a different market than free online flash games, such providers include the Real Arcade.

Flash game production has also seen the remake of many old classic arcade games which many people may have thought are only available through vintage console or arcade purchases, or even by having to download and install gaming emulators and roms on their computers.

Classic games such as PacMan, Ms PacMan, Space Invaders, Pong and Frogger have all been remade using flash and are now available to play as a free online game. Paul Neave, an expert flash developer was responsible for the flash version production of many of these classics and they can now be played at his website and many other gaming websites. It will prove a delight to many fans of the 80's era to find that some of their most cherished classic games can be revisited through the simple launch of a website page.

More comprehensive flash gaming communities have sprung up within this landmark 5 year period of growth. One example of a hugely popular community is MechQuest, this is one of currently 5 flash games created by Artix Entertainment. This is a constantly developing online Fantasy/SciFi Web RPG game which offers both a free and premium paid side. The game is built using flash and has millions of members in its community. It aims to offer a game with reasonable depth, but not to the likes of games such as World of Warcraft. Instead it offers one that can be played for a couple of hours here and there. MechQuest holds enough of a rewarding experience without consuming ghastly amounts of your free time, as opposed to the later where you have to spend 4-5 hours at a time to get any real reward from playing the game. Of course free online games such as MechQuest, AdventureQuest, DragonFable, ArchKnight and BattleOn.com are a step in the right direction for what online gaming should be about, offering the gaming fan a healthy portion sized serving of a fun game without requiring a life long commitment to get anywhere within it.

The free online games market will continue to grow hugely over the next 5 years and more developers will come into the market. Whether flash will remain the markets main publishing platform in the future remains to be seen but for now it will keep its dominant position with all free online game developers using it. Fans can look forward to even more elaborate free online flash games being produced for their entertainment, with the likelihood that some of these games are going to become more in depth and absorbing to play.


Free Online Games

Author: Jod Carey
Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jod_Carey