Sharendipity
The tools and finished games on Sharendipity are available for anyone to use free now while still in beta.
Overlooking Madison's Capitol Square, in a small, open office, four programmers are diligently working on the next great online game. The catch is they're not actually creating it. They're building the tools so that anyone, with or without experience, can create a web-based game that he or she can instantly share with anyone. The company is called That led to the notion that they could "create a platform that would let people interested in math create that [themselves], let people interested in physics create physics educational software, let people interested in games create games," explains Gehring. "And that's what became Sharendipity." These sorts of simple games, dubbed "casual games," are very popular now on platforms ranging from the web to cell phones to iPods and are expanding on what Solitaire and Tetris began years ago. Casual games played from within social networking sites such as "We aren't in the business of making games," says Greg Tracey. "We're just producing the platform that lets the community build games. The idea is that non-programmers can do that too, by reusing the small components that other people in the community contribute." There isn't an approval process in place, making the relationship between Sharendipity and its users more collaborative than even the relatively open iPhone application store, which still requires the purchase of software and programming knowledge. A major milestone for Sharendipity came a month ago, when it made the game player available in web browsers using Flash, software that runs much smoother for many users than the Java version that Sharendipity started with. Sharendipity's Facebook page boasts over 500 users, but it's just a start. "We're platform-independent; the idea is that we'll eventually have an Xbox player or you could create the application from Facebook or from our website. It could run on an iPhone or an Xbox." Sharendipity's plans for 2009 include increasing its staff and, eventually, launching the marketplace. There never will be a true final version, as the editor will be consistently enhanced and improved. "Our business is to empower people to create things," says Gehring." "And the more places that creation gets played the better." Sharendipity
sharendipity.com
apps.facebook.com/sharendipity
