doof — Web’s Video Arcade

doof

Over past few years social networking has become a mainstay of the online experience. Most internet users have heard of MySpace, Facebook or Orkut, if not participate in one. But what about social gaming? This primarily has been restricted within the online game-play modes of Xbox 360 or Playstation 3, which is limited to full blown complex games. There are PC based internet alternatives but they are as complex.

doof on the other hand is a new service, which has launched in beta. Their approach is very similar to the video arcade, only for the web. Remember the arcades with simple games where one popped in few quarters and they delivered tons of fun.

doof Games

doof’s service, fully developed in flash has a similar approach. They have created over 50 simple web based games, which remind you of the ones in the arcade. These games are very simple to learn and play. As a player one can quickly start enjoying the game, without have to worrying about learning the controls. Ofcourse one has to get good at the game to win points and get ahead in the rankings. One can play them solo or get into multi-player tournaments. The normal game play is free, but the multi-player game-play requires credits, which can be purchased using PayPal or credit cards. Players can also earn credits by beating the top scores, meeting benchmark scores and of course by winning multi-player challenges.

doof profile

doof keeps track of your game plays and points earned. These points are displayed on your public profile. doof allows a very rich profile, where users can express themselves. Players can show off their accolades along with any personal content like photos and videos. Compared to a typical social network, doof takes the player profile paradigm to the next level.

In addition to offering addictive games, doof has created a very sticky community environment. They have done so by enabling the community aspects in the game play itself. The service offers myriad of tools to the users for participating and connecting within the community. Some of them are:

doof Community

  • Challenge to a game
  • doof messenger
  • Email messaging
  • Profile wall commenting
  • Send gifts and tickles etc

Checkout more features on their blog. The community angle makes the service pretty sticky. Most other communities like Facebook and MySpace leave it to the users to interact on whatever topic they feel comfortable with. Also if you don’t already know people on the community, it is somewhat weird to make friends online on such sites. However doof connects everyone with the gaming theme. Thus its easy for people to connect with each other and compete. Such competitions (and championships) fuel the communal interactions, thus increasing the service usage.

Their business model is also interesting as they have simply mapped the arcade model to the web. People pay to play, simple as that. Note that basic game play is free and only multi-player or championship modes needs credits. The games are pretty addictive and I can easily see users spending a lot of time on this site. The flash rich environment maybe only beneficial for the broadband users, but I haven’t performed tests to prove otherwise.

So in conclusion, I found this to be a really addictive service, which delivers lots of fun. They have tons of features on the service, which one can learn overtime. So I recommend that you go and play some of them. Also bosses everywhere, watch out ;-).

October 15th, 2007 in Gaming, Web 2.0

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