Playyoo Goes Live

Playyoo — a new mobile casual game service — has gone live. The service is free, although downloading games incurs fees from your cell provider.

[I have been consulting to the company on the product for several months, and I have both an emotional and financial relationship with the firm, so I am decidedly biased. We have some great things planned for 2008.]

There are many design features of Playyoo that are cool, especially the core design notion of a ‘game stream’ — the sequence of rectangles across the top of the page — which are filled by a combination of manual selection, friend’s recommendations, or by selecting a blend of game types to automatically control new additions. David Mantripp, the principal designer of the service, has done a great job in this design, which is clean and uncluttered.

I have no friends on Playyoo yet, as I have just signed up. Please join me there.

The company is running a contest with cash prizes for best games with a first prize of $10,000. If you are a game designer or a hobbyist, you might want to jump in. Playyoo includes a Game Creator, so you could craft a game online and win big bucks. Give it a try.