Looking for “Early Glory”, Developer Releases Game on Kindle

As you may know, I bought a Kindle recently. I use it to read the long form articles that go into my weekly column as well as books and blogs. One thing I’ve never really thought about using it for, however, is gaming.

CEO of Spry Fox, David Edry, recently penned a post on his blog talking about why his company has just released a game on Amazon’s Kindle and brings up a few interesting ideas. Basically, his decision to design a game (Triple Town) comes from the idea that the Kindle is a market that has prospective growth, where users “are inclined and encouraged to purchase large quantities of digital content at relatively healthy prices.”

He also points out that right now, there’s actually very little in terms of Kindle games on the market, so Spry Fox could get some “early glory” by being one of a few developers who are making games for a device that seemingly doesn’t seem to fit it.

It’s not quite in competition with the iPhone in terms of the number developers or games, but there’s been perks of interest from a couple of groups that are looking to define this new market. EA launched Scrabble on the Kindle recently (which I can’t download because you know, the internet isn’t a global network) as well as others such as Solitaire. These simple games aren’t the next generation of our beloved interactive medium, but it’s still interesting seeing devs pushing to make games on a device which seemingly wasn’t meant to have games on. Things like a “choose your own adventure” titles could be very fun, although I’ve yet to try this out.

Edry’s whole post is a worth a read, but this subject also brings up an interesting question about the uses of our modern devices. Every piece of consumer electronic equipment we buy has a certain amount of multi-purpose use. Gone are the days when your game console just played games (PS1) or when your phone just did phone calls (pre-iPhone). Now, devices can play music, video, tweet as well as carrying out its primary function.

The Kindle, which doesn’t even have a clock, tries to remove this multi-purpose nature by just focusing on the reading. It’s not an iPad; it isn’t trying to be an all-in-one, it’s just trying to be a reader. While most of these are simple, word-based games it’s still interesting to see them on there and find out whether devs can make any money from the venture. If nothing else it shows the importance of having an “app store” in the modern electronics market; everything is about the add-on sale.

via: MTV