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Visit Millions of games, originally added to eHub on Sep 19, 05.

eHub Interviews MillionsofGames.com (MOG)

Thanks to Duncan Gough, creator of MillionsofGames.com for this email interview posted November 4, 2005.

eHub: What is your web application/service about?

MOG: Millionsofgames aims to be the largest directory of community bookmarked casual games. We built MOG out of a basic links site that we’d always talked about building and we’re convinced that casual games are a candidate for tagging since bookmarking and sharing links on del.icio.us is a lot of fun.

There are no other tagging sites that cater exclusively for casual games and we’ve put a lot of work into making it a fun and competitive website.

eHub: Why did you start this project?

MOG: Necessity. Many of the main social bookmarking sites have a games section but none of them are guaranteed to be filled with links to online or downloadable games. There has been a lot of discussion about the fragmentation of social bookmarking sites to cater for different types of content. Tagging casual games is an easy choice for us at 3rdsense because we come across so many quality games that we need a place to keep track of them all.

eHub: How much time do you devote to its growth? Do you have a day job?

MOG: Now that MOG has launched, we’re planning what improvements to make for the next version, which doesn’t take up too much of our time. Thankfully, building MOG has been part of my day job at 3rdsense.com along with game development and several rounds of agency work.

eHub: How large is your team and what are your backgrounds?

MOG: All four of us have been involved in building and testing MOG, although I’ve been the primary developer since we are a small company.

I’ve worked for a number of dot-coms in London, most notably UpMyStreet and Time Out, before landing on my feet with 3rdsense.

eHub: What is your design philosophy?

MOG: MOG is something of a venture into the unknown so we minimised the risks by re-using as much of our existing codebase as possible. This foundation meant that the code didn’t have any opportunities to draw our attention away from the main purpose of the website. In that sense, our design philosophy is focussed on evolution and re-use.

eHub: What technologies are you currently using?

MOG: LAMP, where the P is PHP and Python (particularly the win32 extensions). Ruby on Rails was a distinct contender and may well be in the future.

eHub: If your project is live, what are the most requested features from your users/community?

MOG: del.icio.us style subscriptions and inboxes plus an easy way to contribute (using bookmarklets is a high barrier to participation for our audience).

eHub: Does your user base reside in a primary geographic location or is it distributed?

MOG: It is distributed.

eHub: Where do you see the project heading in the next 6 months? The next 2 years?

MOG: The next six months will be about consolidation and mindshare. Within two years will we have to address the architecture of the website since, as Nitin Borwankar pointed out, Web 2.0 needs Data 2.0.

eHub: What is the greatest challenge to your success?

MOG: Balancing the volume of data available to us with the amount we display to users on the site.

Presenting the right amount of data to allow users to make decisions about each game is just as important as collecting data about casual games. If we get that right, we’ll have even more data to deal with. So our reward for all that hard work will, of course, be even more hard work.

eHub: What is the one thing you need to get to the next phase of the project?

MOG: 6 to 12 months worth of data, users and exposure.

eHub: Do you have a business model? If so, what is it?

MOG: Yes, but it’s not something I can discuss for several, good reasons.

eHub: If you’re able to disclose this information, how much traffic or usage do you see on an average day?

MOG: When Slashdot linked to us, plenty. Otherwise, enough to make us think that we’re on to something but not enough for us to break out the non-alcoholic champagne.

eHub: What is the one thing you’re most proud of about the project?

MOG: The terribly ropey, browser screenshots script that is liable to crash if I even look at it the wrong way (and just has).

eHub: How would you describe the shift that’s occurring with the web right now to future generations?

MOG: The web is catching up with its own potential. However, there’s nothing being built at the moment that could not have been built a couple of years ago. I don’t think that future generations are going to be all that interested in this particular shift.

eHub: What site(s) do you visit everyday other than your own?

MOG: On a regular basis, I check lesscode.org, plasticbag.org and interconnected.org. Slashdot.org and new.bbc.co.uk are probably the only sites I visit on a daily basis.

eHub: How many hours of sleep do you get a night?

MOG: Plenty of sleep and plenty of early mornings, courtesy of my son, Ryan.

Thanks to Duncan Gough, creator of MillionsofGames.com for this email interview posted November 4, 2005.

Visit Millions of games
Originally added to eHub on Sep 19, 05

» More eHub Interviews

eHub Interviews is a series with the creators of Web 2.0 applications and services by Emily Chang, author of eHub, designer, and co-founder and principal of Ideacodes, a strategic web consultancy in San Francisco that she co-founded with Max Kiesler.

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