instantaction posts

Why did InstantAction get shut down? That's a question that's been hanging over the industry since its parent company, IAC, made the decision to close InstantAction's operations last November. It's former CEO Louis Castle, now the new VP of Studios at Zynga, has finally spoken on the reasons behind the closure of InstantAction to IndustryGamers.

In short, Castle said that the company, which was trying to push technology that would embed high end games into web sites similar to Flash web videos, wasn't making enough money for its parent company IAC. He states, " ... we certainly were affected by the fact that it was quite an expensive operation. We still had quite a ways to go, six months to a year, before we would be completely on track."

He added, "I can't blame IAC, which put a ton of money into the project. At that point in time they just said it would just be better for them to discontinue operations and take the write-offs, because they had a strong year, and not continue to play in a space that they weren't comfortable in." The game engine part of InstantAction was successfully sold off and is now a separate company under its original name of GarageGames.

Last year saw the shut down of InstantAction, the PC gaming company that tried to launch a web-based embeded game technology. The company was headed up by Louis Castle, the former head of Westwood Studios that created the Command and Conquer series.

Now IndustryGamers has announced that Castle has a new job as he has been hired by Facebook game publisher Zynga as its new VP of Studios. Castle is the latest major PC game developer to join Zynga following others such as Brian Reynolds (formerly of Big Huge Games), Mike Verdu (formerly of EA Los Angeles) and even Ensemble Studios co-founder Bruce Shelley who is working for Zynga as a consultant.

IndustryGames promises to post up a new interview with Castle that will reveal what happened with InstantAction.

October 2010 saw the shutdown of InstantAction.com, the streaming/embed game publisher. However the company's Torque engine game business stayed operational while it tried to find a new owner. Today it was announced that new owners have indeed been found and the Torque game engine business will continue under the game company's original name GarageGames. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The newly revived GarageGames is now owned by Graham Software Development and will continue to support and update the many Torque game engine and development tools. The company has also lowered the price of all of its tools to just $99 each for a limited time. In a post on the company's web site its mentioned that the company will remain in Las Vegas and is currently hiring.

Last month, Hi-Rez Studios bought the rights to the Tribes series of games from InstantAction.com just before the latter company shut its doors. Now comes word that another game owned and operated by InstantAction.com could be getting a new life as well.

It's Fallen Empire: Legions, the "spiritual successor" to Tribes that was released by InstantAction.com's first incarnation as a free-to-play browser-based multiplayer shooter. A group of the game's loyal community members reached an agreement with InstantAction.com to obtain the source code for the game. The team plans to re-release the title as a stand alone game (no browser needed) under the new name of Legions: Overdrive. The team is already signing up people to beta test the game but there's no word yet on when the game will get its re-launch.

InstantAction.com, the heavily hyped browser based PC game service, is shutting its doors. In a post on the Torquepowered.com message board (owned by InstantAction) its director of operations Eric Preize stated, "Today, InstantAction informed employees that it will be winding down operations." It's currently unknown how many people are affected by the shut down of the company which had offices in Portland, Oregon and in Las Vegas.

InstantAction.com was formed in 2007 as a subsidiary of from the now former GarageGames as a web-based PC game site with a number of original 3D titles that ran in a browser. In 2009, Louis Castle, the founder of Westwood Games, came on board as the company's new CEO. Under his leadership InstantAction.com's business model switched to support games that are embedded to web sites like Flash-based videos. It released two games that used that technology (The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition and its own game Instant Jam) before today's announcement.

The company, whose parent is internet conglomerate IAC, has continued to support and develop GarageGames' Torque game development tool business throughout these changes to its business models. In his message today Preize stated, "Torquepowered.com will continue to operate while InstantAction explores opportunities with potential buyers for Torque." Last month Hi-Rez Studios purchased the Tribes game rights from InstantAction.com for an undisclosed amount.

[Via Gamasutra]

It's been a while since InstantAction discussed its streaming PC game service that would allow games to be embedded into web sites like videos. It looks like things have been a bit slow on that front for the company, which released The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition earlier this summer on the service and then its own game, the music-themed Instant Jam.

So what's the hold up on more games from InstantAction? Gamesindustry.biz (free registration required) chatted with the company's CEO Louis Castle who said, "We got very close to a lot of deals with a lot of potential partners." However publishers wanted some proof that the technology would work and so InstantAction created Instant Jam. And what about that deal to offer indie games from the Greenhouse web site via streaming technology? Castle states, "We'll start with a couple of them and then we'll roll them out." So far the Greenhouse site is still "temporarily offline."

The folks at InstantAction have been fairly slow to release new info about the plans for the company's web-based game service but today that changed with the launch of Instant Jam. This new Facebook-based games allows people to take their own music library and play it with the game in a Guitar Hero-Rock Band inspired interface. Players can link up with their Facebook friends to play the game and purchase new songs via Amazon.

This new project seems to be a slight departure from InstantAction's previously announced plans to offer high-quality PC games as embeddable items similar to Flash-based web video. Earlier this year we reported that InstantAction was teaming up with the indie game site Greenhouse to offer that sites games via InstantAction's embedded technology. So far the site has yet to relaunch with that tech.

On Tuesday we reported that the PC indie-themed game download site Greenhouse would be using the embed gaming technology from InstantAction. We now have some more info about the deal from Robert Khoo, the business head of Penny Arcade which owns Greenhouse.

Khoo told Big Download that it first learned of InstantAction's gaming embed technology some time ago but that InstantAction was not yet ready to implement the tech at the time. Penny Arcade more recently assumed 100 percent ownership of the Greenhouse web site (it started as a co-venture with Hothead Games) and it was at that time that InstantAction said their game embed technology was now ready.

As far as how the developers of the games on Greenhouse feel about the InstantAction deal, Khoo tells us, "Indie devs think the same way we think about it, which is that since they have the option to embed the games into pretty much anywhere, it's a win-win for everyone involved. Yes, we'll still offer the ability to have the standard off-line version, but since indies have their own built in-audiences, being able to connect them directly via their embedded game is pretty powerful stuff."

As we mentioned Tuesday, the Greenhouse web site is currently in an offline mode until the InstantAction technology is put in place (although folks who have purchased games from the service can download them again if they need to). Khoo would not give us a concrete date for the site's relaunch but said it should happen sometime before Penny Arcade Expo starts in early September.

The site, which was co-founded by Penny Arcade some time ago, is currently offline. While details are few Penny Arcade's business head Robert Khoo has confirmed to Big Download that InstantAction will be using its streaming game embed tech to deliver games from the Greenhouse library of titles when the site comes back online. At the moment there's no word on when the new Greenhouse web site will come back online.

The InstantAction.com web site has still not relaunched yet but the browser-based PC game web site is starting to reveal more about the kinds of features they plan to introduce when they come back online. The latest video blog from the team has revealed that InstantAction.com will offer the ability for publishers to have their PC titles be available on a rent-to-own basis.

Basically the idea is that some PC games on the site can be downloaded and purchase for a small fee to play for a certain time period. If the player decides he or she wants to play the full game they can go ahead and pay for the full price tag minus what they have already paid for or they can simply wait and pay in increments until they finally do own the game. Details on how this system will work are still being worked out. The video blog states it will be up to the publishers of the games to decide if they want to use the rent-to-own feature and what prices and time limits they will set for each game.

So does that mean there won't be any free game demos on the site? In an addendum on the video blog post, the company states, "We plan to offer demos as well as rent-to-own." Unfortunately there's still no word on when InstantAction.com will relaunch.