Look around you for new game inspirations

Scratching for a new game idea? The “The Pickford Paradox”: Between Silent Film and New Media from Henry Jenkins does a nice job of getting you to look around your physical world to find new inspirations for games.

Update: Another great source, GamePlayGag, for examples between silent movies and new media.

We’ve released our new creation tools in Flash!

We are really excited to announce the launch of our new game creation tools in Flash! As we’ve talked about many times before, we’ve been striving to improve your user experience within the browser. With Flash, you now have a seamless launching and syndication experience, plus a snazzy user interface!

The port of our browser player from Java to Flash went relatively quickly. However, in the case of the creation tools, we took the opportunity to step back, identify, and eliminate many of the points of friction that made it difficult to reuse components in the community.

We love reuse at Sharendipity. We think that is the key to making it easier for everyone to enjoy the process of creating and sharing interactive applications with their friends. And our new creation tool has taken huge strides toward making this a snap!

For example, you can display Flickr photographs on any object by simply dragging a Flickr feed component onto the object. You can incorporate the profile data of your Facebook friends into your games through multiple Facebook services. Perhaps more exciting is the ability to create templates from these user generated components. For example, the Scramble template provides a mechanism for anyone to customize their own photo scramble game. All of these elements are created by users in the community and shared without requiring the respective consumers to understand how the underlying objects are programmed.

If you’d like to build your own logic, we provide object oriented programming tools for you to use. Once you’re finished, you can share it with others in the community. Whether it is a set of actions, a game actor, a scoring system, a web service, or your own artwork.

To help celebrate this event and help you get acquainted with the creator, we’ll be hosting a game jam Tuesday, June 23rd at our Sharendipity offices from 5-11pm. If you can’t make it in person, please join us online through our Twitter account and we’ll work hard to support you remotely.

We believe in your creativity so come join the fun and show off your talents today! We are in the process of turning over the tutorials and wiki to match the new tools. If you need anything feel free to contact us through our Get Satisfaction page!