FunOrb

FunOrb

FunOrb logo
Type of site
 Internet games
Available in English, French, German, Brazilian Portuguese
Owner Jagex
Created by Jagex
Slogan(s) The best in free online games
Website www.funorb.com
Commercial Yes
Registration Optional (compulsory for multi-player games)
Launched 27 February 2008 (2008-02-27)
Current status Online

FunOrb is a casual gaming site created by Jagex. Launched on 27 February 2008, it was the company's first major release after their successful MMORPG, RuneScape. All of the games are programmed in Java.

Jagex has announced that this site is targeted towards the "hard casual", "deep casual" or "time-pressured" gamer market and that it intends to expand into the mobile phone games market.[1][2][3] On 3 December 2009, Jagex released its first mobile phone game, Bouncedown, for the iPhone and iPod touch,[4] followed by StarCannon on 15 April 2010,[5] Miner Disturbance on 8 June 2010,[6] and Undercroft on 16 September 2010.[7]

Summary

A screenshot showing Arcanists, one of the games on FunOrb.

FunOrb offers single-player and multiplayer games. Multiplayer games allow players to communicate with each other through a public lobby, game chat, which can be used while playing in a game, or through private chat, which can be used to talk to people on RuneScape, and vice versa. In all current multiplayer games, players receive a separate rating for each game, which symbolises their experience with the games and can rise or fall based on their rated game performance. In all current multiplayer games, with the exception of the persistent-world game, Dungeon Assault, players may play "rated" games, which finds random opponents and adjusts their rating based on their performance, or they can play unrated games with people of their choice, which have no effect on their rating.

The site includes an achievement system which gives awards for completing challenges in single-player and multiplayer games. These include "Orb Coins", which players are able to spend on a variety of game content including desktop wallpapers, music, icons, and more.[8] Also awarded are "Orb Points", which can be compared to those of other players.[9] The site has been launched in English, German, French and Brazilian Portuguese, with more languages planned.[10]

Jagex stated that FunOrb would be updated every two weeks, either with a new game, an update to a game or an updated site feature,[11] but the last website update was on 2 December 2014.[12][13] Currently, only Jagex games are available on the site, but Jagex stated in 2008 that they were considering adding third party games to the site.[14]

Cost

Another screenshot showing the game Armies of Gielinor.

Limited versions of all FunOrb games are available for free, with costs covered by advertising. Some games are completely free, with the exception of fullscreen mode. Players have the option of becoming paying subscribers, which gives them access to more ingame content, among other things the option to play games in fullscreen mode and an increased amount of achievements.[15] Subscribers are also granted immediate access to the FunOrb forums, whereas non-subscribers are required to have obtained at least 42 achievements before being allowed to post.[16]

Holiday events

From 22 October 2008 to 5 November 2008, special Halloween Achievements were spread across 10 games, with each of those games having a temporary Halloween theme.[17] These were re-released on 28 October 2009, along with Achievements and Halloween themes for several other games.[18]

On 18 December 2008, an update for the game Arcanists was released in celebration of Christmas, in the form of several costumes that players could buy with Orb Coins.[19]

Awards and accomplishments

In November 2011 the FunOrb game Arcanists won game of the month on MPOGD.[20]

Jagex, the creators of FunOrb was shortlisted for a Golden Joystick award[21].

State of the player base and website

Post 2010, FunOrb received little to no development, the last update being on September 26th, 2010.[22] Since this date the playerbase has dwindled, only now averaging about 10-20 players across the whole site. Entirely concentrated in the most popular game, Arcanists. Due to many browsers now no longer allowing Java to run (Chrome[23], Firefox[24]) due to no longer supporting NPAPI (technology required for Java applets to run) FunOrb has further decreased in popularity, however it is possible to use Jagex's RuneScape client (JagexLauncher) to load FunOrb games[25].

References

  1. ↑ Leigh Alexander (2008-01-28). "Q&A: Jagex's Faulkner Talks New Service, Emerging Trends". Gamasutra. Archived from the original on 2009-11-11. Retrieved 2009-10-28.
  2. ↑ Robert Purchese (2008-02-29). "FunOrb targeting "every demographic"". Eurogamer. Archived from the original on 2011-07-29. Retrieved 2008-05-19.
  3. ↑ Christian Nutt (2008-10-24). "Interview: Jagex CEO Iddison On Going 'Deep Casual' With FunOrb". Gamasutra. Archived from the original on 2008-12-21. Retrieved 2008-12-01.
  4. ↑ "Bouncedown — Now available on the iPhone". FunOrb News. Jagex. 2009-12-03. Retrieved 2009-12-03.
  5. ↑ "StarCannon: now on iPhone and iPod touch". FunOrb News. Jagex. 2010-04-15. Retrieved 2010-04-15.
  6. ↑ "Miner Disturbance for iPhone and iPod". Jagex. 2010-06-08. Retrieved 2010-06-09.
  7. ↑ "Undercroft for iPhone and iPod". FunOrb News. Jagex. 2010-09-23. Retrieved 2011-02-03.
  8. ↑ "Orb Downloads". FunOrb News. Jagex. 2008-09-24. Retrieved 2008-09-24.
  9. ↑ "Orb Points Table". FunOrb News. Jagex. 2008-08-13. Retrieved 2008-08-14.
  10. ↑ "FunOrb Brazil". FunOrb News. Jagex. 2008-11-20. Retrieved 2008-11-22.
  11. ↑ "General/Most Popular Questions". FunOrb Knowledge Base. Jagex. Retrieved 2009-08-09.
  12. ↑ We have an Update?!? General forum
  13. ↑ Confined - Where did this game come from?
  14. ↑ Tim Ingham (2008-06-18). "£12,000... all it takes to create a casual game". casualgaming.biz. Archived from the original on 2011-07-29. Retrieved 2008-06-18.
  15. ↑ "FunOrb Members' Benefits". FunOrb Knowledge Base. Jagex. Retrieved 2011-05-27.
  16. ↑ "Forum FAQs". FunOrb Knowledge Base. Jagex. Retrieved 2009-08-23.
  17. ↑ "Halloween on FunOrb". FunOrb News. Jagex. 2008-10-22. Retrieved 2008-11-06.
  18. ↑ "FunOrb Hallowe'en". FunOrb News. Jagex. 2009-10-28. Retrieved 2009-10-28.
  19. ↑ "Arcanists Costumes for Download". FunOrb News. Jagex. 2008-12-18. Retrieved 2009-01-07.
  20. ↑ "MPOGD's GAME OF THE MONTH November 2011". Multiplayer Online Game Directory. 2011-11-01. Retrieved 2012-10-01.
  21. ↑ www.jagex.com. "FunOrb - News - Golden Joystick Awards". services.funorb.com. Retrieved 2017-07-31.
  22. ↑ Jagex, Inc. (2010). "News Archive". FunOrb.com.
  23. ↑ "Java and Google Chrome Browser". www.java.com. Retrieved 2017-07-31.
  24. ↑ "Java plugin does not work in Firefox". www.java.com. Retrieved 2017-07-31.
  25. ↑ "How to play Arcanists outside of the browser • r/arcanists". reddit. Retrieved 2017-07-31.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.