The FlashCanon

The Escapist magazine interviews Dan Ferguson of Blockdot.

Here’s the link to the interview.
And here’s the lead-in:

Office managers can thank Dan Ferguson for helping reduce their workers’ productivity. He pioneered the concept of the “advergame”: easy-to-play, casual videogames that pitch a product, service or company’s brand. Often played within a web browser and running in Flash, these innocuous looking games can suck up a lot of hours during one’s workday - and that’s how they are intentionally devised.

Ferguson began making such time-wasters when he, along with his business partner Mike Bielinski, created Elf Bowling as a promotional tool for their design company. Released in November 1999, it capitalized on the holiday season and served over 7 million downloads. Buoyed by this success, Ferguson and Bielinski sold their company and formed a new one in 2001, which would marry their ad design experience and newfound game design skills: Blockdot.

Since then, Blockdot has made over 800 games hawking its clients’ wares and names. Blockdot cranks out one to two games per week. This modest-sized company (they employ just over 50 employees at their Dallas office) could likely be considered the most prolific game developer in history.

After much thought and careful consideration, I’ve recently turned in my resignation with Click Here and will be joining the team at Blockdot starting on November 26th. While I’m very much looking forward to meeting (and of course working with) all of the extremely talented developers at Blockdot, I will also miss my friends at Click Here who have been the best group of people I’ve had the pleasure of working with to date. The last 4 years have been very valuable to me in terms of both personal and professional growth and if anyone reading this post is presented with the opportunity to work at Click Here, I would definitely recommend it. With that said, it’s time for me to look ahead to my future and open a new chapter in my career… a chapter that looks to hold plenty of fun challenges, learning opportunities and of course… games.