(UPDATE: Kongregate has temporarily stopped excepting Silverlight and Unity games. They are working through some user experience issues with offering these type of games.)

Quick, name an online games portal.  Now tell me what platforms they support.

I'm guessing your answer to the second question was Flash.  Flash is a behemoth in the online games ecosystem. Today it pretty much IS the online games ecosystem.

Thing is, while Flash has been and still is a great platform for building online games, it's no longer the only show in town.

A number of developers, myself included, are writing our online games with Silverlight, Microsoft's Flash-like technology.

Diver 2: A Silverlight game I’m currently working on.

Others are using the a game technology called Unity that allows a developer to write full-blown, true-3D games that run in the browser. 

Velociraptor Safari: A Unity Game by the guys from Blurst

Still other early adopters are beginning to toy with game development using the still-in-the-works HTML 5 spec.

It's been my contention for a while now that Flash-ONLY online game portals are the present, but not the future of online games. 

The online game portals of the future, the next-gen game portals if you prefer, will open themselves up to these other ,non-Flash, platforms and their devoted legions of game developers.

To be clear, I'm not contending that Flash becomes any less relevant in this new open ecosystem, it's just getting some new friends to hang with.

On Dec 15th, Kongregate announced Konduit and became the first major portal to open itself to non-Flash games.

From the Konduit website:

Konduit is a new application platform that allows developers to integrate any browser-based game with Kongregate’s array of community features. Developers can now use JavaScript, ActionScript or REST APIs from their own back-end to tap into features such as achievements, leaderboards, virtual goods, profiles, and chat.

This means Unity games, Silverlight games, JavaFX games and actually any games that can be hosted on a website are supported by the Kongregate portal through their new IFrame hosting feature.  Furthermore, since Konduit supports javascript and REST access to it’s api’s most of these technologies should be able to utilize the many game related services Kongregate offers.  I applaud them for this move and for having the foresight to see a bigger picture.

Personally, I've been wanting to get my Silverlight games on Kongregate since the first day I found Kongregate on the web.  The morning after I read the Konduit announcement I submitted my game, Tire Storm, to Kongregate using the new IFrame option offered by Kongregate.  It took much less than an hour!

The game went into preview mode and went into a queue to be reviewed by Kongregate.   A few hours later I received the following email from Jim Greer, CEO of Kongregate:

Hi Jeff - 

I published this for you. Congrats, you're the first Silverlight game on Kongregate...

You can see and play Tire Storm on Kongregate here.

For those that don’t feel like jumping over there, here’s a screenshot.

Silverlight game on Kongregate

I look forward now to digging into the Konduit platform API and livening up my current and future games with the services the new system offers to us non-Flash game developers.

Finally, on behalf of all us non-Flash developers, A BIG, BIG THANK YOU to the Kong!

-Jeff Weber

Wait, wait, wait… how do you submit a non-Flash game to Kongregate, you ask?

1. Get your game onto the web in a blank html page. (Nothing but your game in the top left corner of the screen)
2. Get a Kongregate account here
3. Go to the Konduit page here
4. Near the bottom of the page you will see a section title “Non-Flash Games”  Click the “Click here” link and fill out the forms and follow the instructions. (Here is the direct link to the IFrame upload page. Notice the “iframe=true” at the end of the url: http://www.kongregate.com/games/new?iframe=true)
5. Be sure to have a friendly fall-back message for those that do not have the plug-in required to play your game.  Here is mine.. could be better but hey.

Ok, that’s all… have fun.

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50.05% Silverlight Install Base

Stats come from www.riastats.com

Gaston Hillar recently contacted me to let me know about a recent book he’s written that uses the Farseer Physics Engine. (I built the Farseer Physics Engine a few years ago and have since handed it off to Ian Qvist, who has been running it for the past year or so.)

Here’s a link to the book on Amazon: 3D Game Development with Microsoft Silverlight 3: Beginner's Guide

Here is the description from Amazon:

A practical guide to creating real-time responsive online 3D games in Silverlight 3 using C#, XBAP WPF, XAML, Balder, and Farseer Physics Engine

• Develop online interactive 3D games and scenes in Microsoft Silverlight 3 and XBAP WPF
• Integrate Balder 3D engine 1.0, Farseer Physics Engine 2.1, and advanced object-oriented techniques to simplify the game development process
• Enhance development with animated 3D characters, sounds, music, physics, stages, gauges, and backgrounds
• Packed with inspiring, realistic examples offering impressive graphics, strong performance, and a rich interactive experience

Looks interesting and definitely worth a look.

-Jeff Weber