Mousebreaker
Encyclopedia
Mousebreaker is a UK based casual games website founded in 2001 by Richard Pendry and Alick Stott. One of the earliest browser game
Browser game
A browser game is a computer game that is played over the Internet using a web browser. Browser games can be created and run using standard web technologies or browser plug-ins. Browser games include all video game genres and can be single-player or multiplayer...

 portals, the site earned a reputation in terms of publishing sports and, in particular, football games. In 2008 the website was purchased by UK publisher IPC Media
IPC Media
IPC Media , a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Inc., is a consumer magazine and digital publisher in the United Kingdom, with a large portfolio selling over 350 million copies each year.- Origins :...

 for a rumoured seven figure sum . Today the site is amongst the biggest UK flash games website, with over 4,500,000 unique users per month .

Early Games

Pendry and Stott first worked together on flash games as a hobby in 2000. Their first projects were a simple penalty shoot out game, and a pool game that would be the basis of the Blast Billiards franchise. Upon licensing copies of both games, the pair realised the potential of their hobby, but it wasn’t until 2003 that Mousebreaker.com was popular enough to be the only source of income for them and they began to work on the website full time

Purchase by IPC Media

In June 2008, Mousebreaker was purchased by Time Warner
Time Warner
Time Warner is one of the world's largest media companies, headquartered in the Time Warner Center in New York City. Formerly two separate companies, Warner Communications, Inc...

 owned IPC Media
IPC Media
IPC Media , a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Inc., is a consumer magazine and digital publisher in the United Kingdom, with a large portfolio selling over 350 million copies each year.- Origins :...

 for a rumoured seven figure sum. The move saw Mousebreaker become part of IPC’s Ignite division, aimed predominantly at the 18-24 male demographic, and home to publications such as Nuts, Loaded and NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...

 .

Style of Games

Mousebreaker is best known for its sports and topical games, with titles such as Aporkalypse Now , Spank the Banker , Fat Cat Cashback and 'Bad Adebayor', getting attention from mainstream news outlets. Their sports section remains their most popular area however, and the site’s sheer number of football games has ensured the two are widely associated.

Mousebreaker’s own list of requirements for third party flash developers states that their games are based on the ‘easy to play, difficult to master’ model, with short load-speeds and “a cheeky sense of humour” also required .

Best Known Titles

Many of Mousebreaker’s early popular titles gained enough of a following to earn their own websites. Blast Billiards, Flash Cricket and Camper Strike all proved popular enough to get a unique domain, with Play A Pal and Play For Your Club also registered by Mousebreaker for use with their popular football volleys games.

More recently, Pendry has noted that Jumpers for Goalposts – a football lifestyle sim – has gained a loyal and dedicated following. A sequel to Jumpers for Goalposts was released in 2009 with another sequel released in 2010. Top Spinner Cricket has proved popular with gamers as well

Finally, the ambitious Rock Band Sim – which attempted to combine rhythm action gameplay with the management sim genre – got some positive write ups on casual game sites .
From October 2010 Mousebreaker has a new gaming partner for the cash games section, the famous 888games.com website.Mousebreaker propose to all the adult gamers to get 5 pounds free and to try to win huge jackpots at 888games.

Mobile Gaming

In November 2009, it was announced that Mousebreaker had entered into a partnership with CobraMobile to bring some of its titles to the iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...

 and iPod Touch
IPod Touch
The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...

 through the App Store . The first game, Blast Billiards Touch, was approved by Apple in December 2009. A lite version offering a few levels was released in February 2010.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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