Interview with Jim Greer

Hello everyone! We've just finished the interview with Jim Greer, the creator of Kongregate.

First of all, I'd like to tell you, that I think he's a really nice guy, and I enjoyed interviewing him.

Here's the English interview, if you'd like to read it in Catalan, click this: Entrevista en català.

Oh, and I'd like to say that I haven't added the whole conversation, because he talked with me personally in a part of the conversation. The interview was stopped at a moment because of Molly, MTV calls, and he said sorry to me very kindly... He's a really nice person ;)


English interview:
Katakong: Hi Jim! It's an honour for us to interview the awesome creator of the flash game portal, popularly nicknamed "the YouTube of gaming", Kongregate.
Jim Greer: Thanks! I think of it more as Xbox Live for web games now.

K: All Katakong followers have helped with the questions for this interview, so it's like a "community interview". Lets start with the questions!
K: What's Kongregate for you?
J: Hmm, big question. Well, first off, I'm very proud to have attracted so many smart, talented developers, moderators, and players. Obviously the thing that distinguishes Kongregate from other game sites is the very gamer-focused, achievement-oriented community. That, and our open, transparent, and fair treatment of developers.

K: When did you and your sister have the idea to make a new flash game portal?
J: - Well, I started in the game industry as a game programmer. I worked on the Ultima series of fantasy RPG games, and then did an online RTS game called Netstorm with some of my friends. That game got good reviews, but didn't make any money... so I know how hard it is to be an indie developer.
I really liked doing online games, so I got a job working for Pogo. Pogo is a web games community as well, quite different from Kongregate - the games are simpler and the players are older, a lot of women playing Solitaire, Bingo, etc. But it really has a great community. So the idea for Kongregate was to create that kind of community around indie web games, and make it really easy for developers to put their games on the site and make money from them. I quit my job at EA (Pogo is part of EA now), and got Emily to help me with the business plan.

My background is all in programming, but she knows a lot about marketing, budgets, that kind of thing. Originally she was just going to be an advisor, but she liked the idea enough that she quit her job and joined up - so she started a couple of weeks after the company was founded.

K: How did you get the idea to do a system of levels and achievements?
J: Well, the achievements are a lot like badges on Pogo... Pogo actually had badges before Xbox had achievements. I love earning achievements and I knew other gamers would, too. The idea for levels was pretty obviously stolen from every RPG ever made - the first one I played was Dungeons and Dragons - my parents got me a copy of the Basic Set for christmas in 1978.
it looked like this http://www.lyberty.com/encyc/articles/images/dnd_BasicRule_s.jpg

K: Were all the Staff members hired when Kongregate was created, or are there any new Staff members? If so, who and why?

J: t definitely happened slowly.
The first was Greg - he worked for Kong even before there was a site. He started by talking to a lot of Flash developers and telling them what we were doing. That helped a ton because it meant that the first week we had a site we already got a lot of good games like Gamma Bros and then Fancy Pants
I think Damijin was next, then Matt, then Alison, AlisonHuffman, Ducklette, and Jonathan
those are the community people
the first programmers were Andrew, Duncanbeevers, Richpixel, and Jvoorhis
Theresa started really early too

K: What do you do in Kongregate?

J: Well, I used to program but I don't do that very much any more. The last big thing I programmed was the abuse reporting system...

Mainly I work with Emily and the team to set our strategy, review how we're hitting our goals, supervise hiring, raising money. I talk to all the programmers a lot and help with technical decisions. I also talk to some of the larger game developers about doing bigger partnerships, that kind of thing. I don't work nearly as hard as Emily or the programmers :)

K: Is Kongregate your hobby or is it your job? If it's a hobby, do you have any other job?

J: It’s my job! I take a salary. In fact, I haven’t had any job besides computer games in 20 years, when I was a cook.

K: What do you think of special events which are sponsored by Left4Dead2, Halo ODST, etc. which you've lately been doing?

J: -Well, obviously Kongregate makes it's money from advertising. We try to do our advertising promotions in a way that is interesting to the players - that's better for the advertisers, too.

So something like the Left4Dead2 promotion, where players actually have fun infecting each other I think does a good job of that.

And of course we share the advertising revenue with developers, so that means Kong will get better games.

I think both of those work well - they got players talking about the games, thinking about them when they decide what games to buy, and watching the videos. And hopefully for people who don't play console games it wasn't too distracting

K: Do you have any updates in mind? If so, which?

J: We're working on a new badges page right now.
Also, we're doing some more improvements to the game browser - like being able to show only games you haven't played, haven't rated, or haven't earned the badges in

And we're working on more ways to put your games on Kongregate - some developers want to host the games from their own servers, so we're supporting that

K: And now lets go with some questions which our readers and us are curious about, which are kind of more personal.

K: What do you like doing out of the virtual world?

J: I like playing poker - I used to play very seriously, now mostly just for fun. I enjoy biking - I ride my bike to work everyday - with my dog in the bike basket I read, watch movies, cook a bit. And hang out with my wife Daphne and Molly, aka Kongbaby. Did you know that I used to live in Barcelona? I had a really good time - I was working on a computer art project. And we worked with a theater group called La Fura del Baus.

K: How old is she?

J: 15 month. here's a movie of her from a few months ago http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimgreer/3765457739/

K: What gives you the most satisfaction?

J: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V30tyaXv6EI. To crush my enemies, to see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentation of their women. Just kidding. Well, when I see people who say that Kongregate is the greatest online game site, and that they've discovered awesome games, made friends, etc - that gives me a lot of satisfaction, also molly.

K: What's your favourite sport?

J: Snowboarding. I go a lot in the winter - the mountains are about 3.5 hours away from San Francisco.

K: Which type of music do you like most?

J: Hmm - some of my favorite bands are Pinback, Guided by Voices, Elliott Smith, Willie Nelson, and Buck Owens. Willie Nelson and Buck Owens aren't bands though. So indie rock and country - also some hip hop but not much of the gangster stuff - more like Jurassic 5, Nas, and older stuff

K: And which is your favourite song?

J: Hmm - how about Paper Moon, by Nat King Cole? Or Summer Babe by Pavement. or I Am a Scientist by Guided by Voices or Or The Scenario by Tribe Called Quest

K: What's your favourite videogame?

J: well, I finished Batman Arkham Asylum last month - that was pretty awesome. great balance of stealth and fighting, and lots of really creative level design. the games that made me want to become a game programmer were the very early RPG games on the Apple 2 like Ultima. I played Ultima I, II, and III for millions of hours then worked on Ultima VII and a bit on VIII and Ultima Online I'm really impressed by world of warcraft, but don't have enough time - I've levelled two characters up to the mid 30s, then stopped. That was before Kong. Mario 64 is my favorite platformer ever. Portal was great - I like shorter games that have a really creative idea. I also like racing games, but more the action kind than the really realistic ones - I played a lot of Wipeout on the PS One

K: And what's your favourite games genre?

J: Hmm... I honestly don't think I have a favorite genre. the games I listed as favorites are all from different genres

K: Finally, in what OS you run?

J: Mac! by far the best - especially for web development not so good for playing pc games, but I mostly play web, console, and DS games

K: That's it! We appreciate your time spent with us in this interview, allowing us to do some questions. Do you have anything to say that you think might interess our readers?

J: Yes. Soccer is boring (just kidding). Actually, I'd just like to thank all of our catalan players for forming a great little community on Kongregate - that's really what the whole site is about.

K: It was very kind of you to let us do this interview. It was very nice, see you soon! Uh, and thank you from room catalonia

J: - Thank You!