Mr. Higgins’ Blog

After reading Will Richardson’s blog titled “The You Tube War”, I started thinking about a flash game named Line Rider. The popularity of this small flash game is simply astonishing, especially after appearing on YouTube. It happened in my class that a student stumbled across the Line Rider game in our community and within a week, almost any student in a computer class was aware of the game and some began to obsessively play the game. At my school, we even had a Line Rider party where students came in after school and competed for different prizes including best track, best crash, and most loops. Of course, the game is now blocked by the district filter, but those students really became part of something bigger….AND IDEA THAT MADE IT BIGTIME!!! I tried to tell the students that they were really involved in something that stretched across all subjects, the sharing and implementation of an idea through the internet. I continue to subtly mention to the students these sentiments.

Then, TIME Magazine comes out with an article titled “The Newest Time Waster: Line Rider” and it documents some of the story including…

“Created by a programmer with the screen name ~fsk who claims to be from the small European country of Slovenia, the digital amusement first showed up Sept. 23 on deviantART, an online community of artists, designers, photographers and art lovers . “This is a project I did for illustration class,” states ~fsk in a brief intro. “It’s not a game, it’s a toy… there are no goals to achieve and there is no score.”

I can just imagine myself telling this story 10 years from now…

“A college student has to do an assignment for class and creates a small flash game named Line Rider. The concept is very simple. To the college students amazement, many people he shows start to like the game so he figures that posting in on the internet is one way to share his project and allow others to play. People then accidentally find the game and begin to play and enjoy what they are doing. Then a couple users post their videos on YouTube and this tiny flash game begins to skyrocket in popularity. Soon, a couple videos pop up on YouTube and all of society begins to get a free look at a small flash game.”

Finally, researching this blog entry I go onto the google and search for “Line Rider” and there are 5+ million results and one of them says the Official Home of Line Rider. I go ahead and click on it and find that it is indeed the official website for Line Rider and the creator sold the rights to the “toy” to a company named InXile who obviously are now the marketing engine behind the simple game. Then the bombshell quote of them all is located on the news page. It says…

“Having already amassed a worldwide cult following on the internet, inXile entertainment announced today that it has acquired the rights to the hugely addictive ‘toy’ Line Riderâ„¢ and that the popular game will soon be available for both the Nintendo DSâ„¢ and Nintendo Wii. Since its first appearance on the Web (www.official-linerider.com) on September 23, 2006, Line Rider has attracted over 15 million viewers to date and has spawned over 11,000 video posts on YouTube.com. Anticipated to ship in Spring 2007, Line Rider for the Nintendo DSâ„¢ and Nintendo Wii from inXile entertainment will retain all the fun and thrills of the addictive Web version, but will also include new added features. Line Rider has received accolades from media worldwide.”

Ideas can make it BIGTIME!!! I can’t wait to share this with the students when break is over.

Here are a couple Line Rider videos for your entertainment.

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 [youtube]GD9DSa3fZf4[/youtube]