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On line games are becoming ever more popular in todays high tech world. There are on line puzzles, on line competitions, on line roleplay, and on line chat. There are gaming applications being created right and left, whether for your iPhone, or in the case of the prodigy I am about to talk about, for social networking sites like Facebook and Myspace.

The latest craze has been invented by a 29 year old creative genius named Keith Schacht who has been starting and growing several on line businesses for over a decade now.

So what is this creative phenomenon? Crafted Fun Inc, which is simply on line games that are played within Facebook and other similar social networks. Two you may recognize are ‘Growing Gifts’ and ‘Hatching Eggs’, that are currently getting about 4 million hits per month.

4 million hits per month translates into a pretty hefty amount of ad revenue for a 3 man operation, whose sole focus is on the next great game they will be creating! In 2005 Keith was named one of ‘The Top Entrepreneurs Under 25′ in Business Week, and with Crafted Fun Inc, is gearing up to becoming a real media mogul in this day and age.

So how is it they are so successful? Simple market research and testing. Within a matter of weeks their operation knows whether or not a game will be a hit or not, and if an application isn’t up to snuff and doesn’t take off like they want, it is killed right away and they are on to the next great app. The ones that prove popular are then virtually syndicated and rerun for profit.

So what’s next for Crafted Fun Inc? Future plans and financial information is being kept pretty carefully under wraps at the moment, but regardless, Keith is still dedicated to supporting his followers and tries to share his knowledge and expertise when possible. So I guess we will all just have to wait and see!

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Currently, the gaming industry is booming. Booming to a cool $7 Billion dollars, almost neck and neck with the film biz at $9 Billion. Affectionately called interactive entertainment, gaming went from being relatively new and unobtrusive, to becoming a leader of culture and technology. Now the creative genius of gamers is taking over the world, one new video game at a time.

With the push of new technology, gaming has grown to mammoth proportions. Now kids can play games on everything from gaming consoles, to computers, to TV’s and palm pilots, to cell phones! Students these days, instead of heading off to film school, are now heading off to interactive software development in the hopes of creating the next phenomenal gaming experience.

These days, video games are created with down to the minute detail displayed. Whether it’s to retrain your brain, find your focus, or teach you some sort of skills, games are now embedded in our society for ever more.

However, due to the explosive growth the gaming industry has seen, it now takes a budget of close to $10 million dollars to develop a new, hit game. Giant corporations like Microsoft and IBM are starting to favor profit more than creativity. That’s a bummer, because creativity is what exploded gaming in the first place!

Now folks are talking about how games can be improved for the public, by creating games with better stories and graphics, more complex characters, and story lines with hard ethical lines you must decide that you are for or against. The main goal? That a new game really makes you stop and THINK for a few moments!

Currently despite the explosive growth, the gaming industry is still in it’s infantile stages. Sort of like TV when it first came out! The saga will unfold, and nobody knows who will be left standing. Innovation is being demanded, but unfortunately the gaming industry has grown so large that it’s hard to pitch a new game idea to giants like Microsoft or Sony. They have just about seen it all. So, I think future innovations will start to come not in the games themselves, but in how we PLAY those games. Think Wii Fit and Guitar Hero!

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With video game usage on the rise, it is no longer just a past time strictly reserved for kids. These days you could just be hearing a ‘Honey can we please get a Wii this Christmas?’ from your lovely but definitely over 25 year old wife or hubby!

With the spark of games created for self help purposes, designed to improve memory and train your brain, and the advent of the Nintendo Wii Fit to get gamers into tip top physical fitness, gaming is becoming a trend with just about everyone. It is becoming a preferred method of entertainment and almost a staple in every household.

But kids aren’t the only ones going gaga for video games, it’s their parents too! Consider the wildly popular World Of Warcraft. That game has some 11.5 million monthly subscribers sitting in front of their PC’s at home, creating characters and slaying fantasy creatures. Going on raids and forming guilds.

Considering the fact that WOW is a paid membership, how likely do you think it is that the bulk of the players are children. Not very likely! Nope the bulk of the players are adults, and even seniors. Some play alone, some play with their spouse or partner and some play with their kids. But the majority are definitely not 13 and under and are quite serious about their online gaming roles.

But why are these games becoming such a trend? One idea is that with everyone going through such hard economic times at the moment, video games are a welcome escape from reality. It’s easy to get lost in a virtual world, and pretend you are something that you might not necessarily be in real life. It’s nice to forget about the worlds problems for a moment and focus on fantasy.

The problem is letting the fantasy take over the real world indefinitely. Addiction could be a very real problem with the current gaming trend, especially in adults that have a weakness in that area. It remains to be seen what kind of a long term impact this may have on people in the future.

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