In Love with Iminlikewithyou

I’m in love with Iminlikewithyou. Why hasn’t anyone told me about this site before? I hopped onto it, intending to do some research for my article, played a few random games, had the urge to register in order not to be listed as another “RandomGuest2690”, and realized I had been sucked into their machine of like.

There are a lot of good things about the machine: the incredibly addictive, yet simple games; the ability to garner and hoard points, or spend them on things such as bidding on games; the many, many young people hoping to be your friend or laying a nasty trap for you in Blockles. And there’s the fact that my addiction to iminlikewithyou resembles hardcore gaming addiction, yet these games are not hardcore, and the people I’m playing them with are not hardcore gamers. Some of them are, in fact, my friends in real life, who have never seen the likes of WoW or Counter-Strike. Instead of calling Zelda4Life, Samus99 or MasterchiefRox over to play, I’m calling Kim, Bob, and Susie. That’s awesome. I really, really like playing games with just-friends. That’s the magic touch: talking smack to your friend you would never ask to play an MMO with you. Unwinding. Wickedly sending bad items their way. Did I mention I really, really like iminlikewithyou?

It began as a complete re-thinking of the typical dating site. When iminlikewithyou launched in 2007, it was a site for flirting, its logo “find. flirt. bid.” Rather than relying on the compatability engines of Match, OkCupid, or eHarmony, iminlikewithyou was fast to sign up for, and it was fun. It focused on flirting rather than on subjective measures of compatibility. You’d bid points on people whose picture or profile you liked, you’d stick your heart out there on a platter of make-believe dowry, and you could fail miserably and not look back. It was love in the time of Facebook.

At some point along the line, the creators realized that iminlikewithyou was more a meet-new-friends site than a feasible dating one, so the focus has since switched over to happy rainbows and games. Everything is bite-sized and yummy. Registration’s a breeze. The games take maybe one round to get used to. Inviting friends is as easy as copy+pasting them a link, whether or not they are registered members. The graphics are appealing, the bright and cutesy background is easily switchable. Commands are located on a simple pop-down menu along the top of the screen, and if anyone interests you or you want to friend someone, that’s as easy as clicking on their avatar. It’s simple, it’s clean, it’s addictively fun.

Why are the games so great? Well, take a game like Blockles, which is basically just Tetris with two new pieces thrown in, one adorable, the other obnoxious. Adorable and obnoxious are a good way to describe the gameplay. With the emphasis on socialization, there’s up to seven players in one game at a time, and there’s always the option to chat/spout expletives. However, the main innovation is the items you accumulate through play; orange items damage your game, adding rows, scrambling your game, or worse (check it out if you don’t believe me), and blue items help your game, eliminating rows, even very rarely—and live-savingly—clearing them. But the great thing is you can choose to use these however you want, on whomever you want, by simply pressing the number that corresponds to the player’s box. It’s the backdrop for mayhem with all your favorite people. Other game offerings include Gemmers, DrawMyThing, and Dinglepop, all equally social and nearly as fun.

With a reported $1.5 billion in funding from Spark Capital, Baseline Ventures, and Betaworks, Iminlikewithyou is hoping to be taken seriously in the casual gaming world. The casual game strategy is working for the company, and they’re opening up their platform to third-party developers, making games playable anywhere on the web. Profitable? Only time will tell. With casual, social games like IMVU amassing 600,000 active monthly users and 20 million registered accounts, the casual game market is opening up bigtime.

Targeting the casual gamer, or just the person who wants to goof off (“Do work later,” says Blockles), like me, Iminlikewithyou is just freaking adorable. A big PLEASE CHECK IT OUT from me, and, if you’re up for a challenge, I’ll kick your butt in Blockles. MadEyeMary is the name.