Is Pogo the best online game website?

Electronic Arts, Inc* (EA) is the creator of the popular game website, Pogo.com. Pogo is considered to be one of the top, casual game destinations online and reported to have earned the game playing hearts of millions of online game players around the world. Pogo.com is celebrating their tenth year in the online game business.

What is Pogo?

In EA’s September 30, 2009 online news release, “Pogo.com Celebrates Ten Years of Online Innovation and Community”, they report, “Pogo.com launched in 1999 as a start up and has grown from a small offering of games with dozens of players to a global destination offering hundreds of games to millions of users in the North America, France, Germany and the United Kingdom making it one of the most trafficked sites on the web, and #1 in stickiness (average minutes/visitor) amongst the top 10 online properties.”

For most of the games, playing on Pogo is free. For a nominal annual fee, players can join Club Pogo and take advantage of game play without advertisement breaks and open additional features. Most games have interactive features whereby players can compete against one another, compare scores and chat in a visible community chat box during play.

What games can be played on Pogo.com?

Pogo game players can play the game classics, to name a few:

• Solitaire
• Scrabble
  
• Monopoly
  
• Their version of Gin, which is called Jungle Gin
• Bridge
• Hearts
• Spades
• Canasta
• Yahtzee

They offer newer favorites such as:

• Diner Dash
• Lottso
• Poppit
• Mahong Safari
• Sudoko Blast

And Pogo has fun arcade and action games too, such as:

• Belle’s Beauty Boutique
• Pogo Bowling with real-sounding alley sounds
• Mini-golf Madness with challenging, quirky holes that include ramps, mounds, tunnels, multiple tee spots, and water traps, etc..

For the amateur gamblers, Pogo offers casino games such as:

• Fortune Bingo
• Big Shot Roulette
• Slots
• Keno.

Pogo's Tenth Birthday Celebration

In celebration of their tenth birthday, Pogo held an online birthday party, asking Pogo players to join in a simultaneous play fest. According to their news release, 181,000 players joined in to play Poppitt, a Pogo favorite,  breaking a record for Peak Simultaneous Usage (PSU). Lots of balloons were popped in unison!

Pogo’s avatar, the "mini"

One of the unique features of Pogo is providing the customization option to each player for a game avatar. The avatar can be dressed from a player’s closet. New clothes, backgrounds, pets and hairdos can be purchased with game points at the Mini-mall. Most players enjoy this feature and are very creative in designing the “mini” me they use as their face to this online game community. 

Using the chat feature, Pogo players interact daily and as reported by the EA news release, as a result of their online interaction, it is reported that:

• 2600 players met offline after chatting on the game site.
• 250 players met and married.
• 1 player’s life was saved (Trapped under a fallen chimney during play, she asked other players for help!)

Not bad stats for a game site, heh?

* Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), is headquartered in Redwood City, California and was founded in 1982. It is a leading interactive entertainment software company that develops, publishes, and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers, wireless devices and the Internet globally.

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Related Reading:

"Pogo Cheats and Poor Sports"

"Where to Play Scrabble Online"

"Club Pogo: Addiction to Fun!"

Resources:

Electronic Arts website

Pogo.com