• by Shankar Gupta , April 3, 2006

Atom Entertainment's online game division, Shockwave, today will launch a development studio designed to aid marketers that want to create advergames.

Dave Williams, general manager for Shockwave.com, said the company created the studio to help brand advertisers navigate the growing advergaming space. "As we looked at the market in the last 12 months, we saw ad-supported online games as something that was going to accelerate pretty dramatically," said Williams. "There are a lot of very big advertisers that are starting to just scratch the surface in terms of games."

He added that the studio marks the company's attempts to "foster the development of more online games."

The studio will be headed by Shockwave developer Cam Daley, and managed by Peter Glover, Shockwave's vice president for games.

Shockwave.com also is expected today to launch a full redesign of the site, separating out the downloadable, pay-to-play games and the free, ad-supported online games into more distinct sections. The subscription service, GameBlast.com, is being rebranded Shockwave Unlimited and brought to the Shockwave.com site.

"We're doing that to create some flexibility for us as a company around the different revenue streams," Williams said. "More information, more categories, allows us to target different types of users better with advertising and sponsorships."