InstantAction, an Oregon-based web gaming and digital distribution platform, will cease operations. Gamasutra confirmed the closure, which was announced on the the company's Torque game engine site.
Director of InstantAction's Torque game engine operations Eric Preisz posted the company's statement: "Today, InstantAction informed employees that it will be winding down operations. While we are shutting down the InstantAction.com website and Instant Jam game, Torquepowered.com will continue to operate while InstantAction explores opportunities with potential buyers for Torque. We thank all of our past and current customers for their support."
The company had made several smaller games, like Instant Jam and Monkey Island, available to play using its browser-based tech. The tech's eventual promise was to make large games playable almost instantly through a browser or full screen as the title was progressively downloaded to the user's PC.
InstantAction, the browser-based platform that enabled gamers to play titles like Secret of Monkey Island and more recently Instant Jam, a sort of Guitar Hero that enables people to use their entire music library for songs to play, is shutting down. The company, which sprung up from the GarageGames business back in 2007, was radically overhauled when former Electronic Arts executive Lou Castle took over as CEO.
"The embeddable version has been announced, and I would like you to play it. Go ahead. I've embedded it right under the "Read More" tag. So take a couple minutes, check it out, then tell us whether you agree with my "hey, this is neat!" preview."
-G4tv.com
So what is Instant Jam? Basically it's like Guitar Hero, but on the web. If you go to the site, login with a Facebook account (or play it on Facebook), and let it scan your music collection, it'll match up songs on your hard drive with songs that have note sheets in the program, of which there are currently thousands.
