Barry Diller's big videogame plans

 In the current weekly Variety I have a profile of InstantAction.com, the new Web videogame initiative from Barry Diller's multi-media empire Interactive Corp. They're going after a relatively underserved (perhaps for good reason? we'll find out) demographic: those who want a deeper experience than most casual games on the Web, but don't have the time or money to play on a console. Here's an excerpt:

The conglom last fall bought a controlling interest in vidgame technology company GarageGames and is using it to launch a new site called InstantAction. IAC will spend $50 million-$100 million on InstantAction, which will offer games that aren't quite as big as, say, "Halo 3," but are significantly deeper than the typical casual game on the Internet.

Online gaming also enables a wider variety of business models than just straight purchases. InstantAction will experiment with several different monetization plans, including pay-per-play, advertising, subscriptions, and virtual property trading.

There's a lot more in the story and you can read the whole thing here. In addition, here's a few more interesting details about InstantAction, which is currently in private beta but will go public soon, that didn't make the print story:

-Currently most of the games are being built by internal teams at InstantAction and GarageGames, the company behind the site's technology in which IAC bought a majority share last year, as well as some indie developers like ex-Bungie-ite Alex Seropian's Wideload Games. But they're also hoping to get third party publishers on board eventually as well.

-They're focusing on making development incredibly easy to try and get developers interested. "One of our goals in designing the technology and SDK is to make it as low impact for developers as possible," InstantAction head Andy Yang told me. "It's very similar to developing games for the original Xbox."

-Every game will be multi-player and the team is building a host of social tools to invite friends to play both on InstantAction and through other sites.

-Though the full games will require software on InstantAction.com, they're planning to build sample levels that can be embedded on blogs or Facebook in order to entice potential players.

-Since it's the Web, episodic gaming and regular updates will be big. And the folks at IAC are hoping that won't just be appealing to gamers (for obvious reasons), but game makers as well. "What is a leap for most developers and an exciting leap once they understand it is to think that game design can be a living, breathing thing that grows over time," said Yang. "That's a big adjustment for most developers used to making box titles."