Google Creates YouTube Video Game to Highlight Chrome and Flash

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Google Creates YouTube Video Game to Highlight Chrome and Flash

Sent to you by Megan via Google Reader:

Google Creates YouTube Video Game to Highlight Chrome and Flash

via Mashable! by Jennifer Van Grove on 6/30/10

The latest stable release of Google Chrome comes with Adobe Flash built-in. To highlight the addition, Google has created Google Chrome FastBall, a Flash-based game for YouTube.

The FastBall game tasks users to complete a series of web-oriented challenges that integrate with APIs from a combination of Google and social services like Last.fm and Twitter in a series of YouTube videos. The idea behind the game is to both demonstrate Chrome's Flash capabilities and the underlying speed of the browser.

The game itself requires a tad too much thought for this early riser, but the more rested among us should try their hand at completing each of the five challenges as fast as possible. If you're super speedy, try and get the ball from one end of the obstacle course to the other in 66 seconds — the current record — or less.

The YouTube video game hails from Google Creative Lab and BBH Labs, who tells us that, "the video player for the experience is built on top of the YouTube API with six separate video players loaded on the page – each featuring a different piece of a handmade track. All games are loaded at the beginning, but are made invisible. As the current video comes to its stopping point, we pause it and cue the window to expand to show the game."

We should note, that though the game is meant to highlight Google Chrome with Flash, the game appears to play quite well in other browsers too. At the very least, FastBall is a fun distraction that demonstrates how Flash can enhance the YouTube experience.