Antstream Arcade and Jam.gg: crafting new experiences from old games

metro.co.uk:

Streaming services like Antstream Arcade and Jam.gg might deal in retro games but their new social gaming experiences are very modern.

An interesting trend has swept the games industry in recent years: retro games have bleeped and blooped their way back into the limelight, finding a new constituency amongst young gamers, rather than merely acting as a source of nostalgia for those who remember them the first time round. But the pixellated renaissance doesn’t stop there, two modern streaming games companies are capitalising on the rekindled love for retro classics to fuel innovative new forms of social gaming.

One of those, British outfit Antstream Arcade, has been leading the charge in bringing retro games to the masses and we spoke to CEO Steve Cottam, to catch up on the streaming service’s latest new feature. We also interviewed Benjamin Devienne, CEO of French streaming service Jam.gg, which is using retro games as something of a Trojan horse to generate innovative new social gaming experiences via web browsers.

Anstream Arcade’s Steve Cottam kicked off by revealing, ‘It’s been an incredibly busy year.’ He proudly points out that the Antstream app has now been downloaded by over 3.5 million people worldwide, and that Antstream has now licensed over 3,000 retro games – over 1,300 of which are currently live on the platform. Cottam admits, ‘There are still those elusive 150,000 retro games out there that we want to bring into the platform’ but there’s no doubt that Antstream is already a paradise for aficionados of retro games.

Cottam is bullish about Antstream’s attempts to make the finest fruits of the 80s arcade scene available to its users, having landed another legendary Japanese shooter: ‘One of the games that we’ve