 Producing Excellent Games Since 1995 |
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"We make games, they work, people play them, they make money."
History | Massively Multiplayer Games | What We Do | Our Way Of Working
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The main game designers (Paul Barnett and Doug Goldner) have been designing and writing games throughout the life cycle of the computer games industry. From machine code games for the Apple II through to Unix based games for the Internet market.
In the Mid nineties they designed and wrote TERRIS their first massively multi-player game. This was originally available through direct dial modems and after a brief period on the Internet was signed up for exclusive distribution through AOL. During it's original beta launch release TERRIS became the largest European based multi player game on the Internet and AOL Europe's largest content provider a position it still holds today. TERRIS has had over 400,000 different people making characters for play in the game. During it's 4+ year placement on AOL, TERRIS has generated over 6 million game hours of usage; our game players have shown incredible loyalty with most players playing for an average of 17 months. The original game was partly converted to German for AOL Germany and through that work we were commissioned to write the parlour card game 'skat' for AOL Germany. This is currently the highest rated German based game on AOL Germany's network. AOL USA commissioned us to write a follow up game to TERRIS for the US market, this was started in June 1998 and launched in January 1999 and utilised the core game concepts we perfected from the life cycle of TERRIS. This game was named Cosrin and was charged for on an hourly basis.
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| What We Do | |
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We are an online computer entertainment business. We develop online multiplayer games designed to allow hundreds and thousands of simultaneous users to play these games at the same time. These games are hosted on commercial computer networks (AOL, AOL UK, AOL Germany); stand alone Internet web sites and in future, cable networks (NTL, etc.).
The games are designed to be easy to learn, engrossing, and have long-term game play elements to keep players coming back day after day. Our design allows us to host hundreds and thousands of players on a single server to keep infrastructure costs down and game speed up. All games are built using our own technologies that we have developed over the last 5 years in the areas of TCP networking, multi-user databases, load balancing, persistent worlds, and online credit card billing. Our technology allows us to easily add elements to the games to keep them fresh and new looking. AN OVERVIEW OF THE ONLINE GAMES MARKET According to a study by +Plan, roughly 13% of Net users between 54 and 65 -- and nearly a third of all 18-to-24-year-olds -- go online to play games. Over 15 million people in the U.S. and Europe will be paying $1.4 billion to play games online by 2002, according to a report by the market research firm Datamonitor. Over 15 million people in the United States and Europe will be paying around $1.4 billion to play games online by the year 2002, according to a new report. "Explosive growth in the number of online households will continue to drive the new market forward, particularly in Europe where online gaming is only just beginning to take off," said market research company Datamonitor. It said online playing will largely be done through personal computers but "new technologies, such as modem-equipped games consoles and interactive digital TV, really have the potential to bring the world of online gaming to a mass market," Datamonitor said. The market is currently worth around $250 million by 2000 and hit $1.4 billion by 2002, Datamonitor reports.
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| Massively Multiplayer Games | |
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A genus of games allowing thousands of people to play simultaneously in the same computer generated environment. It is ideally suited to networks that connect large numbers of people such as the Internet or the digital cable TV Network.
The player has a small client program installed on his PC (usually provided for free) which facilitates access to the game which is running on a remote computer. The remote computer provides a simulated world in which the player can interact and communicate in real time with other players.
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| Our Way Of Working | |
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Play games, design games, throw away designs, play other peoples games, write down what we like in games, work on old games we already run, ignore what the press say, ignore people who follow fashions, design games, throw away more ideas.
Design game, test design, re write design, eat curry, play more games, play old long forgotten games, play board games, re work design, have utter faith in our own design, steal anything good, code up basic sample of new game. Tear apart new sample, improve it, drink beer, work on old games we already run, improve design. Go back to start and do it all again. The more ideas we have, the more waste paper bins we need. If it's good steal it, if it's bad write it down, file it and never forget it. If it works do it again but improve it. There is nothing wrong with "average", average is 80% of the world, average is acceptable and affordable. Chasing technology will make you broke and unhappy. Reading is good for you! And trust me on the sun screen... |
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All content ©2008 Online Games Company.
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