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MSN Games (also known as Zone.com - formerly known as 'The Village', 'Internet Gaming Zone', 'MSN Gaming Zone', and 'MSN Games by Zone.com') is an online games site devoted primarily to casual games, both stand-alone and multi-player online games. Games are available in free on-line versions, trial versions, and full feature pay-to-play versions. Stand alone games can be played on the Web, or downloaded to a personal computer or smartphone. Multi-player games require either internet or cell phone connectivity. The numerous multi-player games that are available encourage a sense of community as players interact in online game rooms, while playing games using Windows Live Messenger, and while on their cell phones when playing Windows Mobile versions of the games. MSN Games is a member site of the MSN portal, and part of the Microsoft corporation, headquartered in Redmond WA.
History The first version of the site, which was then called "The Village", was founded by Kevin Binkley, Ted Griggs, and Hoon Im. In 1996, Steve Murch, a then-employee of Microsoft, convinced Bill Gates to acquire the small online game site, then owned by Electric Gravity. The site was rebranded to "Internet Gaming Zone" and launched in 1996. Between 1996-97, Murch worked on modernizing the site and adding—and sometimes remaking—new games. For the following 5 years, the Internet Gaming Zone would be renamed several times and would increase in popularity with the introduction of popular retail- and MMOG-games, such as Age of Empires and Asheron's Call. Competitors The Zone's first competitor was AOL Games. Today, the site competes with other similar free-game sites, such as Yahoo! Games and Pogo.com. Most sites offer a similar mix of free and premium games . Volunteers MSN's competition with AOL Games resulted in the creation of a Volunteer Program for the Zone, which AOL also offered. The idea was to have volunteers moderating chat lobbies, hosting tourneys, offering tech support, and interacting with the gamers to collect general feedback. Volunteer Moderators for the Zone were initially designated as members of the "Zone Team", or zTeam, with assorted tokens assigned to the different teams: the Gaming Team (!), Helproom Team (+), Tournament Hosting Team (%), and Tech Support Team (?). Because of legal complexities when AOL was sued by their volunteers—and the volunteers won the case—MSN Games reformed their policy by contracting a third-party company to manage the program. In 2001, Participate Systems won the contract and would continue to lead the program until its official disbanding. During the volunteer program's conversion to its new management, all previous token designations were replaced with a single "+" token and a new name, the "Member Plus", or MPlus program. Participate Systems was acquired by Outstart.com in November 2004. Citing MSN's statement regarding the closure of CD-ROM games on the Zone on June 19, 2006, the Member Plus program will also be disbanded at that time, due to the removal of chat capabilities from game lobbies and the end of support for the ZoneFriends client. Setbacks Legacy Controversy MSN Games announced in early 2006 the retiring of support for all lobby-based CD-ROM games, chat lobbies, the ZoneFriends client and the Member Plus program, scheduled for June 19, 2006: "...as of June 19, 2006, we will be retiring our CD-ROM matchmaking service, along with the original versions of several classic card and board games: Classic Backgammon, Bridge, Classic Checkers, Chess, Cribbage, Euchre, Go, Classic Hearts, Reversi, and Spades. We’ll be sad to see them go! These games are like old friends: they gave us our start, and helped us grow from an innovative little entertainment site to a truly stellar online gaming experience. But over the years, it’s become more and more difficult to maintain the aging hardware and software that supports them. We held out absolutely as long as we could, but it was finally time to make that decision." In a series of public chats held with various administrators and developers of the Zone, MSN outlined its plan to shift its gaming environment into Windows Live Messenger, a more frequently updated client than the outdated ZoneFriends messenger used on the Zone. However, due primarily to MSN's inability to provide a timeframe for the expected replacement of chat lobbies, tournaments, and its Member Plus volunteer moderator program, thousands of players appeared at each session to express their discontent, and began an online petition in an attempt to stop MSN's scheduled changes. As with previous changes, however, MSN has continued to stand firm in its commitment to the retirement of its services, citing outdated hardware and lack of economic viability for the old products. Although alternatives exist to the Zone for CD-ROM gameplay, many Microsoft game studios embedded Zone links and functionality into their games, including Angel Studios' Midtown Madness and Ensemble Studios' Age of Empires game series. Ensemble only began their switch to an in-game matchmaking system with the release of Age of Mythology, and are currently scrambling to find a solution to allow easy matchmaking for the thousands of players who continue to play their older games: "We at Ensemble Studios were recently made aware of this and will be actively looking for possible solutions for this situation over the coming weeks." Games as recent as Flight Simulator 2004 utilize the Zone's lobby system for matchmaking. For many such games, no replacement service has been announced. The first game in the Flight Simulator series to use in-game matchmaking will be the upcoming Flight Simulator X, scheduled for release in late 2006, leaving a gap of several months without MSN supported matchmaking services. The alternative CD-ROM matchingmaking service GameSpy Arcade still supports most of the games which will be dropped by Zone.com. It should also be noted, that as they have no replacement at this time, and as Bridge is Bill Gates' game of choice, it is still up and running on the old zone in the old lobbies. With no volunteers moderating the chat, it can be quite a free for all at times with extreme language from some along with vicious attacks on others brought about by nothing more than a simple request to refrain from the bad language. Trivia See also | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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