Mplayer, referred to as Mplayer.com by 1998, was a free online
PC gaming
A personal computer game, also known as a PC game or computer game, is a type of video game played on a personal computer (PC) rather than a video game console or arcade cabinet, arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more divers ...
service and community that operated from late 1996 until early 2001. The service at its peak was host to a community of more than 20 million visitors each month and offered more than 100 games.
Some of the more popular titles available were action games like ''
Quake'', ''
Command & Conquer
''Command & Conquer'' (''C&C'') is a real-time strategy (RTS) video game franchise, first developed by Westwood Studios. The first game was one of the earliest of the RTS genre, itself based on Westwood Studios' influential strategy game ''Dune I ...
'', and ''
Rogue Spear'', as well as classic card and board for more casual gamers. Servers and matchmaking was provided through a proprietary client. Initially, the service was subscription-based, but by early 1997, they became the first major multiplayer community to offer games to be played online through their network for free. This was done by relying on advertisement-based revenues.
Mplayer was a unit of Mpath Interactive, a
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
-based startup. The demand for online gaming in the late 1990s resulted in huge growth for the service. They became known for supplying a range of features integrated through their software, including their very successful voice chat feature. This feature proved so popular that it was later split off as a
VoIP
Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...
service to cater to non-gamers, dubbed HearMe, which would eventually become the new name of the company.
The company was listed on
NASDAQ
The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...
as MPTH and later HEAR.
Despite the growth of their gaming unit, Mplayer was never profitable. HearMe continued to refocus themselves on VoIP technologies and, in late 2000, had sold off Mplayer to competitor
GameSpy
GameSpy was an American provider of online multiplayer and matchmaking middleware for video games founded in 1996 by Mark Surfas. After the release of a multiplayer server browser for the game, QSpy, Surfas licensed the software under the GameS ...
. In addition, some technologies were sold to 4anything.com. HearMe survived the buyout and continued to operate independently.
Mplayer was taken offline and integrated into
GameSpy Arcade
GameSpy Arcade was a shareware multiplayer game server browsing utility. GameSpy Arcade allowed players to view and connect to available multiplayer games, and chat with other users of the service. It was initially released by GameSpy Industries ...
in 2001.
HearMe shut-down in mid 2000.
Story
The company first began as Mpath Interactive, a
venture capital
Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...
start-up co-founded in early 1995 by Brian Apgar,
Jeff Rothschild and
Brian Moriarty
Brian Moriarty (born 1956) is an American video game developer who authored three of the original Infocom interactive fiction titles, ''Wishbringer'' (1985), ''Trinity'' (1986), and ''Beyond Zork'' (1987), as well as ''Loom'' (1990) for LucasArt ...
, based in
Cupertino
Cupertino ( ) is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States, directly west of San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The population was 57,8 ...
,
California
California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
.
It was later renamed to HearMe. Mpath Interactive later moved to
Mountain View, California
Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376.
Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is the ...
, after acquiring Catapult Entertainment, Inc., and their online gaming service
XBAND
XBAND (stylized as XBⱯND) was one of the first competitive online console gaming networks and was available for the Genesis and Super NES. It was produced by Catapult Entertainment in Cupertino, California. It is the only modem released in Am ...
.
[ Mplayer began as a division in October 1996 to provide online gaming to subscribed users. A few months prior to launching Mplayer, Mpath announced their goal for the service in a job description:] Not only will people go to the Internet for information, they will also go to it to meet and interact with other people. Mplayer, scheduled to debut 1996, will bring the excitement of real-time multi-player gaming to the Internet's World Wide Web for the first time. It will feature popular PC-based games from well-known game publishers. Mplayer's features will include voice-capable games and chat rooms where players can converse as they play the games, watch games in progress and choose teams or opponents.
In February 1997, they began to offer internet play for free for their major commercial games such as '' Quake'', as well as card and board games such as Scrabble
''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left t ...
and Spades
SPAdes (St. Petersburg genome assembler) is a genome assembly algorithm which was designed for single cell and multi-cells bacterial data sets. Therefore, it might not be suitable for large genomes projects.
SPAdes works with Ion Torrent, PacBio ...
. In this, they were one of the first major commercial communities on the internet to offer such a service. They continued to add many new games to their offering. The slogan that was used from its founding was ''"Wanna Play?"''[ By the end of 1998, the company had a staff of 111 employees,] and about 80 by late 2000.[ The company was listed on ]NASDAQ
The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...
beginning April 29, 1999 as MPTH, which changed to HEAR by late September of the same year.
Revenues
Games first offered over Mplayer were by subscription. In addition to the Gaming Service, Mpath also launched a "preferred" ISP service, WebBullet, reselling InterRamp ISP accounts on the PSINet network, the very backbone which Mplayer.com's production services were hosted on. In early 1997, their growth allowed the service to be offered for free through support of its advertising network, which eventually became known as the Mplayer Entertainment Network. However, the subscription model was retained, known as ''Plus'', and gave special privileges to these member who subscribed. The yearly rate was USD
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
$39.95, or $29.95 for two years; this gave access to certain games, their rating and ranking system in ''Quake'' and ''Quake II'', as well as online tournaments. Subscriptions had previously been $20 per month, but upon changing their business model to offer many services for free, MPlayer decided to switch to a yearly rate so that they would not have to market to their subscribers every month in order to keep them.
While certain releases were kept as "Plus Only" features for a brief time, in many cases the Plus game rooms were simply games hosted by Mplayer's own servers. With the rapid growth of Quake fans, and the increased server load, Mplayer opened the door to the QuakeWorld
''Quake'' is a first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive. The first game in the ''Quake'' series, it was originally released for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows and Linux in 1996, followed by Mac OS and Sega ...
network, exponentially increasing the number of available game servers, and offering someone a chance to get a faster connection to a game. The downside was that there was very little control of cheat codes in these systems. Mplayer tried to increase the appeal of the Plus subscription, offering a "secure" Mplayer owned Server hosted Game, and offering Rankings and customizable Clan Skins.
With the Internet user demographic changing, a growing market emerged for classic games, with Scrabble and Battleship leading the charge. Mplayer turned more into an aggregator, hoping to attract as many users as possible with free, ad-supported games and software, including Checkers, Othello, and Chess.
Despite this, the company had been losing money, $11.9 million in 1998 alone, and by late 1999, had yet to break even.[ MPath was forced to look toward different venues. Proprietary technologies that were developed as features for Mplayer, known internally as POP.X, were later licensed to third parties. This was meant to help other companies create their own internet communities using existing technology. Third parties that licensed this technology included companies like ]Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...
and Fujitsu
is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...
. HearMe, the internal audio chat feature in Mplayer that was later split off, eventually accounted for 50% of all of the company's revenues.[
]
Growth
Mplayer began as online gaming was still in its infancy. That along with their initial subscription fee that was required to use its service limited its early growth. Mplayer gained popularity after making its service available for free to all users in early 1997, and by early 1998 had attracted more than 125,000 monthly visitors and 400,000 total members. The entire network had averaged 800,000 hours of gameplay each month, with each member averaging 15 sessions a month for 35 minutes each time.[ By the end of that year, Mplayer had 2 million total registered users. By March 1999, Mplayer had over 3 million total users, and over 80,000 unique daily visitors, averaging over 300 minutes of gameplay each. Mplayer saw some of its biggest growth during this period, with more than 200 million total minutes of gameplay per month beginning in 1999. According to internal data from HearMe at the time, Mplayer.com was the tenth most popular site on the internet in terms of total monthly usage time.][
The huge growth of Mplayer was closely associated with the growth in the internet in the late 1990s that culminated in the ]dot com boom
The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet.
Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compos ...
. This was seen in their first day of being publicly traded when their IPO
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...
nearly doubled.[ By the time of the buyout by GameSpy not long after, the service had over 10 million registered members, and 20 million unique visitors per month.][
]
HearMe
HearMe.com was launched in January 1999 following the success of Mplayer.[ Mpath intended to expand their market from entertainment using money that was being made through Mplayer to create a VOIP communications network. The technology used was based on the lucrative audio chat software used within Mplayer. HearMe.com's website featured gratis voice and ]video-conferencing
Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio and video signals by people in different locations for real time communication.McGraw-Hill Concise Ency ...
chatrooms, as well as free HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
(ActiveX
ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. ...
) code that would allow one to add a voice-chat module directly to their own website and speak with visitors in realtime. The new business became successful to the point where the entire company decided to refocus itself on this market, and this unit was not part of the buyout.[ In late September 1999, Mpath Interactive bought Resounding Technology, Inc, maker of Roger Wilco, another audio chat program. HearMe continued to release updates of the software until mid 2000 when HearMe saw its end and went out of business. However, in late 2000 a deal with PalTalk emerged, where PalTalk assumed all rights to HearMe's technology. It was later implemented into GameSpy Arcade.]
Games
Mplayer offered a variety of game types to play online, including fast-paced action games, sports games, card and board games, amongst other types of games. Until late 1997, Mplayer had a lineup of about 20 games, with some of their more popular ones being '' Quake'', '' Red Alert'', '' Diablo'', and Scrabble
''Scrabble'' is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left t ...
. In October 1997, it was announced that they would add more than 30 new games to their roster, making it the largest offering of any online gaming service at the time. The company wanted to diversify their market, and brought in many new types of games, such as Cavedog
Cavedog Entertainment was a PC game developer and publisher based in Bothell, Washington. Founded in 1995 as a division of edutainment game developer Humongous Entertainment, Cavedog was known for the 1997 release of ''Total Annihilation''—w ...
's ''Total Annihilation
''Total Annihilation'' is a real-time strategy video game created by Cavedog Entertainment, a sub-division of Humongous Entertainment, and was released on September 26, 1997 by GT Interactive for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Two expansion packs ...
'' and a host of new card games to attract more casual gamers. In a deal with Sports Illustrated
''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twic ...
, Mpath introduced an entirely new section of games dedicated to sports. The new section was meant to accommodate sports gamers, as well as online tournaments and sport news and statistics.
The main commercial games were divided by channels into action, strategy, sims, and role-playing. Their popularity generally came down to the individual game rather than the type of game. Indeed, some games would often be too underpopulated to support matchmaking, while other more popular games would have a thriving community of hundreds or thousands of gamers. Competition of online matchmaking services for computer games had been increasing by the late 1990s. Mpath attempted to ensure that it stay up to date with the latest and most popular games being released. Some games like ''Quake II
''Quake II'' is a 1997 first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Activision. It is the second installment of the Quake (series), ''Quake'' series, but not a direct sequel to ''Quake (video game), Quake''. The game ...
'', ''Daikatana
''Daikatana'' is a 2000 first-person shooter game developed by Ion Storm. It was published by Eidos Interactive for Microsoft Windows and Kemco for Nintendo 64. Players control a swordsmaster who travels through various time periods in an eff ...
'' and ''Unreal
Unreal may refer to:
Books and TV
* ''Unreal'' (short story collection), a 1985 book of short stories by Paul Jennings
* ''Unreal'' (TV series), a 2015 television drama series on Lifetime
Computing and games
* ''Unreal'' (video game series), ...
'' were all heavily promoted as being available for online play even before their launch.[
A popular feature was the ability to download shareware versions of some games and play them online. For some games, this was supported by publishers as a means to promote their games at retail. In other cases, Mplayer arranged deals with developers to attract gamers with demos of popular games such as ''Quake'' and ''Unreal''.][ The card and board games offered were supplied straight from Mplayer for free through their own software.]
Game community and market
Competition
When Mplayer launched, there were few major online gaming services, but in the late 1990s, it had numerous competitors. Notable competitors were Heat.net
SegaSoft, originally headquartered in Redwood City, California and later San Francisco, was a joint venture by Sega and CSK (Sega's majority stockholder at the time), created in 1995 to develop and publish games for the PC and Sega Saturn, prim ...
(built on a licensed version of Mplayer's core technology), Total Entertainment Network
Total Entertainment Network (TEN) was an online game, online gaming service that existed from September 1996 until October 1999. T E Network, Inc., which created and operated the TEN service, was formed from the merger of Optigon Interactive and O ...
, Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
's Internet Gaming Zone (later MSN Gaming Zone
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 a casual gaming web site, with single player, multiplayer, PC download, and social casino video games. Games ...
), GameSpy3D, Kali
Kali (; sa, काली, ), also referred to as Mahakali, Bhadrakali, and Kalika ( sa, कालिका), is a Hinduism, Hindu goddess who is considered to be the goddess of ultimate power, time, destruction and change in Shaktism. In t ...
, Blizzard
A blizzard is a severe snowstorm characterized by strong sustained winds and low visibility, lasting for a prolonged period of time—typically at least three or four hours. A ground blizzard is a weather condition where snow is not falling b ...
's Battle.net
Battle.net is an Internet-based online game, social networking service, digital distribution, and digital rights management platform developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The service was launched on December 31, 1996, followed a few days later ...
, and Sierra's Won.net.[ Furthermore, Mplayer's offering of card and board games had been countered by numerous sites across the internet, including by services like from ]Yahoo!
Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...
and GameStorm
GameStorm was an online gaming service founded by Kesmai corporation in November 1997. It offered several online video games at a flat monthly fee of $10 per month, a relatively radical payment system in the age of pay-by-hour online gaming. Both ...
.[
]
Marketing
Mplayer's first business model in online gaming was to charge gamers to play. However success was limited, and the company shortly after changed their marketing direction toward offering online play for free with supported advertising. The CEO of Mpath Interactive at the time, Paul Matteucci, put it: "It wasn't until we really got it – that it was about building a community around the games – that Mplayer.com took off," speaking on making the games free. It was from here that their model would begin to be based more around the actual community of gamers, and Mplayer would see its number of players climb several-fold.
Soon after, Mplayer had become a well-known player in the online gaming industry. As such, most of their marketing was geared toward attracting new gamers through a broader offering of games, as well as taking advantage of the large community they already had. The former can be seen in the hype surrounding the release of high-profile games of the time such as ''Unreal'' and ''Quake II'', both of which were to be offered online through Mplayer.com.[ The company built a family-friendly image in order to appeal to both kids and adults, with chat rooms which were monitored to limit profanity.] They also used their ''Plus'' service to cater to the more hardcore gamers who did not mind the extra fee. One source describes their presence at E3 2000: E-3 2000, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, held at the Los Angeles Convention Center in May 2000, was a multimedia extravaganza. Nowhere was this more apparent than at the room-sized exhibit housing Mplayer.com, the premier on-line multiplayer gaming service. And, if the multimedia electronic action didn't grab your attention, the exhibit itself was sure to. Here was a mega multimedia presentation all its own. The exhibit, costing tens of thousands of dollars to design, fabricate, and install, occupied on three raised floors, where fanatic gamers battled it out on a dozen big-screen overhead monitors...The design and construction represented an engineering marvel. Nothing had been left to chance in the exhibit's design.
By creating such an extravagant exhibit at e3, the largest gaming exposition, they sent a message that Mplayer was a major player in the gaming industry. Even at this late date, months before the buyout by GameSpy, Mpath was still aggressively marketing Mplayer. This was despite criticisms that splitting off HearMe took the company's focus away from gaming.
Software
Service was provided through proprietary software, a channel-based lobby and matchmaking client known as ''gizmo''. The design and interface of gizmo was outsourced to two design companies, Good Dog Design and Naima Productions. Upon launching the program, users would choose from a list of games, that would then take them to a universal lobby for that game. From there, users could create their own game channel that would be displayed to everyone. They could also join a created game. The lobby would show a list of rooms, ordered from least to most latency. Green rooms indicate games that were fast enough to be playable, while red rooms were unplayable. The rocket icon indicated the game had been launched. This would bring them to a second private chatroom before entering the game. The channel creator acted as the moderator, who could launch the game and ban players in the lobby as well as change game settings, but could also make someone else a moderator. In some games like ''Quake'', players could join the game after it was launched, but for most this was not possible.[
]
Features
Mpath integrated many features into Mplayer in an attempt to stay competitive and support its community. Most of these features came with an update to Gizmo in December 1997, among them were voice chat,[ a chalkboard system in game channels that anyone could view known as ''ScribbleTalk'', a built-in browser known as ''WebViewer'', personal messaging, as well a ratings and rankings system for Plus members.][ The voice chat only allowed one person to speak at a time, but became extremely successful to the point where half of all Mplayer's service usage was from voice chat. Mpath soon after split off a division to focus on VoIP technologies in early 1999 catering to non-gamers.][ Ranked games were played in a separate lobby than normal games. Ranking was determined how well you played relative to your opponent's rank. In some games, this rank was only provisional until you played a certain number of games. Later on, the rank icon only appeared after enough games were played. Users could also customize their profiles by choosing a portrait from a set of pictures and edit their profile with ]HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
, however this feature was removed in later versions of gizmo.
GameSpy buyout
Despite its success in attracting users, Mplayer was still in financial trouble in late 2000, and it had been speculated the division would be sold off, possibly to Sega
is a Japanese multinational corporation, multinational video game and entertainment company headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its international branches, Sega of America and Sega Europe, are headquartered in Irvine, California and London, r ...
, owner of Heat.net
SegaSoft, originally headquartered in Redwood City, California and later San Francisco, was a joint venture by Sega and CSK (Sega's majority stockholder at the time), created in 1995 to develop and publish games for the PC and Sega Saturn, prim ...
. However it was announced in December 2000 that GameSpy, an Irvine Irvine may refer to:
Places On Earth Antarctica
*Irvine Glacier
*Mount Irvine (Antarctica)
Australia
*Irvine Island
*Mount Irvine, New South Wales
Canada
*Irvine, Alberta
* Irvine Inlet, Nunavut
United Kingdom
*Irvine, North Ayrshire, Scotla ...
-based gaming site founded in 1996, made a deal to acquire Mplayer from HearMe. The two companies had fully merged by June 2001.[ Included in the deal was the Mplayer POP.X business unit and gaming service, as well as its Globalrankings system, which ranked players in game, and the Mplayer Entertainment Network, their advertising network. This was all sold off by HearMe for ]USD
The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
$20 million[ and a 10% stake in GameSpy.][ HearMe was willing to sell off its entertainment division to focus on its more profitable VoIP unit, while GameSpy wanted Mplayer's userbase for its own multiplayer gaming community. There was also the belief at GameSpy that HearMe had been neglecting the service in favor of its other ventures. At the time, GameSpy was looking to start over from its GameSpy3D service with GameSpy Arcade, which was then in beta.][ Only a few months after the acquisition, many features from Mplayer had been added to their new service.]
References
{{reflist
GameSpy
Online video game services
Internet properties established in 1996