MSN Gaming Zone
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Type of site
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Web Games |
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| Owner | Microsoft Corporation |
| Created by | MSN, Microsoft |
| Website | zone |
| Commercial | Yes, ad funded |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | August 7, 1996 (as Zone.com) |
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 and multiplayer online games, as well as PC download games. Games are available in free on-line versions, trial versions, and full feature pay-to-play versions.
MSN Games is a part of Microsoft Studios, a sister of the MSN portal, and is owned by Microsoft, headquartered in Redmond, Washington.
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.
It started with a handful of card and board games like Hearts, Spades, Checkers, Backgammon, and Bridge.
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 MMORPG-games, such as UltraCorps, Age of Empires, Asheron's Call and Fighter Ace.
The Zone's first competitors were AOL's Games.com, as well Mplayer.com and Sega's Heat.net. Formerly, the site competed with other similar free-game sites, such as Yahoo! Games and msngames.org.
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 five different teams: the Gaming Team (!), Helproom Team (+), Tournament Hosting Team (%), zStar Team (*), and Tech Support Team (?).
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