Dwango's demise marks end of era for multiplayer gaming
Houston-based Interactive Visual Systems Corp. closed up its Dwango U.S. operations Friday. "It's the passing of an era," said Erick Hachenburg, president and CEO of the Total Entertainment Network Inc., a competitor to Dwango. "Dwango was the last of the multiplayer companies not on the Internet."
The network's demise was originally reported in the Houston Chronicle Saturday. Dwango officials could not be reached for comment. For other online gaming sites, the moral of the story is clear.
"If you are not on the Internet, you can't be in this business," said Hachenburg.
Dwango -- the dial-up wide-area network game operation -- had its own proprietary gaming network with over 30 servers spread throughout the United States. The gaming network's key selling point to hard-core gamers was that, by bypassing the Internet, its network delivered more responsive game play.
"Dwango was pretty unique," said Mark Mooradian, group director of consumer content for new media researcher Jupiter Communications Inc. "They were set on their subscription plan, and they were targeted on a narrow audience, that is, action gamers who are set on the lowest latency solution out there."
No cheat codes allowed
Dwango is the last of the proprietary networks to fall by the wayside. Previously, similar networks such as Catapult and Genie have either failed or been bought up.
All of the networks tried to fix a major problem with Internet gaming: Lag time.
Because of the circuitous routes that data takes to get from one player's computer to another's, the lag between a player's command and the time the action appears on the screen can approach a half a second or more. While that may not sound like much, it's equivalent to having to wait a half a second between telling your hand to move and when it actually does.
"Plenty of Internet companies are working on reducing lag times," said Jupiter's Mooradian. "Most have reduced the time to where Dwango no longer had an major advantage."
Don't pass Go...
The loss of that advantage and the fact that access to Dwango's networks were in only 30 cities nationwide added up to fewer subscribers.
"People that didn't move to the Internet three years ago have disappeared," said Paul Matteucci, CEO of Mplayer.com. "They had a nice loyal clientele, but all of our habits have changed in the past several years."
Fewer subscribers means less advertising, and online gaming services have quickly found that they need advertisers to stay alive.
In fact, Internet-based services have added features to specifically attract casual gamers. "We focus on our recreation games -- such as card games and board games," said TEN's Hachenburg, "because we need to attract broad audiences. That's what our advertisers want."
By attracting a more general gamer, TEN and others hope to grab a large piece of the online gaming pie, whose revenues Jupiter predicts will grow from a piddly $41 million last year to over $1.1 billion in 2002.