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BACKGROUND

VGOL (Video Games On-Line, Inc.) was formed in 1994 as one of the interactive entertainment industry’s pioneers in Internet-enabled gaming. The business concept was straight-forward and built around the idea that console and computer gaming would eventually become inextricably bound and then enhanced by the online experience. VGOL was to become an AOL-style community and portal toward that end.

While the vision was strong and in hind-sight appears self-evident, technology of the day was prohibitive and it became increasingly apparent that online gaming required mass-market broadband access. The business was fragmented and few software publishers saw the future of gaming heading in the on-line direction. Nintendo for its part did have a phone jack hidden underneath the bottom of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and again in the SNES, but the concept needed to be pushed and prodded and lacked any substantive backing.

At one early point, the founder and owner of VGOL, Hal Halpin, pitched AOL founder and CEO Steve Case on a joint-venture concept whereby they could leverage the brand recognition and expertise of one entity and the mass market appeal of the other. The two young entrepreneurs emailed back and forth, but eventually determined that the market just wasn’t ready.

Hal left the VGOL business dormant while he opened a new venture, Cyberactive Publishing – a businesses-to-business media company serving the sector. He published Video Game Advisor magazine, the game industry’s leading trade publication, and developed a readership that consisted primarily of games retail and publishing executives. Over the following years, VGOL was left as a back-burner project that was ahead of its time, but it did serve as the launching pad for several, now famous, industry staples. The site was an online directory of the games business at one stage and the VGOL brand was omnipresent for industry veterans. It was so highly regarded by executives in the sector that it frequently became a marketing vehicle to brand products and properties. When the founders of GameSpot were looking to introduce their business to the market they advertised heavily on VGOL.

A decade later the industry has grown into a $10 billion business in the U.S. alone and represents a full third of the broader entertainment category. Traditional brick-and-mortar retailers are finding compelling solutions in leveraging the physical packaged goods and retail experience with the near-term realities and complexities of the business. The promise of online gaming is closer now than it has ever been and the future of the industry does indeed appear to be heading along the same path that appeared a distant likelihood just ten years earlier.

Copyright © 2011 Video Games On-Line, Inc. All rights reserved.