Total Entertainment Network

Total Entertainment Network (TEN) was an online gaming service that existed from September, 1996 ["TEN goes commercial; Leading interactive entertainment network for game players offers special introductory pricing to first 25,000 members," "Business Wire" Sep. 23, 1996. Available online at http://www.thefreelibrary.com/TEN+goes+commercial%3b+Leading+interactive+entertainment+network+for...-a018698627] until October, 1999. T E Network, Inc., which created and operated the TEN service, was formed from the merger ["Planet Optigon, Outland to merge and form "The Total Entertainment Network"; Online Entertainment companies merge, receive venture financing from Kleiner Perkins, Caulfield & Byers," "Business Wire" Apr. 24, 1995. Available online at http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Planet+Optigon%2c+Outland+to+merge+and+form+%22The+Total+Entertainment...-a016857194] of Optigon Interactive and Outland in June, 1995 when they received their first round of venture capital funding from Vinod Khosla, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

The service offered PC game players a place to play DOS and Windows-based games online with and against other players, to chat, to download game-related content, and to compete for high scores and to win tournaments. The service was bundled with many PC games and offered as a subscription service. Some of the games supported on TEN include Duke Nukem 3D ["3D Realms Titles Go Exclusively to TEN for 5 Years; TEN to be exclusive online partner for all upcoming titles, including Duke Nukem 3D," "Business Wire" Mar. 19, 1996. Available online at http://www.thefreelibrary.com/3D+Realms+Titles+Go+Exclusively+to+TEN+for+5+Years%3b+TEN+to+be...-a018104297] , NASCAR Racing Online Series ["NASCAR Speeds onto the Internet: TEN Puts Pedal to the Metal with Sierra On-Line and NASCAR," "Business Wire" Dec. 3, 1996. Available online at http://www.thefreelibrary.com/NASCAR+Speeds+onto+the+Internet%3a+TEN+Puts+Pedal+to+the+Metal+with...-a018896455] , , ARC, AD&D's Dark Sun Online, Quake ["TEN Shakes Up the Gaming World With Addition of QUAKE; First commercial Internet entertainment network adds to list of high-quality content," "Business Wire" Sep. 30, 1996. Available online at http://www.thefreelibrary.com/TEN+Shakes+Up+the+Gaming+World+With+Addition+of+QUAKE%3b+First...-a018731815] , Quake 2, Shadow Warrior, Wulfram, Warheads, Master of Orion II, Blood, WizWar, , Command & Conquer, Panzer General, Twilight Dawn, Diablo, Warcraft, , Big Red Racing ["TEN Revs Its Engines with Big Red Racing; Leading interactive entertainment network for game players lines up more hit content," "Business Wire" Sep. 6, 1996. Available online at http://www.thefreelibrary.com/TEN+Revs+Its+Engines+with+Big+Red+Racing%3b+Leading+interactive...-a018651257] , and Myth.

Many online games, especially PC games adapted for online game play, require low and consistent latency to play well. It was a major challenge circa 1996 for consumers to find consistent low latency connections to central servers or to other game players because of the latency intrinsic to dial-up modems and the heavy congestion at the Internet peering points. T E Network, Inc. partnered ["TEN and Concentric Forge Alliance to Provide Fastest Possible National Gaming Network," "Business Wire" May 16, 1996. Available online at http://www.thefreelibrary.com/TEN+and+Concentric+Forge+Alliance+to+Provide+Fastest+Possible...-a018290454] with Concentric Network Corporation to offer consumers Internet access dial-up numbers that would provide the reliable low latencies they needed to play online games. Concentric optimized their network and their dial-up technology for the TEN service. Concentric also received venture capital financing from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

After the success of Blizzard Entertainment's free Battle.net service for Diablo and their claim that offering online play as a feature of the game boosted retail sales by 10%, PC game publishers started following Blizzard's lead and offering free online game play. This undermined the subscription business model of TEN and their strategy to be the exclusive place to play popular PC games online. As Internet advertising was starting to gain traction, T E Network decided to focus on easy-to-access and easy-to-play browser-based games that would appeal to a broad audience and attract enough unique users to drive an advertising-based business model. T E Nework, Inc. became ["TEN Becomes pogo.com: Bingo Beats Quake," Wall Street Journal Interactive, Oct. 1999. Available online at http://www.costik.com/pogo.html] Pogo.com, Inc. to pursue this new strategy.

TEN games

* Duke Nukem 3D
* NASCAR Racing Online Series
*
* ARC
* AD&D's Dark Sun Online
* Quake
* Quake 2
* Shadow Warrior
* Wulfram
* Warheads
* Master of Orion II
* Blood
* WizWar
*
*
* Command & Conquer
* Panzer General
* Twilight Dawn
* Diablo
* WarCraft
*
* Big Red Racing
* Myth
*
* Necrodome

Earlier Total Entertainment Network service from Optigon Interactive

The first Total Entertainment Network (TEN) service was an online gaming network and community portal developed by Optigon Interactive. Optigon Interactive was founded by Daniel Goldman and Janice Linden-Reed in 1991 and launched a beta nationally in 1994 via Sprint's X.25 dial-up network. ["Showdown at the Virtual Corral," San Francisco Chronicle, Jan. 5, 1995. Available online at http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/1995/01/05/DD7710.DTL] . The brand was developed in conjunction with Alan Buder, from Colossal Picture, and Michael Lipscomb. It was an online service with a DOS client that offered Chess, Checkers, SimCity, email, and chat [1] . The entire executive management team Optigon went on to become the executive management team for TE Network, joined by CTO David King from Outland.

References

See also

*Pogo.com

External links

* Internet Archive of the TEN website, http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.ten.net