[07-14-99 8:10 PM ET] IS MPATH* BEATING TMSR** AND IMGK**...IN SPADES?
*Mplayer.com Launches Enhanced Community for Card and Board Game Fans
Voice Chat-Enhanced Lobbies And Game Play, Additional Programming and News Bring Social Game Playing to a New Level on Mplayer.com's Card And Board Game Community
Mountain View, CA - (July 13, 1999)
Aching to recreate the living room Backgammon marathons of your youth? Craving a quick game of cards, be it Poker, Hearts or Spades? In addition to many of their favorite classic games, card and board game fans will find a host of news and entertainment on the newly-enriched Card and Board Games Community on Mplayer.com™ the award-winning Internet games and entertainment community from Mpath. The voice chat-enhanced Card and Board Games Community on Mplayer.com offers new easy-to-use features, added programming and activities - plus a host of game titles. And, since players can actually use their microphones to speak to one another as they play many of their favorite games-this site promises to be one of the most social places on the 'Net!
"Souped up" Games and Activities
On the Mplayer.com Card and Board Games Community, game fans can play a variety of voice chat-enhanced card and board games including Hearts, Poker, Scrabble, and Backgammon, and find hundreds of thousands of potential opponents from across the globe-FOR FREE! Card and Board games fans on Mplayer.com can also participate in a number of activities and tournaments. While online, they can meet new people and hang out with friends using Mplayer.com's cutting-edge communications technologies, including text chat, pager, and live voice chat-which is featured in chat and game lobbies in as well as during gameplay...
Direct to Game Web Launch
With the launch of the new Card and Board Games Community, Mplayer.com is making it easier for game fans to quickly find and play games on the Internet. Mplayer.com has incorporated new, automatic game launch into the Card and Board Games site so that-with a single click of the mouse-game fans go directly into a specific game lobby from the Card and Board Games Community Web site without clicking through a series of intermediate pages...
Fun Web Game Lets Game Fans Spice Up Homepages With Mplayer.com Flavor
Mplayer.com's Card and Board Games Community is also adding a new feature that makes it a snap for Mplayer.com game fans to bring a few games to their own home pages..."
Source: mPath Company Release
mpath.com
*From the 1960's Living Room to the 1990's Chat and Game Lobbies: America's Card Culture Embraces the Internet
Virtual Card Playing Clubs Enjoy Cards and Conversation on Mpath's Voice-Chat Enhanced Mplayer.com
Mountain View, CA - (July 13, 1999)
Game fans across the country are recreating the card nights once popular in American living rooms -with a 1990's twist of course! Rather than inviting the neighbors over for a friendly game of hearts, card players of the '90's are turning on their computers and visiting the voice chat-enabled Card and Board Games Community within Mplayer.com™ (www.mplayer.com), the award-winning games and entertainment community from Mpath.
On Mplayer.com, card fans are hooking up with regular card buddies and meeting new people for a friendly game of cards and casual conversation. Though the experience might strike some as intimidating or reserved only for "techno-geeks," playing games on Mplayer.com is actually quite easy and surprisingly social. In fact, computer card fans claim that playing cards over on Mplayer.com can be as much fun-if not more-as the living-room card games of the past. Thanks to voice chat technology from Mplayer.com's sister site, HearMe.com™ card players can speak with competitors in their own voice, share stories, explain a game, even play music or sing songs while they play. They simply use their mouse to click on a button onscreen that says "TALK" and speak into their microphones.
Angie Chavez, a thirty-four-year-old mother of three, is just one of the many people that play cards on Mplayer.com each day. Her game of choice? Spades. In fact, Chavez is such a huge fan of Spades that she has been known to spend as many as six hours playing and chatting with her card-playing friends in a single day!
Within Mplayer.com's card playing circles, Chavez is something of a celebrity. Not only can she cut a mean deck of cards, but a few months ago Chavez organized her own online card club within the Mplayer.com Card and Board Games Community-just like the card clubs of yesteryear! Chavez's card league was a big hit-in fact, just one week after it was founded, the club-known as the NCA Spades League-boasted over 100 members. Since then, membership of her league has more than doubled. Now, the NCA Spades League has an executive committee that includes a membership recruitment officer, regularly scheduled NCA voice chat-enabled club meetings, member tournaments, and rules that govern membership.
For Chavez, voice chat is an integral part of the Mplayer.com experience. She uses it to recruit members to the NCA, explain games, discuss club issues, govern tournaments and even to carry on casual card game conversation much like people would hear around a kitchen table-except she is online. Chavez explains that using voice-chat to meet and speak with fellow Mplayer.com members has brought her closer to the community: "On Mplayer.com, I have built friendships with people from all over the country, based on our common interest in card games," says Chavez. "I have spent so much time playing games and talking to people that the relationships I have with my Spades buddies goes beyond playing cards. We are like old friends-we talk about our kids, our jobs, and our day-to-day problems, over a game of cards. Sometimes we don't even get around to playing cards, we just hang out online and chat." According to Chavez it's not just the games that bring her back to Mplayer.com each day, "It's the people!" she exclaims.
Jeremy Verba, executive vice president of live communities for Mpath, says these types of social activities are strong examples of the truly interactive and social potential of the Internet. "With services like Mplayer.com, we can bring people from across the country together to engage in very social, rich experiences," explains Verba. "Our members log on to Mplayer.com to participate in colorful, graphically rich games; become enthralled in the thrill of competition; and enjoy the social benefits of sharing stories by talking to each other -- all in real-time. It's a real party."
Card strategy expert Joe Andrews, author of "Win at Hearts," and "Win at Spades" (Bonus Books) and director of the American Hearts and Spades Players Association, considers online game communities such as Mplayer.com an ideal place to find a good game of cards. "With the Internet, it doesn't matter where you are or what time it is; you can always find a skilled group of players and get a friendly game of cards going," says Andrews. It is no surprise, he says, that this phenomenon is taking off. "What you have here, is a group of people who gather online to indulge in a favorite pastime. It's no different than playing cards at someone's home, except in this case you may be in Chicago, while your partner is playing from San Francisco," explains Andrews.
When not playing the latest voice chat-enhanced card and board games such as Hearts, Poker, Scrabble and Chess, visitors to Mplayer.com can sample the variety of special events and tailored content that make the community such a cool place to hang out. They can read articles from experts on game strategies, compete for cash and prizes through Mplayer.com tournaments and events, and see how well their fellow community members are playing by checking out the latest ratings and rankings. And, if they want a little distraction, visitors to the Card and Board Games Community can read up on the latest Entertainment News, including reviews of recently released movies, master the Daily Crossword, test their brainpower with Two Minute Trivia and read their horoscopes..."
Source: mPath Company Release mpath.com
*Mpath Appoints Internet Veteran Jeremy Verba Exec VP
Former E! Online Founder and President Heads Mpath'sLive Communities Team
Mountain View, CA - (June 15, 1999)
Mpath Interactive, Inc. (Nasdaq: MPTH), today announced that it has appointed Jeremy Verba, former founder and president of E! Online, as the executive vice president for Mpath's Live Communities business unit.
Verba, 36, has joined Mpath to lead thecompany's two industry-leading live communities HearMe.com™ and Mplayer.com™ which boast more than four million members. In his new role, Verba will manage product evolution and revenue development for the two sites.
Unveiled in February 1999, HearMe.com is a live audio Internet community through which consumers can interact in real-time using voice, music, and other forms of sound. Mplayer.com is Mpath's award-winning games and entertainment community featuring over 100 card, board, and retail games for consumers to play against opponents from across the Internet. Verba will manage the sites' syndication partners program, feature definition and content development, and all marketing activities.
Mpath president and CEO, Paul Matteucci believes that Verba's background and expertise is a tremendous addition to the Mpath team. "Under Jeremy's direction, E! Online was successfully launched and grew to become one of the top 25 visited sites on the Internet," said Matteucci. "His strong understanding of online business models, Internet business relationships, and consumer Internet experiences gained both from E! Online and CNET will be a major asset to HearMe.com and Mplayer.com.
"Before Mpath, no one had built large-scale real-time live communities with rich audio and graphics. Now, these experiences are becoming very popular and I look forward to leading Mpath's live communities into the future," Verba said.
Verba founded E! Online after being recruited by CNET as the company's vice president of entertainment ventures to lead CNET's joint venture with E! Entertainment Television. At the onset, Verba played a critical role in developing E! Online -- hiring the senior management team, developing the business plan, and launching the company. Verba served as president of E! Online for over two years. With Verba at the helm, E! Online eventually ranked among the top 25 visited sites on the Web and won a variety of accolades: Montgomery Securities named E! Online the category leader and a USA Today/Intelliquest user survey selected E! Online as the leading entertainment site on the Internet. During his tenure with the company, Verba built E! Online through the recruitment of seven figure sponsorships and major advertising relationships with film studios, high-tech partners, and consumer product companies. He also played a key role in the development of strategic relationships with such leading media companies as AOL, Yahoo!, WebTV, Microsoft, @Home, PointCast Network, Mindspring, and CNET's SNAP..."
Source: mPath Company Release
mpath.com
**[TMSR] ThrustMaster Talk N' Play talknplay.com
**[IMGK] iMagic Entertainment imagicgames.com
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