Acclaim Games
Encyclopedia
Acclaim Games, based in Beverly Hills, California
, was a private online
video game company that offered free Massively multiplayer online role-playing
games on its website
upon registration. The company was founded in 2006 and is the successor of Acclaim Entertainment
in terms of brand name. After Acclaim Entertainment filed for bankruptcy
, former Activision
CEO Howard Marks purchased the "Acclaim" name in September 2004 for a reported $100,000. He, along with Neil Malhotra, created a new company, naming it "Acclaim Games" and taking a totally different direction from the previous company.
While Acclaim Games primarily focused on bringing to North America
and Europe
online games originally from Asia
, it also gave the opportunity to its registered members to submit video games they'd created. Acclaim Games relied on In-game advertising
and items sales for revenues, while releasing the games themselves for free.
The company released fourteen games: The Chronicles of Spellborn, Kogamu, BOTS (which was its launching title), 9Dragons
, 2Moons, Ponystars, Dance Online, My Diva Doll, Tribal Nations and Prize Potato. As of December 2007, the company had 5 million registered accounts and 500,000 active players across all games.
On May 19, 2010 Playdom
acquired the company. Three months later, on August 27, and almost six years to the day that Acclaim Entertainment
went out of business, Playdom closed Acclaim Games The 9Dragons game was sold to GamersFirst, with all other games being discontinued.
Beverly Hills, California
Beverly Hills is an affluent city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a population of 34,109 at the 2010 census, up from 33,784 as of the 2000 census, it is home to numerous Hollywood celebrities. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together...
, was a private online
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
video game company that offered free Massively multiplayer online role-playing
MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
games on its website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
upon registration. The company was founded in 2006 and is the successor of Acclaim Entertainment
Acclaim Entertainment
Acclaim Entertainment was an American video game developer and publisher. It developed, published, marketed and distributed interactive entertainment software for a variety of hardware platforms, including Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, and Game Gear, Nintendo's NES, SNES, Nintendo...
in terms of brand name. After Acclaim Entertainment filed for bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
, former Activision
Activision
Activision is an American publisher, majority owned by French conglomerate Vivendi SA. Its current CEO is Robert Kotick. It was founded on October 1, 1979 and was the world's first independent developer and distributor of video games for gaming consoles...
CEO Howard Marks purchased the "Acclaim" name in September 2004 for a reported $100,000. He, along with Neil Malhotra, created a new company, naming it "Acclaim Games" and taking a totally different direction from the previous company.
While Acclaim Games primarily focused on bringing to North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
online games originally from Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
, it also gave the opportunity to its registered members to submit video games they'd created. Acclaim Games relied on In-game advertising
In-game advertising
In-game advertising refers to advertising in computer and video games. IGA differs from advergaming, which refers to a game specifically made to advertise a product.The IGA industry is large and growing...
and items sales for revenues, while releasing the games themselves for free.
The company released fourteen games: The Chronicles of Spellborn, Kogamu, BOTS (which was its launching title), 9Dragons
9Dragons
9Dragons is a martial arts-themed massively multiplayer online role playing game, developed by Korean video game company Indy21. The game features 3D graphics and traditional Massively multiplayer online game control schemes...
, 2Moons, Ponystars, Dance Online, My Diva Doll, Tribal Nations and Prize Potato. As of December 2007, the company had 5 million registered accounts and 500,000 active players across all games.
On May 19, 2010 Playdom
Playdom
Playdom is an online social network game developer popular on Facebook and on MySpace; it is currently the largest social game developer on MySpace and one of the larger ones on Facebook. The company was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area by University of California, Berkeley graduates Ling Xiao...
acquired the company. Three months later, on August 27, and almost six years to the day that Acclaim Entertainment
Acclaim Entertainment
Acclaim Entertainment was an American video game developer and publisher. It developed, published, marketed and distributed interactive entertainment software for a variety of hardware platforms, including Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast, and Game Gear, Nintendo's NES, SNES, Nintendo...
went out of business, Playdom closed Acclaim Games The 9Dragons game was sold to GamersFirst, with all other games being discontinued.
Games
- BOTS!! –A multi-player online fighting game in which player can eat some pie while playing.Warning there are many hackers in thiss game this is totally true!!! Aside from that, Players choose from one of five basic BOTS (Patch, Surge,Ram,Conduct,andGogol) and then upgrade their character throughout the game. There are multi-player story modes that include Sector (Player vs Virus), PVP (Player/Team vs Player/Team) and Base (Base vs Base). This game has been out since April 2006. Before the game's original release, a 3D promo of the game was available for a short amount of time. BOTS!! is now defunct.
- Forsaken - A game in which you play as a bounty hunter on the ruins and remnants of earth. It was a Six degrees of freedomSix degrees of freedomSix degrees of freedom refers to motion of a rigid body in three-dimensional space, namely the ability to move forward/backward, up/down, left/right combined with rotation about three perpendicular axes...
in which you search for gold, crystals, and other loot. In the meantime there are numerous robots and other bounty hunters to fight. - 9Dragons9Dragons9Dragons is a martial arts-themed massively multiplayer online role playing game, developed by Korean video game company Indy21. The game features 3D graphics and traditional Massively multiplayer online game control schemes...
– A 3D3D computer graphics3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
MMORPGMMORPGMassively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of role-playing video games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
set in ChinaChinaChinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
during the Ming DynastyMing DynastyThe Ming Dynasty, also Empire of the Great Ming, was the ruling dynasty of China from 1368 to 1644, following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty. The Ming, "one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history", was the last dynasty in China ruled by ethnic...
. It includes actual Chinese geographyGeography of ChinaChina stretches some across the East Asian landmass bordering the East China Sea, Korea Bay, Yellow Sea, and South China Sea, between North Korea and Vietnam in a changing configuration of broad plains, expansive deserts, and lofty mountain ranges, including vast areas of inhospitable terrain...
and historical features such as the Great Wall of ChinaGreat Wall of ChinaThe Great Wall of China is a series of stone and earthen fortifications in northern China, built originally to protect the northern borders of the Chinese Empire against intrusions by various nomadic groups...
and the Shaolin Temple. 9Dragons was developed by Korean company Indy21 and the lore and ingame storyline was remastered, and later game directed by bestselling author Steven-Elliot AltmanSteven-Elliot AltmanSteven-Elliot Altman is a bestselling American author, graphic novelist, video game writer-director, producer and screenwriter.-Games:*9Dragons Online...
. - 2Moons – A translation of the Korean MMORPG Dekaron by Gamehi, featuring a new story line. Published by Acclaim under the direction of David Perry, 2Moons uses an in-game advertising business model. In December 2007 the game had 500,000 active players, with fewer than 10% buying items through this advertising.
- Dance! OnlineDance! OnlineDANCE! Online was a downloadable massively multiplayer online music video game produced by David Perry and published by Acclaim in North America. It is a free-to-download PC title that largely resembles a combination of Audition Online and Dance Dance Revolution series. It is based on the Chinese...
– A game is based on the Chinese game Super Dancer Online created by Nineyou. Like 2Moons, it is published by Acclaim under the direction of David Perry. As of December 2007, the game had 300,000 active players, of which over 50% are female. Ever since 2008 it has been dumped by Acclaim and has not been updated nor cared for. - Ponystars – an online virtual pets game, launched in June 2008. It is a US-hosted version of the French game Pony Valley and is operated in partnership with that game's creator, Feerik.
- My Diva Doll – A multi-player online fashion and decorating game. Partnership with French company Feerik.
- Tribal Nations – A multi-player online sim set in the Native Tribes of MesoamericaMesoamericaMesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...
. Partnership with French company Celsius Online. - Prize Potato – A multi-player game created for FacebookFacebookFacebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. , Facebook has more than 800 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as...
that offers prizes. - The Chronicles of SpellbornThe Chronicles of SpellbornThe Chronicles of Spellborn was an MMORPG, developed by Spellborn International and distributed by Frogster Interactive, Mindscape and Acclaim Games; set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world...
– MMORPG developed by Spellborn InternationalSpellborn InternationalSpellborn International, registered as Spellborn N.V., is a Dutch video game developer, located in The Hague, the Netherlands. They were developing the MMORPG The Chronicles of Spellborn....
, released on the 27th of November, 2008 in the Europe. Release for the USA and the UK is planned for Q1 of 2009. - Knight's Blood– A multi-player online Knight fighting game. In partnership with RedMoonStudios GmbH & Co. KG.
- Muniz Online
- TrackManiaTrackManiaTrackMania is a series of racing games for the Windows PC, Nintendo DS and Wii platforms, originally developed by the French team Nadéo for the PC...
- Prize Island
- Top Secret – A Scalable Multi-player Online Racing Game directed by David Perry and developed by Acclaim Games. It is an online collaboration in video game development, drawing on both established professionals and novices. The project also features a competition, where the top contributor will take the role as director for a new game.