Microsoft Ants - History

History

Ants was created in 1996 as a proprietary game for Microsoft's MSN service. At this time, MSN was the online service that was integrated into Microsoft Windows and you could access it by double clicking the MSN icon on the desktop, which would open a "My Computer" type window where you could use the service.

After AOL releasing newer versions of itself, and Prodigy Internet, which was a giant upgrade of the popular online service Prodigy, Microsoft took MSN in a new direction by upgrading its own service with a flashy new layout powered by ActiveX called "onstage". Part of this service included a brand new section for kids and game fans. It was called "Spike's World of Games," or "Spike's World Online Game Magazine."

Spike's World featured games such as Scrawl, a popular game-show type game, and Ants. Ants premiered in early 1997 as a real-time strategy game, which were uncommon at the time. Ants displayed the latest in Microsoft's game technology and it was paired for download along with Direct X 3.

During this time, Steve Murch, a then-employee of Microsoft, convinced Bill Gates to acquire a small online game site (then owned by Electric Gravity). Between 1996-97, Murch worked on modernizing the site and adding—and sometimes remaking—new games. Joshua Howard, also an employee at Microsoft in what would later be the MSN Gaming Zone department, petitioned Microsoft to make the movement of Ants onto their servers a priority, and eventually "Microsoft Ants" became one of the original games to be tested and officially inducted (though slightly manipulated) into the newly remade Internet Gaming Zone. This was done primarily as a result of its easy interface and its cute characters, who both spoke to and interacted with each other at the whim of the user.

In the late summer of 1998, the Internet Gaming Zone was taken over and made a part of MSN while being renamed the Microsoft Gaming Zone. At this point, since the "onstage" part of MSN was gone, Spike's World was gone too. There was no way for anyone to play games on the site, Ants included. Finally in October 1998, after several code changes which included modification to images and existing maps, Microsoft premiered "Microsoft Ants" as one of the games available to play on its servers. The game was free and available to play online after a quick download of integrated software for anyone who wanted to play it. Shortly after Ants was officially on Microsoft servers, Joshua Howard left Microsoft to work elsewhere, and would not become involved in Ants again until returning to MSN Gaming Zone several years later.

As soon as it appeared, Ants became an instant hit for the Internet Gaming Zone, or "the Zone" as it would quickly be dubbed by its more die-hard users. This was due in part to loyal fans having followed it from Spike's World. However, because the Zone was still in its infancy players wanted a game that would be simple, easy to use and understand, and could almost guarantee that there would be little to no problems in playing it. "Ants" easily met these criteria. A single game could take no more than twelve minutes. It was easy and clean enough for children to play, but addictive and strategic enough for adults to enjoy it too. The popularity and population soared, reaching almost record levels in a short period of time, sometimes hosting over 500—or more—players in four to six game rooms at once.