MSN Games - Legacy

Legacy

• Personalities such as Bill Gates and his friend, Warren Buffett, have played bridge on the Zone. Garry Kasparov, chess champion, played in a chess game organized by Microsoft. World champion Alex Moiseyev and grandmaster Tim Laverty also played checkers on Zone. The Sheik of The United Arab Emirates invited a few backgammon players from the Zone to play in his "2nd annual Abu Dhabi Backgammon Championship". Many of the "Giants of Backgammon" (top 32 in the world) participated in Zone tournaments, including Neil Kazaross, Johannes Levermann, Steve Sax, Howard Ring, Paul Weaver, Kit Woolsey, and Bill Robertie.
• MSN Games is credited for assisting with the introduction of new games on Windows Live Messenger (formerly called MSN Messenger) and the development of Xbox Live Arcade.
• Writer Dorothy Rosencrans wrote a book about her experiences at MSN Games and her encounter with Bill Gates.
• MSN Games is credited with renaming DiamondMine to Bejeweled, which is one of the most popular casual games of all time.
• Members Plus originally utilized a Microsoft-authored program called ZoneCommander to access lobbies directly, bypassing web pages. This was later replaced by ZoneOrchestrator, a program written by two Members Plus which improved upon ZoneCommander by adding chat monitoring facilities and an enhanced user interface. Some years later, ZoneCommander was retired in favor of ZoneOrchestrator, which became the official tool of choice and remained so until the lobbies closed on June 19th, 2006.