DWANGO

DWANGO, the Dial Up Wide Area Network Games Operation (originally Doom Wide-Area Network Game Organization), was an early fee-based multiplayer server for Doom, Doom II and Heretic. It was created in early 1994 by Bob Huntley and Kee Kimbrell in Houston, Texas. The first version was released with the shareware release of Heretic.

Since it predated widespread consumer access to the Internet, players had to dial long distance to Houston. Even so, it was wildly popular, and the creators reaped a healthy profit from the subscription fees. By early 1995, ten thousand subscribers were paying $9.95 a month, some calling from as far as Italy and Australia.

About this time, Huntley and Kimbrell decided they should expand, and began setting up a franchising system. They charged a flat fee of $35,000 to set up a server, and would let the franchisee keep the rest of the profits. In four months, they set up 22 servers across the country.

With the advent of Quake came multiplayer across the Internet, and DWANGO, which had started to dwindle by late 1995, was all but dead after its release. It was formally shut down in most areas of the world in 1998. Its Japanese subsidiary, which had earlier been spun off into a separate corporation, survived however with an evolving mission statement. It now runs the popular Japanese video sharing site and owns game developer. Nintendo acquired a 1.5% share of the company in late 2013.

DWANGO's legacy includes the semi-official DWANGO map packs created by various authors. Compiled until DWANGO6 into collections by Lance Lancaster (Aikman), an employee of DWANGO's hosting provider Interactive Visual Systems, they are still used today by DM players.

Map packs
Note: DWANGO9 and DWANGO13 are both fan creations, compiled after the DWANGO service was shut down.

Further info
The maps Aikman selected for the DWANGO compilations were submitted to a Dallas-based BBS (The Wall DiSc), operated by Nileppez. Submitted wads were reviewed by a team consisting of veteran players from the Dallas DWANGO server. They would rate submitted levels based on repeated four-player matches. The original DWANGO wads (1-6) often featured Entryway remakes and a mixture of small-to-large maps, with the intention of appealing to various playstyles.

MIDI choices for the DWANGO collections were heavily thought out. Most songs had a story behind their use, for example DWANGO6 Map13 features Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden, a seattle band. This was a tribute to Spriggan, a Seattle-based Moderator and author of the map.

Aikman was assisted by Spriggan during the 1995 event "Judgment Day", also known as Deathmatch '95, held at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington - one of the earliest examples of an e-sport event.

External link

 * DWANGO v2.0 documentation
 * (DWANGO complete series)
 * (DWANGO complete series)