Mplayer, referred to as Mplayer.com by 1998,[1] was a free online PC gaming service and community that operated from late 1996 until early 2001.

[2] Some of the more popular titles available were action games like Quake, Command & Conquer, and Rogue Spear, as well as classic card and board for more casual gamers.

Initially, the service was subscription-based, but by early 1997, they became the first major multiplayer community to offer games to be played online through their network for free.

[3] This feature proved so popular that it was later split off as a VoIP service to cater to non-gamers, dubbed HearMe, which would eventually become the new name of the company.

[citation needed] Mpath Interactive later moved to Mountain View, California, after acquiring Catapult Entertainment, Inc., and their online gaming service XBAND.

Mplayer, scheduled to debut 1996, will bring the excitement of real-time multi-player gaming to the Internet's World Wide Web for the first time.

[2] The company was listed on NASDAQ beginning April 29, 1999 as MPTH, which changed to HEAR by late September of the same year.

With the Internet user demographic changing, a growing market emerged for classic games, with Scrabble and Battleship leading the charge.

Mplayer turned more into an aggregator, hoping to attract as many users as possible with free, ad-supported games and software, including Checkers, Othello, and Chess.

[20] HearMe, the internal audio chat feature in Mplayer that was later split off, eventually accounted for 50% of all of the company's revenues.

By March 1999, Mplayer had over 3 million total users, and over 80,000 unique daily visitors, averaging over 300 minutes of gameplay each.

[20] Mpath intended to expand their market from entertainment using money that was being made through Mplayer to create a VOIP communications network.

The new business became successful to the point where the entire company decided to refocus itself on this market, and this unit was not part of the buyout.

[5] In late September 1999, Mpath Interactive bought Resounding Technology, Inc, maker of Roger Wilco, another audio chat program.

Some games like Quake II, Daikatana and Unreal were all heavily promoted as being available for online play even before their launch.

In other cases, Mplayer arranged deals with developers to attract gamers with demos of popular games such as Quake and Unreal.

[18] Furthermore, Mplayer's offering of card and board games had been countered by numerous sites across the internet, including by services like from Yahoo!

However success was limited, and the company shortly after changed their marketing direction toward offering online play for free with supported advertising.

It was from here that their model would begin to be based more around the actual community of gamers, and Mplayer would see its number of players climb several-fold.

As such, most of their marketing was geared toward attracting new gamers through a broader offering of games, as well as taking advantage of the large community they already had.

The former can be seen in the hype surrounding the release of high-profile games of the time such as Unreal and Quake II, both of which were to be offered online through Mplayer.com.

[9] The company built a family-friendly image in order to appeal to both kids and adults, with chat rooms which were monitored to limit profanity.

One source describes their presence at E3 2000:[27] E-3 2000, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, held at the Los Angeles Convention Center in May 2000, was a multimedia extravaganza.

The exhibit, costing tens of thousands of dollars to design, fabricate, and install, occupied 1,000 square feet (93 m2) on three raised floors, where fanatic gamers battled it out on a dozen big-screen overhead monitors...The design and construction represented an engineering marvel.

[32] Despite its success in attracting users, Mplayer was still in financial trouble in late 2000, and it had been speculated the division would be sold off, possibly to Sega, owner of Heat.net.

[33] However it was announced in December 2000 that GameSpy, an Irvine-based gaming site founded in 1996, made a deal to acquire Mplayer from HearMe.

[2] HearMe was willing to sell off its entertainment division to focus on its more profitable VoIP unit, while GameSpy wanted Mplayer's userbase for its own multiplayer gaming community.