Well, why did 2am’s system of revenue (clicking on advertisements) fail? One main reason was their system itself. It consisted of a Free-Time Meter, that looked like this:
This meter was built into the software, and could be seen in the Game Club lobby and every game room while playing 2am games (it is still there today, but no longer serves its original purpose). Basically, in order to play games, you would have to fill up on free time. You fill up on free time by visiting the advertisements (the banners) that were located at the top of the screen. Users would have to click on three banners per hour to fill their meter. For each 20 or 30 minutes you played a game, it went down a few notches. Of course, each time you clicked on a banner, the advertiser would pay 2am. This system worked well for many months because they had a large player base (several thousand unique players). 2am averaged about $60,000 per month in a five-month period, with revenues certainly going higher after that.
The problem, though, lied in that 2am was forcing its users to click on banners (or else they would not be allowed to play games… remember the free-time meter). This went against the advertisement company’s policies, and they found out about it when many users began to complain. The ad company requested that 2am stop forcing users to click on banners, but obviously 2am could not do that since it was their only flow of income.
Adding to this mess was the severe drop in the price-per-click that these ad companies were offering. This could be explained simply because a lot of companies were doing it. Where 2am used to be paid $0.25 per click, it went down to about $0.02 per click. So for the example above, 2am went from getting paid $0.75 per user per hour, to $0.06 per user per hour… this is quite a significant drop and was a huge setback for 2am. This was also a big reason why free services and ISP’s went under so fast.
In a nutshell, there were so many companies relying on ads for at least a supplemental income that it had brought the price down.
As was stated before, 2am was also interested in future avenues that didn’t include the Game Club. Its peer-to-peer technology at the time was innovative, and many companies were interested in buying that technology from 2am. No companies had desired to buy the games though.
In October of 2000, 2am began preparations to go public with its new peer-to-peer technology. The Game Club was to serve mainly as a “show room” for how the new technology could be implemented. The game site became less of a priority than it was before. In addition was 2am’s involvement with other gaming sites and their projects. Many of the developers at 2am started seeing the Game Club as their funding for other projects.
In these dark times it was Mark and his hard work that kept at least CoC alive. If it had not been for him, Javert, and a few others like them, the Game Club would have probably gone down in August of 2000, after it had stopped showing profits. That December when 2am shut down, CoC was pretty much on its own.
This is when that previously mentioned group of four from 2am tried to save or at least extend the game’s life. They got Warenet to run all the servers and take all the money that the ads brought in for a limited time. The fact was that the ads didn't bring in enough according to Warenet, so they decided to start disabling servers in early April. With CoC gone, the legacy of 2am Games came to an end.
The games of 2am were never intended to make money, but rather to beta test the CREATION technology. 2am’s peer-to-peer technology never even ended up on the market, due to the fact that it was unstable. The company that abandoned its Game Club, Chain of Command, and thousands of loyal players to concentrate on flaunting its over-hyped, flagship technology to other companies, made no profit worth mentioning off it.
2am was a failure.