The Newest Addiction: Warcraft meets Fantasy Footbal
Published 5 September 2004
Hi! You've stumbled upon a blog post by a guy named Ryan. I'm not that guy anymore, but I've left his posts around because cool URIs don't change and to remind me how much I've learned and grown over time.
Ryan was a well-meaning but naïve and priviledged person. His views don't necessarily represent the views of anyone.
Build an army; rally your forces; mount an assault; fend off scavenging enemies; Kings of Chaos has it all. The power-hungry can quickly amass forces by recruiting more commanders, while the fearless raid their way to wealth. What begins as intriguing becomes addictive as you train your spys to sabotage your enemies' defenses, while equipping sentries to protect your own armory.
More than the fantasy, more than the graphics of medieval weapons, the history and concept behind the game makes Kings of Chaos worth perusing. The brainchild of a handful of bored high schoolers that wanted to learn PHP and MySQL, it grew into an international phenomenon with over a hundred thousand players. The original games was based solely on a simple strategy: each player has a unique link, from which they gain power when others click on it. The more clicks, the more fun. Replace "fun" with "money" and you have the recipe for a powerful ad-sponsored internet business that is completely free to its users. This freedom—bought by an inch of real estate on the right and left margin of the page—is yet another example of the internet as the ultimate balancer. With a few months of teaching themselves, even teenagers can create a booming internet business running on the fuel of open-source web programming languages.