OgameBlog

Karlsruhe-based company as a “Great Place to Work” award

Karlsruhe, 25 February 2010. Gameforge, the largest independent provider of online games, according to one of the benchmark study “Germany’s best employer 2010″ Great Place to Work ® Institute’s 100 best employers in the country.

The award as top employer was passed by the Great Place to Work ® Institute Germany in the presence of Federal Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Ursula von der Leyen during a major gala took place last night in Berlin, and certifies to the Karlsruhe-based company once again a special appeal as an employer. Recently, Gameforge was through the nationwide comparison and cross-industry businesses TOP JOB has been awarded as one of the top 100 German SMEs.

Gameforge in the study was his commitment and his achievements in creating a quality workplace culture impressively demonstrated. The company shows responsibility for the staff and a great vision for the importance of trusting relationships between staff and management for business success.

“The joy and pride in this latest award motivates us to pursue this avenue in Personnel consistently. We see the result as an invitation to collectively continue to ensure that Gameforge continue to be a ‘Great Place to Work’ remains, “says Klaas Kersting, CEO and founder of Gameforge.

The extensive employee survey on key issues such as workplace culture and business success, participation and cultural change, lifelong learning, balance between work and life, pay and benefits took place anonymously. The investigation was conducted in Germany in addition to 14 other European countries. More information about Benchmark Studies of the Great Place to Work ® Institute is on the Internet at www.greatplacetowork.de

About the Great Place to Work ® Institute Great Place to Work ® is a founded in 1991 and internationally networked research and consulting firm headquartered in the United States. Basis of the work is an empirically grounded model that encompasses the key aspects of an excellent staff from the perspective of the employer. The focus is on the relationship between management and employees, the relationship of employees to their own operations and the company as a whole and the relationships among colleagues. Employers are the key characteristics of excellent credibility, respect and fairness of management, as well as the pride and team spirit among employees. Supported on this basis and advises the Great Place to Work ® Institute enterprises in the systematic creation of a high-quality, attractive workplace culture and is currently identified in over 40 countries worldwide regularly Best Employer lists.

The German Great Place to Work ® Institute carried out annually since 2002, the benchmark study, “Germany’s Best Employers” and through since 2006 “Best Workplaces”. The institute also offers individual consulting and training events.Legal representative of the Great Place to Work ® Institute Germany is the GPW Germany GmbH based in Cologne.

More Info: www.greatplacetowork.de

About Gameforge:

Gameforge is the largest independent provider of online games. The Karlsruhe-based company offers 18 games in 50 languages, including Metin2, the largest massively multiplayer online game in Europe. Also in Gameforge portfolio are well-known games like OGame, Ikariam, Guild 1400, or 4Story Gladiatus. The Gameforge MMOGAME.COM portal integrates all Gameforge games in a comprehensive community network. Gameforge has received numerous awards including the ‘Technology Pioneer 2009′ by the World Economic Forum and the ‘Entrepreneur of the Year 2008′. Ikariam won the German Game of 2009 award in the category ‘Best Browser Game’. The German Developer Award 1400 guild chose the best German browser game 2009th 2010 Gameforge the ‘TOP JOB was named Employer of the Year’. In addition, the Great Place to Work ® Institute Germany awarded Gameforge out as one of the best employers 2010th

Source: gameforge.de

Startup partners with market leader for online games, gives 85 million players free access to virtual goods

Berlin, 20 August 2009: Just a short time after its market launch, SponsorPay GmbH’s innovative payment system is already reaching millions of online gamers around the world. Gamers are thrilled by the opportunity to receive virtual goods and items for free by accepting an offer from one of SponsorPays 1,000 advertising partners. And the industry is swiftly embracing the Berlin-based company’s ground-breaking approach: SponsorPay proudly presents its newest client, Gameforge, the biggest publisher of browser and client-based MMOGs worldwide.

Free access to online content that usually has to be paid for. This is made possible with the new payment method provided by Berlin-based SponsorPay GmbH. “Instead of paying with real euros a player can now complete one of our advertising offers to purchase, for instance, a virtual item for a computer game”, comments Jan Beckers, Managing Director and co-founder
of SponsorPay. “In return, he’ll receive the virtual good for free.”

But not only gamers benefit from the new system. For publishers of online games, it works as an effective tool to raise revenues and increase their reach. Previously many players did not access premium content, being unwilling to pay for it. The possibility to receive it for free increases the games attractiveness and player activity. And the game publisher is paid a commission by the advertiser for each completed offer and thereby receives his real euros.

These arguments now have convinced one of the most important companies of the digital entertainment industry as well. “Our new customer Gameforge is one of the leading independent providers of browser and client-based online games”, Jan Beckers comments. “This cooperation means a boost in reach for our advertising partners in Europe who now have access to an additional 85 million registered users.” And Klaas Kersting, Managing Director of Gameforge, is sure to have entered a successful cooperation with SponsorPay: “As we are pursuing a long-term growth strategy, which is based on high consumer satisfaction, we are putting a high value on the transparency of advertising offers. With SponsorPay, we are happy to have found a partner who shares our philosophy completely and already serves a large portion of our markets in Europe.”

It started out as a test universe giving 5,000 users a peek into the new OGame (one of the most popular mmo games), complete with video trailer, graphic interfaces and an improved menu structure. The redesign offers the player much easier navigation, improved flight-time indicators and buddy requests, a professional notification system, tech-trees, a newly structured fleet dispatch system and the actualization of raw materials production in real time. The redesign also opens up new possibilities: for example, at the time of colonization players can take resources with; colonization is always possible from the galaxy view and all standard fleets are limited to twelve units. As with all test universes, there is an internal check system in place to work out any bugs that may appear. Despite the new version of OGame, there are no changes to the existing game cycle. Gameforge CEO Klaas Kersting explains: “Our developers have been working on the reconfiguration of OGame for a long time. We are thanking our players for their many years of loyalty. Beyond this redesign, we will of course continue with improvements and further development of the game.” I cant wait for the new ogame to fully update, it will defiantly bring in new players and excitement to the game, especially for veteran ogame players as myself.

You probably play Ogame for a while or maybe you just started. But do you know the Ogame Story? Read the ogame history, it will give you more understanding of Ogame, which inturn will make you a better ogame player.

This is the story of a species, a race – its our race, the humans.

Interestingly enough the story has not yet happened, but it should still be told. Once in a time you will find that time runs in parallel, that everything that was in the past, forms the present as well as the present is the basis for the future. There has been found a way to visit the past without altering the future. Because one can only alter the future when living it for oneself. This might be hard to understand, but its true. Only when you know that something has happened, you can change it, because it then is part of one`s own past. You will simply disappear from that point on, no changes will take place, because this is already the past.. your past.

It began in the year 2250 – the year `alpha` – when the first man took the risk of an interstellar flight of more than three minutes and thus farther than any probe had gone before. It was a new kind of engine called impulse engine, which allowed mankind to travel at the speed of light. Yes there were earlier space flights, but those were limited, a mere glimpse into space compared to the later achievements. But mankind`s natural impulse for new adventures continued to push the development further and thus prolonging the space flights little by little over the years.

Modern engines were using highly energetic deuterium fuel allowing them to travel from galaxy to galaxy in relatively short amounts of time. Unfortunately, this deuterium was very rare, on earth only 0.015% of all water was in the form of this heavy isotope. Later, even the best deuterium wasn`t good enough anymore, and a new scientific debate was born, discussing over new ways to generate an even better fuel than deuterium itself already was. Based on a well known theory, it was believed to be possible to combine deuterium with a mysterious gas emitted by a quasar`s explosion. The quantum-chemical reaction with this mixture would set free huge amounts of energy, so much more that ships could travel faster and faster. Scientist Fred Terrane put his hands together and started to design an engine based on the above theory. Despite the criticism from almost every scientific side, the new propulsion engine finally showed the theory to work – although based on the current level of scientific knowledge, it shouldn`t have to. In real-world applications the new machinery proved to live up to its promises and cultures all around were able to head for outer space even more easily and even faster.

There was well enough space and places to colonize and so peace and prosperity quickly spread in the universe and remained so for many decades. Ever more new cultures were discovered and also created and life spread into every corner of space. The Universe was light and peaceful.

But it was the quiet before the storm…

Even after this prosperous period, new and faster technologies for propulsion systems were investigated. Based on old theories and eventually combined with the eager of young student, a completely revolutionary propulsion technology was created that put everything away known so far… The Hyper-space engine technology. Basically a hyper-dimensional bubble being in the fourth and the fifth dimensions yet isolating its innards from these influences and obeying the laws of the four-dimensional space. There is a narrow field of vision on the galaxy in direction of movement. Using this outstanding Engine technology, explorers could go even further into the deep space and colonization took place much faster due to decreased travel times. Again, a new era was entered, the development speed increased again and many new worlds were discovered. Diplomacy was big in these times and there were not many conflicts between races. Until an previously unknown chemical element named Xentronium was discovered on a some people`s colony.

The war should begin soon…

This chemical element was extremely rare to find, and during the first years after its discovery, only 1.5 micrograms could be harvested. Because it had been found on terran ground, only laboratories of the terrans would be able to investigate on this new element. Xentronium was believed to have the power of 10`000 terran suns per microgram! Once this knowledge spread across the universe, envy and ill will arose from the dark and caused conflicts among the nations which sadly enough ended in a war. Quickly two parties were established, those to the terran fraction and those against the terrans. It was Nostradamus who once saw that the war would last for 150 years, but reality proved him wrong as the war wasted more than 300 years. Thousands and thousands of nations were drawn apart, fell or completely disappeared of annihilation.The side of the enemies to the terran federation started to use some ultimate weapon by the name “omega bomb”. As the name already suggests, usage of this bomb wipes out entire parts of a galaxy, freeing it from any civilization. Hundreds of years after the new time system and the year alpha was established, the universe was faced with the most dangerous and most deadly weapons ever created, solarsystem after solarsystem was destroyed and literally removed. Calculations were conducted to predict the outcome: Only a mere 24 years after the first omega bomb was dropped, known space within the universe would be wiped out leaving lifeless space behind…

Only few were able to survive, and even lesser were able to flee through wormholes and make their way out into new areas of the universe – but it was a way of no return to them.

A new life

With great relief the people found themselves in an entirely different universe where they had never been before.. interestingly enough, they only found a single planet in the entire area and as far as they were able to see…
They dared to settle on this peace of universal driftwood and encountered quite a strange life-form, a nation to the name “legorians”. The visitors were treated well, and the legorians had a similar technical knowledge. Eventually, the legorians agreed to let the strangers settle in the near environment of the legorian`s inhabited world. However there were two conditions: Every nation, every race, would only colonize 9 planets, so that others would also get the change to settle for a new civilization after those long conflicts and their escape. The second condition was to create a senate on the homeworld of every rising empire allowing the people to debate and talk. Of course the nations and their representatives agreed thankfully and even established trading associations and guarding troops to ensure peace and fairness. A new civilization arose…

You might be asking by now, why we wanted to tell you this story. The answer is very simple, it is for you come with us to build the future! Follow us, and see what YOU can do with a nation that is awaits a new emperor desperately ready to grow and succeed! You will have to put much work into this task, and the times wont always be peaceful, but it is up to you, to take part in this part of the universe and save your nation a respected seat among all the empires. Follow us through this time portal, and enjoy this world full of new things and an big future. It might be hard from time to time, it might be easy now and then, but your will and your power could create a powerful and prosperous nation. I will leave you now… hoping you would join us… yet its your decision… Dare it!

Source: ogame.org