- Omerta (video game)
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Omerta 
URL http://www.barafranca.com Slogan The world's biggest mafia game Commercial? Yes Type of site Browser game Registration Required Available language(s) English, Dutch, Portuguese, Turkish, German, French, Scandinavian Content license Closed Source Owner Omerta Game Limited Created by Moritz Daan Launched 26 September 2003 Alexa rank 86,309 Revenue Unknown Current status Active Omerta is a browser-based text MMORPG and has been running since 2003. In this game the player is a gangster in the 1930s. Players rank up by stealing cars, committing crimes, breaking people out of prison and dealing alcohol and narcotics.
Contents
History
Omerta went public on 26 September 2003 with the first version, now known as Omerta 1.0. It was originally written by Moritz Daan as an amateur project from his home town Groningen.[1]
In three months the game had around 3000 active players with an average of 150 online at all times and peaks up to 500. During the 5 year run of Omerta, there have been about 3.5 million unique registrations across all versions.[2]
After the initial growth, Steve Biddick purchased a majority of the shares in mid 2004, and formed Omerta Game Limited making him the CEO of Omerta Game Ltd. The company moved from Groningen in The Netherlands to Hull in the United Kingdom where it currently resides.[3]
The initial version of the game, 1.0, was not stable enough and it was too easy to cheat. The game was reset in January 2004 to version 2.0. Version 2.0 was the first version to introduce Captchas as a meants to counter cheaters. With the reset to version 2.0, the game was also moved from shared hosting to a dedicated server in order to deal with the increase in number of players.
In July 2004, version 2.0 reached its end of life as the game was slow and unstable. The source code was reviewed and partially rewritten to accommodate more players and a click limit was introduced. New servers were rent to run the new game and it was relaunched during the same month as version 2.1.
In July 2005, Omerta 2.2 was launched. After this, the game was upgraded and reset roughly every six months, usually increasing the minor version. Major new features were introduced in version 2.4, like Mega Organized Crimes and a new kill algorithm. in Juli 2009 the last version was released under the version 3.0
In January 2008 Omerta moved to a new service provider and currently has about 20 servers running the FreeBSD operating system.[4]
In July 2009 version 3.0 of Omerta was released, and is currently the active version on Omerta, in the first month after the release more than 100 000 players registered for this version.[5]
Gameplay
Omerta is a strategic role playing game where you perform criminal activities to gain money and experience, together with other people families are formed which have power struggles to become the dominant family in the game. one of the most important assets is the kill function where you can kill other players to gain money or products. by playing the game you can rank up in levels both ingame as in the family to become the don of a family
Business model
Whilst Omerta is free to play game,[3] it has no banners or other advertisements and no paid functions that would else limit the game play. Instead, Omerta works on basis of a clicklimit. With the clicklimit active a player can only request eleven webpages per minute. A player may purchase a code that raises the clicklimit to 40 webpages a minute. A second code can also be activated allowing more storage in a player's inbox, and a bigger profile. Codes can be purchased via mobile phone by text message or using the game's auction tool.
References
- ^ "Omerta" (Press release). Newswire Today. 2009-06-13. http://www.newswiretoday.com/news/52248/. Retrieved 2009-10-16.
- ^ "Omerta" (Press release). gamesindustry.biz. 2009-06-01. http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/omerta-1930s-themed-gangster-mmorpg-launches-version-3. Retrieved 2009-10-16.
- ^ a b "The New Version of Leading Online Gangster Game, Omerta Is Now Live" (Press release). gamershell.com. 2009-07-09. http://www.gamershell.com/companies/omerta_game_limited/624364.html. Retrieved 2009-10-16.
- ^ Interview with the creators of Omerta "[1]". Casual Gaming
- ^ "Omerta Re-launched!" (Press release). Massive Online Gamer. August 28, 2009. http://www.massiveonlinegamer.com/news/announcements/194-omerta. Retrieved 2009-10-16.
External links
Categories:- 2003 video games
- Browser-based games
- Massively multiplayer online role-playing games
- Organized crime video games
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