AOL began as a short-lived venture called Control Video
Corporation (or CVC), founded by William von Meister. Its sole
product was an online service called Gameline for the Atari 2600
video game console after von Meister's idea of buying music on
demand was rejected by Warner Brothers. (Klein, 2003) Subscribers
bought a modem from the company for $49.95 and paid a one-time $15
setup fee. Gameline permitted subscribers to temporarily download
games and keep track of high scores, at a cost of approximately $1
an hour. In 1983, the company nearly went bankrupt, and an investor
in Control Video, Frank Caufield, had a friend of his, Jim Kimsey,
brought in as a manufacturing consultant. That same year, Steve
Case was hired as a part-time consultant; later on that year, he
joined the company as a full-time marketing employee upon the joint
recommendations of von Meister and Kimsey. Kimsey went on to become
the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the newly renamed Quantum
Computer Services in 1985, after von Meister was quietly dropped
from the company. Case himself rose quickly through the ranks;
Kimsey promoted him to vice-president of marketing not long after
becoming CEO, and later promoted him further to executive
vice-president in 1987. Kimsey soon began to groom Case to ascend
to the rank of CEO, which he did when Kimsey retired in 1991.
Kimsey changed the company's strategy, and in 1985 launched a sort
of mega-BBS for Commodore 64 and 128 computers, originally called
Quantum Link ("Q-Link" for short). In May 1988, Quantum and Apple
launched AppleLink Personal Edition for Apple II and Macintosh
computers. After the two companies parted ways in October 1989,
Quantum changed the service's name to America Online. In August
1988, Quantum launched PC Link, a service for IBM-compatible PCs
developed in a joint venture with the Tandy Corporation. Under
Case's guidance, AOL committed to including online games in its mix
of products even when it was only a Commodore 64 service. In the
early years of AOL the company introduced many innovative online
interactive titles and games, including: * Graphical chat
environments Habitat (1986-1988) and Club Caribe (1988) from
LucasArts, * The first online interactive fiction series
QuantumLink Serial by Tracy Reed (1988), * Quantum Space, the first
fully automated Play by email game (1989-1991), * The original
Dungeons and Dragons title Neverwinter Nights from Stormfront
Studios (1991-1997), the first Massively Multiplayer Online Role
Playing Game (MMORPG) to depict the adventure with graphics instead
of text (1991) and * The first chat room-based text role-playing
game Black Bayou (1996-2004), a horror role-playing game from
Hecklers Online and ANTAGONIST, Inc. In February 1991 AOL for DOS
was launched using a GeoWorks interface followed a year later by
AOL for Windows. In October 1991, Quantum changed its name to
America Online. These changes coincided with growth in pay-based
BBS services, like Prodigy, CompuServe, and GEnie. AOL discontinued
Q-Link and PC Link in the fall of 1994. Massive growth Case drove
AOL as the online service for people unfamiliar with computers, in
particular contrast to CompuServe, which had long served the
technical community. AOL was the first online service to require
use of proprietary software, rather than a standard terminal
program; as a result it was able to offer a graphical user
interface (GUI) instead of command lines, and was well ahead of the
competition in emphasizing communication among members as a
feature. In particular was the Chat Room (borrowed from IRC), which
allowed a large group of people with similar interests to convene
and hold conversations in real time, including: * Private rooms