Pogo Backdoors
Pogo Overview Movie
Older Pogo Pics
Game Release Dates for Pogo
A history of Pogo
Pogo.com is a website, owned by Electronic Arts, that offers a variety of free casual games, from card and board games to puzzle, word, and sports games. The website is free, but a premium subscription-based service called "Club Pogo" also exists. America Online users are allowed to play some premium Club Pogo games without paying any membership fees.
Players can win jackpot prizes and tokens from playing the games on Pogo.com. Tokens can then be exchanged for tickets in Pogo.com's daily, weekly, or monthly prize drawings. Players can place bets of tokens on some games, such as Texas hold 'em poker and High Stakes poker. Cash and merchandise prizes are currently only available to US and Canadian residents, excluding Quebec.
Club Pogo is Pogo.com's premium subscription-based service. Perks to subscribers include: the ability to compete for badges visible in chat rooms, premium badges (animated flash badges), exclusive members-only rooms, no ad interruptions, emoticons, private chat, Pogo Minis (avatars) , fast access, double jackpot spins and over 30 exclusive games.
History of Pogo.com
Pogo.com began life on September 2, 1999 with a handful of games, after existing previously as part of the Total Entertainment Network (TEN). Pogo grew quickly, eventually outpacing its competition to become the "stickiest games site on the Internet". Although the site was wildly popular by late 2000, the Dot-Com bubble was bursting for most startup companies, and cash was very tight. Pogo.com entered into a deal to be purchased by the (then) famous web portal Excite @ Home, however the terms of the deal Excite struck ended up being very poor for them by the time the year 2001 rolled around (Pogo would have ended up owning about 1/3 of Excite based on the terms of the deal). Excite then terminated that deal, leaving Pogo.com in the lurch.
In March 2001, Electronic Arts purchased Pogo.com for approximately $50 million, and began wrapping it into their own casual games offering. EA had previously struck a long-term deal with America Online to be the provider of games for the AOL games channel, but were having difficulty with the integration. Using engineers from both EA and Pogo.com, EA was able to meet its obligation to AOL and the service was launched in the fall of 2001
Retired Games
* Buckaroo Blackjack
* Word Riot
* Triviatron
* Hammerhead Pool
* Highland Golf
* Jackpot Bingo
* Primetime Pitch
Notes
1. Carnival Blackjack replaced Buckaroo Blackjack on August 28, 2006
Additiona notes:
Pogo was formed when Total Entertainment Network (TEN.net) was renamed to Pogo. (Wall Street Journal, October 1999: http://www.costik.com/pogo.html)
September 1999 – Pogo.com offered family-oriented games such as popular card games and board games like spades and backgammon
November, 1999 – Electronic Arts (EA) and AOL create an alliance for EA to provide exclusive games to AOL subscribers to provide EA’s games (EA's press release: http://www.info.ea.com/news/pr/pr64.doc)
February, 2001 – EA Acquired Pogo.com (EA's press release: http://www.info.ea.com/news/pr/pr15.doc)
July, 2003 – Club Pogo Launched with the very first Club Pogo weekly challenge beginning July 11. http://www.info.ea.com/news/pr/pr385.doc
November, 2004 – Electronic Arts raises over $38,000 through Pogo.com's Club Pogo Breast Cancer Awareness Events including Race to Join and Tokens for the Ribbon (EA's press release: http://www.info.ea.com/news/pr/pr549.pdf)
November, 2005 – Club Pogo hits 1 million subscribers!! (EA's press release: http://www.info.ea.com/news/pr/pr703.htm)
July 23, 2006 - Club Pogo
Celebrates it's third birthday! All Club Pogo members receive a
special edition celebration badge commemorating this milestone.