1. A simple game model www.slingo.com

2. … Slingo … A combination of slot machines and Bingo was designed and implemented as an on- line game, under the name of Slingo. The game was modeled on an old Mexican five- wheel slot machine, but modified during development to build in features that were best done in software.

3. games are played with ten participants per game, and a “chat” feature was added so that during the game the players could tease or congratulate each other.

4. The chat feature was a big hit, so much so that players developed a distinctive vocabulary that became known as “Slingo Lingo”, thus presaging by years a similar phenomenon amongst cell phone instant messaging systems.

5. The game was refined and tested, and then offered to America On-Line for inclusion in the AOL gaming environment. It was meant to help fill out the AOL offerings by providing a little something for every possible demographic of their membership. The game officially “rolled out” in October of 1996, in a context where, according to the experts, in a best-case scenario, the game might account for perhaps 10,000 hours of AOL connect time per month.

6. A funny thing happened. The game quickly became one of the most popular activities on the AOL site. Within three months the game had reached a level ten times greater than the most ambitious of expectations, accounting for over 100,000 hours per month. And it kept growing.

7. Slingo Factoids As of 8/02, there have been over 2 billion Slingo games played. Slingo hosts almost 2 million unique players each month, with an average of approximately 140,000 total daily hours of game play.

8. Slingo stands as one of the top ten most downloaded games. Slingo ranks 4 th amongst all game publishers based upon unique monthly users, and 7 th (following Microsoft’s 6 online products) in total game plays. The world “Slingo” has been one of the top 5 most accessed keywords on America Online for three straight years.