The Syndicate® is the most successful Virtual Community in the history of Online Gaming. This month they celebrate their 13th birthday and we wish them all the best! Press Release In Feb 1996, The Syndicate was founded. From those humble beginnings, back when MMOs were just a fledgling idea, we have grown to more than 600 individual, adult, active members spanning gaming worlds with complex and deep relationships with a host of companies. The journey has been long, and at times it has been difficult. We have stubbed our toe a tie or two; learned important lessons from that; and created a virtual community that, while large, is amazingly unified and full of lasting friendships. That has resulted in great stability with virtually no members departing for other organizations. So on this anniversary we are most proud of our thriving, friend focused community and the deep bonds we have formed with each other.
It is hard to believe 13 years have passed. People often say that it seems that time flies by. However, when I think back across those years, my mind is flooded by memories of the massive amount of things that have gone on. So many mountains were climbed and so many victories were shared by all of us that it hardly seems like we could have fit everything into just 13 years. That is the power of having a large, unified, team focused community. Each member of the community does their part to make us successful and the sum of those parts is far greater than we could have achieved individually. So looking back across the 13 years I would instead say "We have achieved far more than I ever dreamed possible and as we look towards the future, we are really just getting started with alot of our visions and plans. We have many more mountains to climb and many more victories to achieve."
One of the key pieces that had to exist in order for our community to grow and thrive were the games themselves and all of their supporting infrastructure like news sites and strategy guides. Gaming is the common passion that has brought CEOs, military men and women, house wives, doctors, IT professionals, fireman, athletes and so many other walks of life, from all over the world, together into one community. It is the common passion that allowed us to look past societal stereotypes and bring people together that otherwise would never have met. It is the passion that helped deep and lasting friendships to form that will live on for many years to come.
So as we celebrate our anniversary, we wanted to take a moment out to say THANK YOU to everyone involved in the industry. Communities such as ours would not be as successful without the mind boggling virtual worlds that continue to pop up all around us. We really appreciate the blood, sweat and tears that go into each one of them.
There are certainly challenges ahead, especially in today's economic climate. The virtual world is not immune from those very real world impacts. That said, we are very excited about the prospects for the future in the online gaming world and to share many more anniversaries with you.
