Wizard 101: Kingisle's Magic

Wizard 101 is without a doubt one of the most popular MMO games, especially among younger gamers. Todd Coleman the co-creator of Wizard 101' at Kingisle Entertainment spoke to Forbes and told the company's and Wizard 101's story. Wizard 101 has over 25 million registered players and receives 16 million visitors each month. Read on for the magical story of Kingisle and Wiz 101.

Wizard 101: It Has Always Been Magic!

Todd Coleman is the co-creator of free to play MMORPG "Wizard 101" at Kingisle Entertainment. In an interview with Forbes, Coleman told the story of Wizard 101 and himself along with his company Kingisle Entertainment.

The beginning of Kingisle Entertainment's story is quite an interesting one. The company was formed as a result of the acquisition of Coleman's former companies, Wolfpack Studios and Inet Technologies. Wolfpack was a maker of traditional games for hardcore gamers and was later acquired by Ubisoft, which is also the publisher of similar type of games. 

Coleman formed another company right after selling Wolfpack to Ubisoft. Funny enough, the new company Inet Technologies did not remain as his company for too long as he sold it to Tektronics Inc. only some months later.

Every great game has a great story, doesn't it? Coleman apparently had two successful companies and both of them has been acquired by other firms. However, these two incidents were probably the best things happened to him. Following the sales of Wolfpack and Inet, Coleman his partner brainstormed the idea of setting up a new company to make what everyone wasn't making.

Creating unique products is always a good idea. The thing is, as long as it's just an idea, it doesn't help much. What Coleman and Josef Hall did was, to come up with the idea of making a fantasy MMORPG for families. They thought noone was creating anything like that. That's when they knew it was a gold idea!

It wasn't enough for them to believe in it. This reminded me of the TV Show Seinfeld. If you know the show, when Jerry and George had the idea of making something noone else was making, "To Make A Show About NOTHING", they had failed with NBC too. And it was actually a true story, story of how the TV Show Seinfeld was created.

Just like George and Jerry, Hall and Coleman had failed with some publisher who absolutely showed no interest to Wizard 101. They would meet Elie Akilian later the same year, lucky for them and us MMO gamers who like Wizard 101. (Read our Wizard 101 review here->) 

Coleman: "The more we talked about it, the more we liked the idea – and no one (literally no one!) was creating anything like it.  In fact, most people in the industry thought we were crazy…we talked to a number of publishers – practically all of them – and no one was interested. It just seemed too risky."

February 2005, they formed Kingisle Entertainment, three months after meeting Akilian. They all had the same question in their minds. Would people trust them? At the end of the day, they were no Disney and they were going to ask families to trust them! It doesn't sound easy, does it? But then noone thought Blizzard could get so many subscribers with World of Warcraft when everyone was playing Sony's Everquest and they adored Everquest! It could have easily been another MMO that failed.

So it all started when Coleman and his partner Hall sold their former companies and formed Kingisle with Ellie Akilain who believed in their idea of creating a family-friendly fantasy MMORPG. Wizard 101 now has over 25 million registered players and it truly deserves to be where it is right now.

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