David Crane

In 1995 @kitchengarry and I set out to use the Internet as the next 'game console'. We created Skyworks Technologies, and in the process found that the only way to make high-quality online gaming economically viable was to use advertising sponsors to support the development.

That was a time for pioneering online content, and in that way very much like the earliest days of television when the content for TV was directly paid for by sponsors (Colgate, Palmolive, Lucky Strike, etc.)

One of our first and biggest sponsors was the Lifesavers Candy Company and we created The Candystand, a destination site for free games. At the time there was no such thing as an 'Advergame.'

That term was coined after the creation of The Candystand when the advertising media started to realize how effective games could be at reaching people. (You know you are doing something right when the industry has to come up with a new term to describe it.)

At Skyworks we created hundreds of games, limited only by download speed. At that time fewer than 3% of America had broadband and downloading a game over a modem could take many minutes. We had to be VERY efficient, but we were good at that having made 4K byte Atari games.

One of my biggest disappointments was that unlike boxed games I made in the past, online games come and go, and once taken down cannot be played by the next generation of players. I am surprised you found a way to play BMW X3 Adventure - I thought that game was lost years ago.