1998 to September 24, 2007
Versions 1.0 to 3.4
iPoker, The Ultimate Poker Simulation™. Because there’s more to life than Texas Hold ’em.
iPoker, The Utimate Poker Simulation upped the ante from its PowerPOKER roots. I rewrote the game in C++ over three months and boosted the library up to 101 poker game files. I tuned it to run on the first iMac and released iPoker in 1998 via my website. I charged $25 for an Activation Code and $10 for major upgrades. This was back when app downloads were the new hotness, and console games were selling for $60. I had to learn some .NET programming to write my own server application that processed PayPal payments and issued Activation Codes.
This was a good deal, considering I barely earned 8% of net revenue on my PowerPOKER publishing deal with Electronic Arts. My overhead on iPoker was only the 2.7% fee I had to give PayPal and a few pennies paid to Google Ads per click, before they inexplicably decided to ban any ads related to poker. Fast-forward to today where Apple’s App Store takes a whopping 30% cut, does nothing but obstruct you and only gives visibility to companies who can drive traffic with large marketing budgets. But far worse, where I once had a relationship with many of my customers via email, the App Store provided only a black hole.
I had tried to register the trademark iPoker in 1999 but according to the USPTO, a little company named after some kind of fruit apparently had dibs on the lowercase “i” prefix. I tried again and failed again. The “iPoker Network” later came along and stole my unprotected trademark and caused some confusion even to this day.
iPoker did provide one memorable customer support story. An irate gentleman wrote to me complaining that iPoker’s graphics were “all blurry” on his Mac. I asked him if he could be more specific, but instead I he offered an apology: “I’m very sorry, but my wife reminds me that I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses last night!”
iPoker won a few random awards on the Internet and I was even interviewed by Seattle Magazine. I must have been pretty boring though, because I never saw the published article!
iPoker™ is trademarked and copyrighted © 1998 by Scenario Software. All rights reserved.