Once upon a time...

Once upon a time, sometime early 2003, a couple of e-sport visionaries met to talk about the future of the industry. They had a spectacular idea of creating an online arena for e-sport games, a common ground where people could meet - and compete. With their ideas on paper they set out to find someone who could make their dreams become reality.

They appointed old-school internet startup king Erik as CEO. After some searching they found two fresh and savvy first-year university students 70 kilometers north of Stockholm: in the university capital of Uppsala. Oskar and Håkan, as they still are called, had already built a couple of Sweden's first gaming communities, and a unique framework they could base the project on.

It took them 9 months, 7 days a week, somewhere around 16 hours a day, but, finally they reached their goal: a revolutionary online gaming experience. It was launched all over Sweden. Created in the their boy rooms.

They called it E-Sport Common Platform (ECP), and the company E-Sport Network AB (ESN). Everything was set to go.

In the upcoming months, Oskar and Håkan were joined by Jonas, a high-school classmate. Jonas had during his high-school years been working with a state of the art C++ real-time web push server, and several homebrewn VOIP systems. His talent and experience took the arena concept even further. Years before the buzz about comet technology and the Facebook chat, the guys had a website with real-time interaction and an integrated VOIP system. They soon realized that the potenial might just be a lot bigger than e-sports.

It was time for the first official ESN office. With the last round of funding, they got a hold of a filthy student flat somewhere in central Uppsala. At first, they were 4 guys in a 3 room appartment. Everything was fine, and spacy. After the success with the arena concept, ESN got its first client: Gamelio. The mission? To combine betting with e-sports. Tobias joined short thereafter, and Carl too. Johan turned up, and Mattias. And Filip, and Markus T. The team grew fast, and after 8 months of heavy-lifting the betting site was released. It was great. ESN soon outgrew the student flat, having 2-3 guys in a 5 squaremeter room, hosting the servers in a closet with neigbours constantly asking why they were vacuuming the appartment 16 hours a day.

So ESN moved, to a proper office. It had yellow walls with green symbols on it, a weird collection of second hand furniture, a slightly tilted kitchen. And they had an idea: they called it ESN Core. They wanted to build an API engine for all the gaming and community needs a developer might have. It was a great idea. With the mystified Core, they soon signed 2 new clients: ahaBingo and onGOLF. It was an explosion. With 3 ongoing projects and ESN Core in the works it was time to up the team once again. So Ph.D. Marcus, Markus K, Erik T, Robert, Ronnie and Jonatan joined.

After a year, ESN Core was live in all of ESN's projects. It worked. They had a integration platform for back-end community features, game server handling and VOIP. It was a kick-ass solution, but something was missing. Maybe the most important part of ESN's web productions: the real-time features and revolutionary user experience. So the team sat down again. They discussed what they've done so far. After weeks of thinking, and a summer vacation, they finally understood what they needed to do.

They redefined the scope of the platform. Building on top of the ESN Core API solution, they decided to take on a full-blown web framework. But with 2 very important goals: they wanted to include a revolutionary real-time interface and focus on intense scaling. The arena concept the guys built years before had grown to nearly half a million users and there had been many lessons learnt down the road.

They kept the name Core for the API part of the system, and introduced ESN Planet for the main product. Micke was hired, and Art Director Martin joined shortly thereafter. He created a fantastic set of brands and logos for the Planet series. And then, the work began.

With a new broader goal the guys packed their bags and left the yellow office. Today they have an official Rock Band room, about 12 or so Fatboy's, proper furniture, a non-tilted kitchen, 2 fridges full of food, a fancy late night bed room, a zillion whiteboards and a balcony for the summer barbecues. And, soon, they'll officially be releasing ESN Planet, along with announcing 3 new projects they've been working on for the last couple of months.

A lot has happened since those e-sport visionaries had a meeting back in 2003. And a lot more will.