MasterCrimeZ

MasterCrimeZ was a text-based multiplayer browser game developed by Jan_Wilmake in 2006 when he was twelve years old. Built in PHP, the game reached over 500 daily active users at its peak and generated revenues exceeding €2,000 per month through microtransactions and advertising.

Origins

Wilmake created MasterCrimeZ as a self-taught programming project while growing up near Groningen, Netherlands. The game represented his first significant software success and demonstrated an early aptitude for both programming and product development.

Gameplay

MasterCrimeZ was a text-based multiplayer game where players could:

• Create criminal organizations
• Engage in virtual criminal activities
• Compete with other players
• Build virtual empires

The interface was entirely browser-based, using PHP for server-side logic and basic HTML for the frontend — typical of early 2000s web games.

Technical Achievement

For a twelve-year-old developer in 2006, MasterCrimeZ represented several notable technical accomplishments:

• User authentication system — managing thousands of user accounts
• Real-time multiplayer mechanics — coordinating player interactions
• Revenue systems — implementing payment processing for in-game purchases
• Server management — hosting and scaling the game infrastructure

Impact on Career

MasterCrimeZ served as an important formative experience for Wilmake:

• Early entrepreneurship — managing a profitable software product as a teenager
• Technical foundation — developing skills in PHP, MySQL, and web infrastructure
• User acquisition — learning to grow and retain an active user base
• Monetization — understanding how to generate revenue from software

The success of MasterCrimeZ demonstrated that software development could be both creatively fulfilling and financially viable, setting the stage for Wilmake's later career in software development and entrepreneurship.

Later References

Wilmake has referenced MasterCrimeZ in discussions about:

• Early programming education — the value of learning through ambitious projects
• Bootstrapped entrepreneurship — starting with minimal resources
• Youth software development — what's possible for young programmers with access to technology

See Also

• Jan_Wilmake
• Code_From_Anywhere
• Communify