Now we see thousands of people playing online games such as tetris, ping
pong, mario bros, super mario etc for free but despite its history
dating back to 1970s, for most people online gaming began with the
explosion of Internet in 1993 and with the advent of Doom and Warcraft
sometime in 1994 or 1995. This got further boost with publishers
starting to add Internet connectivity to computer games in 1994-95.
The media, in fact, have themselves been ignorant about online games
history. As far as they are concerned, online gaming just coincidentally
happened when their advertisers started producing Internet-capable
games. But it isn’t so…
Early Years of development
In early 1950’s a college student created a game much like Tic-Tac-Toe
for a class project to be played on dinosaur computers of those days
complete with cathode ray tubes for the screen display. The 1960’s had
MIT students programming a game called “Space war” that could be played
with two people over a primitive network. The late 1960’s brought the
first “real” video games like table tennis and shooter games.
The 70s – the game begins
Serious online gaming began with the first interactive online game
called ADVENT. In fact networked gaming got conceptualized with ADVENT.
Networked gaming had users playing against each other within an online
fantasy world. The first networked game was called Mazewar, a game which
involved networked players traveling through a maze and attempting to
kill one another.
Next came the interpersonal interaction in a multi-player environment.
The first such game was called DUNGEN. DUNGEN had players competing
against one another to complete a series of quests. DUNGEN provided with
new settings and players each time the user logged on.
The late 1970’s saw the start of video game craze with more and more
households getting computer savvy. As a natural corollary, people
started writing their own games for the home computers. These
programming hobbyists traded and sold these home-grown games in local
markets.
Other changes in the 1970’s were home gaming consoles which used game
cartridges. That meant the people could collect games cartridges for one
base unit instead of having bulky game console systems.
The 80s – some pause before the storm
1980’s saw growing craze for the video and computer game craze, but
online gaming wasn’t on the horizon yet. New games with better sound and
graphics were introduced and gained popularity. Pole Position and
Pac-man were two that achieved big popularity. It was during 1980’s when
Nintendo introduced its first gaming system.
The 90s – revolution begins
The 1990’s saw the phenomenal growth in both popularity and technology mostly because of the rise of 3-D and multimedia.
Myst, the intellectual adventure game introduced gaming on the CD-ROM
format. Fancier 3-D graphics hardware made FPS (first person shooter)
games such as Quake possible.
The late 1990’s saw the exponential growth of the Internet, MUDs
(multi-user dungeons) which made online games wildly popular. New and
improved graphical interfaces had people all over the world playing
against each other not only in FPS games but also in real time strategy
games (RTS games) as well as third person games like Grand Theft Auto.
This was also the period when websites started offering online games
such as tetris, ping pong, mario bros, super Mario, and other free
online flash games and non-flash based games free for playing after
registering with them. This really pushed online gaming into the popular
psyche.
The 21st Century – world is just a playground
Early years of the 21st century were dominated by the DVD-CD-ROM. It has
changed the way online games are played. The latest gaming systems such
as Sony’s play station and Microsoft’s X-box have networking
capabilities to enable people play with each other in real time from all
over the world. Exponentially growing broadband internet services have
made playing these online games possible in true sense of the word.
The only drawback to the constantly evolving technology for online games
is that what you buy today might become obsolete by the next year.
Luckily, for the serious gamers, the resale industry for these online
games is huge. This resale industry is just another element to the
ever-changing history of online game.
