An
online game is a game played over some forms of
computer networkComputer networking is the engineering discipline concerned with communication between computer systems or devices. Networking, routers, routing protocols, and networking over the public Internet have their specifications defined in documents called RFCs...
. At the present, this almost always means the
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
or equivalent technology; but games have always used whatever technology was current:
modemModem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
s before the internet, and hard wired
terminalsA computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying data from, a computer or a computing system...
before modems. The expansion of online gaming has reflected the overall expansion of computer networks from small local networks to the Internet and the growth of Internet access itself. Online games can range from simple text based games to games incorporating complex graphics and virtual worlds populated by many players simultaneously. Many online games have associated
online communitiesA virtual community, e-community or online community is a group of people that primarily interact via communication media such as newsletters, telephone, email, internet social network service or instant messages rather than face to face, for social, professional, educational or other purposes. If...
, making online games a form of social activity beyond single player games.
The rising popularity of Flash and
JavaJava is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
led to an Internet revolution where websites could utilize streaming video, audio, and a whole new set of user interactivity. When Microsoft began packaging Flash as a pre-installed component of IE, the Internet began to shift from a data/information spectrum to also offer on-demand entertainment. This revolution paved the way for sites to offer games to web surfers. Most online games like
World of WarcraftWorld of Warcraft, often referred to as WoW, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the fantasy Warcraft universe, which was first introduced by Warcraft: Orcs & Humans in 1994...
,
Final Fantasy XI, also known as Final Fantasy XI Online, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed and published by Square as part of the Final Fantasy series. It was released in Japan on Sony's PlayStation 2 on May 16, 2002, and was released for Microsoft's Windows-based personal computers...
and
Lineage IILineage II is a fantasy massive multiplayer online role-playing game for the PC, and a prequel set 150 years before Lineage...
charge a monthly fee to subscribe to their services, while games such as
Guild WarsGuild Wars is an episodic series of multiplayer online role-playing games developed by ArenaNet and published by NCsoft. Although often mistaken for an MMORPG, the developers define it as a CORPG due to notable differences from the MMORPG genre. It provides two main modes of gameplay—a...
offer an alternative no monthly fee scheme. Many other sites relied on advertising revenues from on-site sponsors, while others, like
RuneScapeRuneScape is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game . It is a graphical browser game, operated by Jagex Ltd., implemented on the client-side in Java and incorporating 3D rendering...
, the games made by
Artix EntertainmentArtix Entertainment , is a game development company that works primarily with browser-based RPGs.- History :...
and
Mabinogi, let people play for free while leaving the players the option of paying, unlocking new content for the members.
After the
dot-com bubbleThe "dot-com bubble" was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1998–2001 during which stock markets in Western nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more recent Internet sector and related fields...
burst in 2001, many sites solely relying on advertising revenue dollars faced extreme adversity. Despite the decreasing profitability of online gaming websites, some sites have survived the fluctuating ad market by offsetting the advertising revenue loss by using the content as a cross-promotion tool for driving web visitors to other websites that the company owns.
Definition
"Online gaming is a technology rather than a genre; a mechanism for connecting players together rather than a particular pattern of gameplay." Online games are played over some form of
computer networkComputer networking is the engineering discipline concerned with communication between computer systems or devices. Networking, routers, routing protocols, and networking over the public Internet have their specifications defined in documents called RFCs...
, now typically on the
InternetThe Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standardized Internet Protocol Suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. One advantage of online games is the ability to connect to multiplayer games, although single-player online games are quite common as well.
First-person shooter games
During the 1990s, online games started to move from a wide variety of
LANA local area network is a computer network covering a small physical area, like a home, office, or small group of buildings, such as a school, or an airport...
protocols (such as
IPXInternetwork Packet Exchange is the OSI-model Network layer protocol in the IPX/SPX protocol stack.The IPX/SPX protocol stack is supported by Novell's NetWare network operating system. Because of Netware's popularity through the late 1980s into the mid 1990s, IPX became a popular internetworking...
) and onto the Internet using the
TCP/IPThe Internet Protocol Suite is the set of communications protocols used for the Internet and other similar networks. It is named from two of the most important protocols in it: the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol , which were the first two networking protocols defined in...
protocol.
Doom popularized the concept of
deathmatchDeathmatch is a widely-used gameplay mode integrated into many shooter and real-time strategy computer games. The goal of a deathmatch game is to kill as many other players as possible until a certain condition or limit is reached, commonly being a frag limit or time limit...
, where multiple players battle each other head-to-head, as a new form of online game. Since Doom, many first-person shooter games contain online components to allow deathmatch or arena style play.
Real-time strategy games
Early
real-time strategyReal-time strategy games are a genre of computer wargames which do not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
games often allowed multiplayer play over a modem or local network. As the Internet started to grow during the 1990s, software was developed that would allow players to tunnel the LAN protocols used by the games over the Internet. By the late 1990s, most RTS games had native Internet support, allowing players from all over the globe to play with each other. Services were created to allow players to be automatically matched against another player wishing to play or lobbies were formed where people could meet in so called game rooms. An example was the MSN Gaming Zone where online game communities were formed by active players for games, such as
Age of EmpiresAge of Empires , is a history-based real-time strategy computer game released in 1997. Developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft, the game uses the Genie, a 2D sprite based game engine...
and
Microsoft AntsMicrosoft Ants is a free multiplayer strategy game for 2-4 players on the Microsoft Gaming Zone. The objective of the game is to get the most points by eating or stealing food, and making use of the various powerups available...
.
Cross-platform online play
As consoles are becoming more like computers, online gameplay is expanding. The first online game console was the
Super FamicomThe Super Nintendo Entertainment System or Super NES is a 16-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia , and South America between 1990 and 1993. In Japan and Southeast Asia, the system is called the , or SFC for short...
, which offered an online service with the
SatellaviewThe was a satellite modem add-on for Nintendo's Super Famicom system in Japan released in 1995. It retailed for ¥18,000 .The Satellaview system was developed and released by Nintendo to receive signals broadcast from satellite TV station WOWOW's satellite radio subsidiary, St.GIGA...
. This service was however offered only in Japan. Once online games started crowding the market, open source networks, such as the PlayStation 2, Dreamcast, Xbox and
Nintendo GameCubeThe is Nintendo's fourth home video game console with Wii being fifth, and is part of the sixth generation console era. It is the successor to the Nintendo 64 and predecessor to Nintendo's Wii....
took advantage of online functionality with its PC game counterpart. Games such as
Phantasy Star OnlinePhantasy Star Online is an online RPG title, originally released for Dreamcast in 2000, bundled with a demo of Sonic Adventure 2. Another edition, entitled Phantasy Star Online ver.2, was released for the Dreamcast the following year...
have private servers that function on multiple consoles. Dreamcast, PC,
MacintoshThe Macintosh, or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced on January 24 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a graphical user interface rather than a...
and GameCube players are able to share one server. Earlier games, like
4x4 Evolution,
Quake III and
Need for Speed: Underground also have a similar function with consoles able to interact with PC users using the same server. Usually, a company like Electronic Arts or Sega runs the servers until it becomes inactive, in which private servers with their own
DNSThe Domain Name System is a hierarchical naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participants...
number can function. This form of open source networking has a small advantage over the new generation of Sony and Microsoft consoles which customize their servers to the consumer.
Browser games
As the
World Wide WebThe World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. With a web browser, one can view Web pages that may contain text, images, videos, and other multimedia and navigate between them using hyperlinks...
developed and browsers became more sophisticated, people started creating
browser gameA browser game is a video game that is played on a web browser. It is distinct from other video and computer games in that it typically doesn't require any client-side software to be installed, apart from the web browser...
s that used a
web browserA web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
as a client. Simple single player games were made that could be played using a web browser via
HTMLHTML, which stands for Hyper Text Markup Language, is the predominant markup language for web pages. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists etc as well as for links, quotes, and other items. It allows images...
and
HTML scripting- HTML Series :The W3C HTML standard includes support for client-side scripting.It defines how locally executable scripts may be used in a web page.A particular client-side application, such as a web browser, may support several script languages....
technologies (most commonly
JavaScriptJavaScript is an object-oriented scripting language used to enable programmatic access to objects within both the client application and other applications. It is primarily used in the form of client-side JavaScript, implemented as an integrated component of the web browser, allowing the...
,
ASPActive Server Pages , also known as Classic ASP or ASP Classic, was Microsoft's first server-side script engine for dynamically-generated web pages...
,
PHPPHP, or PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, is a widely used, general-purpose scripting language that was originally designed for web development, to produce dynamic web pages. It can be embedded into HTML and generally runs on a web server, which needs to be configured to process PHP code and create web...
and
MySQLMySQL is a relational database management system which has more than 6 million installations. MySQL stands for "My Structured Query Language". The program runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases...
). More complicated games such as
Legend of Empires would contact a
web serverThe term web server or webserver can mean one of two things:# A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients , and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are web pages such as HTML documents and linked objects .# A computer that...
to allow a multiplayer gaming environment.
The development of web-based graphics technologies such as Flash and
JavaJava is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
allowed browser games to become more complex. These games, also known by their related technology as "
Flash gamesA browser game is a video game that is played on a web browser. It is distinct from other video and computer games in that it typically doesn't require any client-side software to be installed, apart from the web browser...
" or "Java games", became increasingly popular. Many games originally released in the 1980s, such as
Pac-Manis an arcade game developed by Namco and licensed for distribution in the U.S. by Midway, first released in Japan on May 22, 1980. Immensely popular in the United States from its original release to the present day, Pac-Man is universally considered as one of the classics of the medium, virtually...
and
FroggerFrogger is an arcade game introduced in 1981. It was developed by Konami, and licensed for worldwide distribution by Sega/Gremlin. The game is regarded as a classic and was noted for its novel gameplay and theme. Frogger is still popular and versions can be found on many Internet game sites.This...
, were recreated as games played using the Flash plugin on a webpage. Most browser games have limited multiplayer play, often being single player games with a high score list shared amongst all players.
Browser-based pet games are also very popular amongst the younger generation of online gamers. These games range from gigantic games with millions of users, such as
NeopetsNeopets is a virtual pet website launched by Adam Powell and Donna Williams on 15 November 1999. Two years after the web site was launched, Adam Powell and Donna Williams sold a majority share to a consortium of investors led by Doug Dohring. On 20 June 2005, Viacom bought Neopets, Inc...
, to smaller and more community-based pet games.
More recent browser-based games use web technologies like
AjaxAJAX is a group of interrelated web development techniques used on the client-side to create interactive web applications. With AJAX, web applications can retrieve data from the server asynchronously in the background without interfering with the display and behavior of the existing page...
to make more complicated multiplayer interactions possible.
Massively multiplayer online games (MMOG)
Massively multiplayer online gameA massively multiplayer online game is a video game which is capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. By necessity, they are played on the Internet, and feature at least one persistent world. They are, however, not necessarily games played on personal computers...
s were made possible with the growth of
broadband Internet accessBroadband Internet access, often shortened to just broadband, is a high data rate Internet access—typically contrasted with dial-up access using a 56k modem....
in many developed countries, using the Internet to allow hundreds of thousands of players to play the same game together. Many different styles of massively multiplayer games are available, such as:
- MMORPG
Massively multiplayer online role-playing game is a genre of computer role-playing games in which a very large number of players interact with one another within a virtual game world....
(Massively multiplayer online role-playing gameA role-playing game is a game in which the participants assume the roles of fictional characters. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines...
)
- MMORTS (Massively multiplayer online real-time strategy
Real-time strategy games are a genre of computer wargames which do not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
)
- MMOFPS (Massively multiplayer online first-person shooter
First-person shooter is a video game genre which centers the gameplay around gun- and projectile weapon-based combat through the first person perspective; i.e., the player experiences the action through the eyes of a protagonist. Generally speaking, the first-person shooter shares common traits...
)
- MMOSG (Massively multiplayer online social game)
Online game governance
With growing numbers of players, it becomes more difficult to maintain social order in online games due to the large amounts of information and freedom that are given to the players. Even though there are many online rules that are already established, wherever there are people, there are conflicts.
More specifically, the advancement of technology allows online games to imitate the complex ecological, sociological, economical, and political dynamics of
real lifeReal life is a term that has different meanings, depending on the context in which it is used, but generally denotes a broader notion of reality than what would be assumed in the current context.-Usage online and in fiction:...
societies. Unpredictable societal dynamics such as hygiene, safety, and pollution require the society to form some type of organized regulation. Andrew Barry wrote, "Regulation is often intended to protect and enhance the health and security of firms, cities and individuals." Like societies in real life, online games can warrant societal complexities and need some type of organized governance.
Popular online games are commonly bound by an End User License Agreement (EULA), which establishes a limited yet definitive social order deemed necessary by the creators of the game. The consequences of breaking the agreement vary according to the contract; however range significantly from warnings to termination, such as in the 3D immersive world
Second LifeSecond Life is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23, 2003, and is accessible via the Internet. A free client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars...
where a breach of contract will append the player warnings, suspension and termination depending on the offense. Enforcing the EULA is difficult, due to high economic costs of human intervention and low returns back to the firm. Only in large scale games is it profitable for the firm to enforce its EULA.
Edward CastronovaEdward Castronova is Associate Professor of Telecommunications at Indiana University Bloomington as of fall 2004, previously Associate Professor of Economics in the College of Business and Economics at California State University, Fullerton. He obtained a BS in International Affairs from Georgetown...
writes that "there are issues of ownership and governance that wrinkle the affairs of state significantly". He has divided the online governance into "
good governanceGood governance is a indeterminate term used in development literature to describe how public institutions conduct public affairs and manage public resources in order to guarantee the realization of human rights. Governance describes the process of decision-making and the process by which decisions...
" and "strange governance". Whereas people actually want to have governance but strangely, democracy still cannot be found in synthetic world. Castronova also mentions that synthetic worlds are good ways to test for government and management.