Online Gaming Popularity Contest - and The Winner is

When internet first arrived, people anticipated and thought we would find purposes in education and news, but the influence on our daily lives would be small, the opposite is the truth. Internet is a huge resource these days and not only in education and news but it has become extremely big in the world of entertainment. Online gaming is one of those extremely popular internet entertainment forms. If you are not familiar in the world of online gaming this article might give you a quick introduction to the world of online gaming.

Online gaming

Online games are games played over the Internet or an equivalent technology. Online games can range from simple text based games to games that incorporate complex graphics and virtual worlds populated by many players at the same time. Massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPG) are being played all around the world via the internet.

Many of these online games have online communities, which makes the online games also a social activity.

A game for every interest

In the world of online gaming there are so many different kind of games that it doesn't matter what your personal interests are, there will always be a online game that you will like. If you like science fiction, there are too many games to be counted. With fantasy games it is the same thing, the amount is staggering. But there are community games, games for kids, puzzle games, adventures, gambling you name it and it exist. The most popular games from 2007 give a wide variety of online games to choose from.

Top 10 online games (2007)

1. World of Warcraft 8.5 million subscribers. WoW as the biggest MMO in the world.

2. Habbo Hotel 7.5 million active users. Social game MMO popular with teens and growing fast

3. RuneScape 5 million active users. MMORPG

4. Club Penguin 4 million active users. MMO for the kiddies social environments like Habbo Hotel.

5. Webkinz 3.8 million active users.

6. Gaia Online 2 million active users

7. Guild Wars 2 million active users. MMORPG

8. Puzzle Pirates 1.5 million active users

9. Lineage I/II 1 million subscribers MMO

10. Second Life 500,000 active users

Top 10 MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing games):

1. World of Warcraft

2. EVE online

3. Final Fantasy XI

4. City of Heroes / City of Villain

5. Dark Age of Camelot

6. Dungeons & Dragons

7. EverQuest

8. ROSE Online

9. Saga of Ryzom

10. Vanguard:Saga of Heroes

Create your own personality

The great popularity of some online games can be explained by the fact that players can create a character, a new persona for themselves with which they can play a role. Some people find this dangerous and are afraid that players lose control of reality and lose their own personality in the process. In fact role playing doesn't create a variety of split personalities, it is just a very enjoyable distraction from day to day live. And yes, there are people who take online gaming too seriously and even can get addicted but their numbers are minuscule compared to the people who just have found a healthy and enjoyable hobby in playing these games.

Online gaming is extremely popular and will remain popular for a long time, because it has so much variety to it and it is also a way to meet people around the world. In the near future there will be no shortage of persons who enjoy spending time playing such games, and online gaming will continue to grow and grow in popularity.

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Online Games - The Evolution

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.

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