Online Multiplayer Games: Newbie Concept, Pro-Creation
An online multiplayer game is one that a gamer plays while staying connected to the Internet, against or with other Internet players. While playing you can also interact with thousands of other players on the server where the game is hosted. Since these games involve thousands of gamers playing simultaneously with each other in a giant virtual world, they are also called Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs). These were made possible only with the growth of broadband Internet access. [Examples: World of Warcraft, Guild Wars]. In some online multiplayer games you can interact with only a few members with whom you can team up [Examples: America's Army, Counter Strike Source].
Evolution Of Online Multiplayer Games
MMOGs are very big business nowadays though they are a relatively new phenomenon. Their popularity started climbing in the late 1990s when two games - Everquest and Ultima Online - caught on in a big way. First-person shooters such as Quake, Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike and Warcraft 3 are also immensely popular online multiplayer games, but they are not MMOGs. Up to recently, these games were played only on the computer. However, they are catching up fast on consoles too. Final Fantasy XI and Everquest Online Adventures are games that are big hits on video console circuit. Online gaming on mobile phones has begun too, but it has yet to make a mark because there are many technological restrictions as of now.
Variations Of Massively Multiplayer Online Games
Today many different styles of massively multiplayer games are available, such as:
* MMORPG (Massively multiplayer online role-playing games).
* MMORTS (Massively multiplayer online real-time strategy games).
* MMOFPS (Massively multiplayer online first-person shooter games)
As things stand, it is the massively multiplayer games that are driving the online multiplayer game market crazy. Can you imagine that Lineage - a Korean MMORPG - has four million registered users? World of Warcraft, a relatively new entrant, has over six and a half million registered users! And all of these registered users are paying a monthly fee playing these games. Now take into account the fact that an MMOG is played for several months or years together and you can imagine the money power that online multiplayer games have started commanding! This trend is new, but the creators of these games are hardcore professionals who know where the moolah lies in this next-generation game module - the online multiplayer game module.
