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Introduction to Web Games
Online games have been around for a while. They started out years ago before the Internet on terminals, then over modems and now on the Web. The explosion of online gaming is due to the growing amount of people who have access to the Internet. Online games vary from basic text to 3d worlds that allow the ability to play other actual users who are connected to the game. There are also many forums and social networking sites related to online gaming.
Thanks to Flash and also Java now games can use video, animations and music. That gave rise to professional networked software games like World Of Warcraft as well as Final Fantasy XI that are so cool that they can charge a monthly fee. There are equally as awesome professional games like Guild Wars and RuneScape that you can play a limited version of for free. Many game sites are supported financially by selling advertising space. Companies also use game sites as a way to drive traffic to other products.
RuneScape is an online multiplayer game
The Start of Online Gaming
One of the first popular online games was called Maze War and was made by Xerox. Then games were played over a modem on BBS systems. That was back in the 1980s. Most of the early games were based on fantasy kind of like Dungeons & Dragons. Early games also copied board games like chess and Scrabble. Many of these games were actually played by email since Internet connectivity was incredibly expensive back then.
Then in the 1990s shooter games were developed that allowed users to fire at other users in head to head combat. The new TCP/IP Internet protocol allowed that more advanced functionality. The decade also saw many multiplayer strategy games also known as RTS. These games also allowed users to interact with each other real time using Internet technology.
Networking Traditional Games
The next step in networked games was the cross-platform integration of traditional console games like Playstation 2, Dreamcast, and Gamecube. These games all put out a PC version to play over the Internet. Games like these share private servers owned by the publisher or open source community. Phantasy star Online is another example.
Eventually browsers like Internet Explorer became so advanced with the use of client side scripting, that really great games could even be programmed right in the web browser. Also in the 1990s classic games like Pacman and Tetris were rewritten in Flash, Java and Javascript.
Neopets is a popular kids game that has virtual pets
Most recently in the 2000s virtual multiplayer pet games like Neopets and Webkinz have become very, very popular among kids. Also games in this decade have started utilizing a Web technology called AJAX to make unprecedented browser-based interaction possible.
List of Free Games You Can Play
Here is a short list of free games you can download or play online.
Aleph One, Battle for Wesnoth, Blob Wars, BZFlag, Crack Attack!, Crimson Fields, Crossfire, Darwinbots, Deliantra, Dnafight, Enigma, FlightGear, Freeciv, FreeCol, FreeDoom, FreeOrion, Frets on Fire, Frozen Bubble, Globulation, GLtron, GNU Chess, GNU Go, Grand Theft Auto, Lincity, Liquid War, MegaMek, Moria, NetHack, Netrek, NexuizNexuiz, Oolite, OpenArena, OpenTTD, Pingus, Project: Starfighter, PySol, Rogue, rRootage, Scorched 3D, Simutrans, Slash’EM, Solarwolf, Sopwith, Stendhal, StepMania, SuperTux, TEG, Thousand Parsec, Tile World, ToME, TripleA, Tremulous, Tux Racer, UltraStar, Ur-Quan Masters, Vega Strike, Vulture’s Eye & Vulture’s Claw, Warzone 2100, Wormux, XBlast, Xconq, XEvil, X-Moto, XPilot.
Free and Open Source Games
You may have started out playing free video games on your personal computer as software. Now you can just surf the Web and find tons of free games and some of them are even open source. Open source means you can put the game on your own Web site or use the code to create your own new game. If you code you can also contribute to the development of games.
Nexuiz is an open source game
Warzone 2100 started out as a game you had to pay for but then became a free open source game. Sometimes programmers make copies of commercial games like Freeciv which is a duplicate of the actual pay for game called Civilization. You can also build a game using existing game software like from ‘id Software’. Nexuiz and the game Tremulous are shoot em up games built like that.
So that’s the short story of the evolution of online games. Check back for more!