The advent of online games and the growth of the gaming industry and technology.

Before i start off in writing an article on my own regarding the advent of online games and growth of the gaming industry, id like to give a reason why ive not been updating my blog for quite a while.

Usually, i would update my blog if something significant happens in my day to day activities. Doesnt mean that i dont update means that i have nothing to say or going on in my life. On the contrary, my posts tend to be very long at times after a period of absence and it has been my style of writing. I prefer to write something that ive done as a whole then to give a day to day coverage of the things that ive seen or experienced.

Today, after many days of looking through various articles on the entertainment industry particularly the gaming industry, it has inspired me to write a brief commentary on the gaming industry. I must inform you however that im no hardcore gamer and i do not play game 24/7. What inspired me to write this commentary to hopefuly touch upon the surface on the gaming industry itself and hopefully it will provide the necessary information to a non gamer who have no clue on the status of the ever growing, ever expanding world of games.

The Roots of Gaming

It all started with Pong, Space Invaders and the likes, coin operated machines on small television sets showing black and white or if you are lucky some shades of colour. It was 1970 at that time and although i couldnt give you a more in depth coverage of the history of gaming during that time, because i wasnt even born yet. For more info in the history of gaming visit : http://www.gamespot.com/gamespot/features/video/hov/index.html

However, on a more personal side, a few years after i was born, i was already exposed to computer games. I can still remember my first game ever played. I do not know the title to that game and the game runs on those floppy disks and the screen has very little colour and sounds coming out from the cpu. There werent any speakers and the CPU were not tower built but laid down with the monitor sitting on top.

The game, i can still remember, you were supposed to serve beer to the customers and you have to slide the beer mugs on the table and try to avoid the beer from falling over and came crashing on to the floor. At that time, the games were all pixelated and there werent many colours, mostly pink, orange, white and shades of green. Another that i played when i was little was gold digger. Basically you have to dig the ground and dig out the gold. Again, the colours were simple and the sound were very much like monotones on handphones.

After that i cant remember but i think, that my dad bought a better computer and this time, it has speakers and uses cd roms. There were no such thing as windows 3.1 yet and the computer runs on dos. On that computer i can still remember playing this very fun game with my dad entitled King's Quest IV. This game was running on cd rom and it was a little better. The sounds were better as well and there were more colours. However, the graphics were still pixellated. We never complete that game because during the course of gameplay we were stuck at one particular area and we just couldnt go on with the game. That game was a role playing game. I dunno the overall aim of this game but simply put it was a classic.

After that we moved house from marsiling to yishun. At that time, he bought another computer i think. This time i remember that was this logo everyone should recognize. Intel Inside. It was the first Intel based computer bought and the brand was IPC, a singapore brand that is non existant right now. Pentium 486 i think and it was running on windows 3.1. At that time, i was familiar with mouse and keyboard already. The next earliest games i remember playing were space quest, another rpg, Lighthouse, adventure, Lode Runner, puzzle solving, The Incredible Machine, Puzzle Solving and my above all that i can remember the most, Age of Empires.

Age of Empires was the first game that i played that i became addicted to. I was (if im not mistaken) primary 3 or primary 4 at that time and i played and played and played right after school with no stopping. The game itself is considered a classic hit and soon after release a slew of expansions and sequels and I tried that all.

After that more games comes in, Sim City, Longest Journey, Myst, Buldur Gate and its expansions ( a classic), Icewind Dale, roller coaster tycoon, Sacrifice, Neverwinter Nights, The Sims, Prince of Persia, Star Wars pod racer, X wing star fighter, Star Wars jedi academy, Star Wars Knights of the old republic, Lode Runner II, The Incredible Machine 2, Unreal tournament, quake 2 quake 3, the Doom series, Unreal Tournament 2002, 2003, 2004 and many many many many more in no particular order!

The growth of the the gaming industry

From what ive witnessed, the growth of the gaming industry seems to be more aggresive, growing faster that ever before, coming up with new technologies and more innovative products. The sky's the limits and also limited by the human imagination. Who could have thought of Xbox and Playstation 2 10 years ago, who could have thought of the advancement of technology in personal computing 10 years ago?

Last year, the revenue generated from the gaming industry exceeded for the first time, that to the movie making industry. It was a shock because considering that the history of games is barely 40 years old and the movie industry dates back since the first cameras and tv sets were born.

The gaming industry grows exponentially every year. this year has been the best years and was even titled as The Year of Sequels.

Previous posts regarding games, i ve mentioned games that sell like theres no tomorrow, such as, Halo 2, GTA: SA, Star Wars Knights of the Old republic, Prince of Persia:Warrior Within and new titles such as Everquest II, Lord of the Rings, The Battle for Middle Earth and World of Warcraft.

Youve read news on reports such as millions of halo 2 copies sold in 24 hours, and now, World of Warcraft, having being sold more than 240 000 in its first day of release! This year has truly been a remarkable year for the gaming industry. It took 2 years for Halo, the first installment to reach the 5 million mark and now, after one month of Halo 2's release it has reached its 5 million mark in terms of sales.

And what now you say? Well ill be very excited to see the future of games not in the next 10 years, but the next 5. Why? Games come and go soo fast and you almost see a new benchmark being set higher and higher every year and there is no stopping. Its terrifying to think of what games will have in store for use in the next 15 to 20 years. Right now, there are games with such gorgeous graphics. What was like 5 years ago? 5 years ago i was in sec one or somewhere there.... What did i play in sec one? what was the in thing in games in year 2000? Sacrifice, Quake III, GTA 2 these were some games that were released during that time. Graphics were not good and these games can be played on a TNT 2 graphics card. Now, what do we have? Geforce 6800. That is 7 generations of graphics card apart. From nvidia alone, tnt, tnt II, Geforce, Geforce 2, Geforce 3, Geforce 4, Geforce FX and finally Geforce 6. See? 5 years is all it takes to see such a huge difference! What can we see 5 years from now? Geforce 10? probably a new name altogether. Right now, the in thing is SLI technology in graphics card, which is the capability of the motherboard to have 2 graphics card attached to the motherboard. This means that graphics capability can been accelerated by 2 times. Twice as fast, twice as efficient, twice the horsepower. I couldnt even imagine such things would happen and it did. The only time i imagine was in my head, the big WHAT IF? What if in the future 2 graphics card were to work together in a pc? It did happened eventually.

Concerning Online Games

What is an MMORPG?

MMORPG stands for massively multiplayer online role-playing game. In an MMORPG, thousands of players exist in the same game world at the same time. This creates an incredibly rich and active environment in which interesting things are constantly taking place. MMORPGs provide thousands of hours of game play, with a nearly infinite variety of goals to achieve across a vast world covering miles of land and sea.

Massively multiplayer online games or MMOG for short means that thousands of played interact and exist in one same game world as opposed to online games such as Counterstrike or Warcraft III, Star Craft etc where you create a map or a room with 16 or more poeple playing in it. In massively mutilplayer online games, there is not such thing as creating a room. What you are in now is one huge gigantic virtual world with thousands of players interacting at the same time. Its a living world with all the players playing together.

There is a vast difference between massively multiplayer online games to normal online games. Firstly, these games requires a subscription based account. A monthly payment is needed in order to continue playing this game. Why is that? A huge level of service is given to customers who bought the game and play the game in maintaining the servers needed to create a huge virtual world and the money they get is not solely for profits sake, but also to provide additional content through that world by release new areas to explore, creating more quests for you and your friends to accomplish and to make the world organic and alive. They need to buy lots of equipments and men to service and maintain this world so that its online 24 hours a day 7 days a week. That is the difference.

Some may argue, but what about maple story and gunbound? Well, gunbound firstly is 2d game. It a budget game that does not need additional content to be added in and remember that when you play gunbound, you basically create a room with 8 other players and you start playing. Thats the difference. Some other games are online games too with persistent worlds that does not require subscription. Well, these games are budget games and only at most a few thousand of them play and there have low penetration to the mass market. Thats why they are free. But the online games im talking about are the highly invested, highly budgeted games that promises constant improvements, content addition and not to mention, hundreds and thousands of players who will be subscribing to the game.

Online games have become more and more popular nowadays. What seems to be only a rich man's game, it is now affordable to an younger group of people who have a keen interest in them. Years before, the older generation of games, it is normally catered to adults who have a credit card to subscribe to these services. But now, you'll see game cards that you can purchase at your own local gamestore that comes with a prepaid 30 or 60 days worth of playing time. It extremely similar sim cards where there is a fixed amount of prepaid in the card and simply have to scratch the for key code to extend your playing duration. This is to cater for people without credit cards.

Yesterday i came upon a site that does a research on online games and gives statistics on how many people are subscribe to what game and how many percent does a particular game hold in the Online gaming industry. http://www.mmogchart.com/

Take a look and youll see what i mean. study the statistics and be mesmerised.

/end of rambling.