Since being introduced to the ‘ordinary’ public, the end user in 1995, the World Wide Web has proven to be part of a revolution in interpersonal relations. How high was Tim Berners-Lee’s dream of this project? Was he aware of the size of his achievements? In the marketed year, the Internet was used by 16 million different people for the most different purposes. At that time, this number represented 0.4% of the world population.
On the one hand it was bombastic, given the high prices, difficulties to connect, poor service quality – compared to the quality that we have today, of course – a limited number of websites indexed to search services and several other factors. But, like a good project, the Internet was not satisfied with the initial results. This has spread in an unbelievable way, and today it adds around three and a half billion users per year. An extraordinary evolution when it arrived at the relatively short time span it had developed.
The evolution of the number of internet users through time
That can be justified. At that time, it was only possible to access the Internet through a computer. Yes, the white skin ones, which were yellowing due to time. They were slow too. Do you remember? At present, most devices are connected to large networks. Televisions, refrigerators, smartphones, tablets, desktops and laptops, technologies that can be worn like glasses and special watches… Anyway, the possibilities are enormous. Even many people in the world can try their luck on links like onlinecasinodeutschland.com.de.
Not to mention, of course, the ease of connecting. Over time, companies, especially telephone companies, have perfected themselves, improved their products, made them at lower prices and with greater strength, in addition to several plans.
The Internet Anniversary
On the occasion of the Internet Anniversary, which celebrates its 30th birthday, we review the 10 games whose use of the Network of Networks has served to change and define the multiplayer online game, either because of its relevance or originality.
Last month we celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Internet worldwide, the global communication system that has changed our lives. In fact, the origins of the Network go back to 1960, with the creation of ARPANET, a sort of precursor that was developed by the United States Army to share data packages. But it was March 12, 1989 when the English scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (www), the space where information, documents and other files are shared through Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) … that we currently know as the Internet.
There is no doubt that the Network is a factor very linked to an industry as technological as the videogame, mainly in regard to the multiplayer facet. But over the last few years, we have witnessed an evolution of online gaming at all levels, completely changing the way video games are understood at a dizzying speed. That is why, we have decided to compile the 4 games that due to their originality or relevance, have made a singular use of the Internet.
1. Maze War
Maze War was programmed in 1973 in computers of the NASA, and it proposed us to move through a labyrinth in first person and to finish with the rest of players, which turns it into one of the first FPS of the history; there is contradictory information about it, but we could be talking about the father of the genre. In 1974, Maze War was connected through ARPANET, that is, we are also facing the first online multiplayer game in history.
- MUD1
And if Maze War was the first “online shooter”, then MUD1 was the first MMORPG. The genre MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) was one of the first examples of online gaming, being MUD (nicknamed MUD1 to differentiate it from its successors and the genre itself), the pioneer. Created in 1978 by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Battle at the University of Essex, MUD1 was a conversational adventure with RPG elements that was developed in what we might consider a primal version of a virtual world. In 1980 it was connected through the ARPANET, becoming the first step of massively multiplayer online role-playing games.
- Phantasy Star OnlineDreamcast is known, among other things, for being the first console in history that integrated a modem in its circuits. And although it is not the first registered case, it could be considered as the pioneer of the current online multiplayer. ChuChu Rocket! (1999) was the first game of the library to make use of these characteristics, but it was no more than an experiment, a test that arose from and to pave the way for the game that truly served to define the multiplayer future through the Network: Phantasy Star Online
Launched at the end of the year 2000 in Japan, PSO was developed by the Sonic Team at the request of Isao Okawa, the president of SEGA, who believed that online gaming was the future (a visionary). At that time, the online game was reserved for PC, so Phantasy Star Online was a revolution in consoles.
4. Counter Strike
When talking about online multiplayer games, it would be foolish not to mention Counter Strike. Born as a Half-Life mod in 1999, Counter Strike was the king of cybercafes when they were in their heyday. It was around that time when Internet connections began to be common in homes, and if you ask anyone who was hired one at that time, it will tell you that at some point he played Counter Strike.
