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12 Networking and Online Games: Understanding and Engineering Multiplayer Internet Games The high fees for such online game play brought a new group of users who would host individual Bulletin-Board Systems (BBSes) that provided play-by-email or play-bybulletin-board system versions of table-top games such as chess or Dungeons and Dragons. Users connected to these BBSes by modem (usually by making only a local phone call). Some hobbyists provided richer gaming experiences, still charging money for MUDs, but at much lower, flat monthly rates than had previously been charged. Although commercial successes, the early computer games were fundamentally different from today s modern computer games. Players would move a dot or simple geometric shape on the screen, perhaps push a button to shoot and something would happen if one shape hit another. There were no opportunities to control anything near human-like avatars, or have complex interactions with other characters or the game-world environment. The game-world environment did not support a variety of vehicles, weapons or even different levels. It is not just that the early games had poorer graphics, rather the game play itself was fundamentally different. Immersiveness, often cited as very important for the success of modern games, was out of the question a player just controlled abstract shapes on the screen, with any immersiveness coming from the imagination of the player. These early computer games were relatively easy to produce, too, both in terms of cost and time. This is in striking contrast with today s popular computer games, which take 18 to 24 months to produce and often have budgets in millions of dollars. 2.3 Multiplayer Network Games By the early to mid-nineties, computer power was increasing rapidly, allowing computers to produce more realistic graphics and sound. Computer game players were no longer forced to go to great lengths to suspend their disbelief. Instead of controlling a square moving slowly around on a four-colour screen, they were able to move rapidly in a 256-colour environment, heightening the overall experience of a more realistic, lush, virtual world. In addition, it was increasingly common for computers to have network connections, ushering in a new area in multiplayer games, the multiplayer networked game. 2.3.1 DOOM Networked First-Person Shooters Arrive At the end of 1993, id Software produced Doom, a First-Person Shooter (FPS) game. Although there had been other FPS games produced before, Doom took the genre to the next level, providing a powerful engine that enabled a fast-paced and violent shoot- em-up with more realistic levels and creatures than had been seen in previous shooter games (Figure 2.11). For multiplayer players, Doom enabled up to four players to play cooperatively using the IPX protocol (an early internetworking protocol from Novell) on a LAN, (Figure 2.12) or competitively in a mode that was coined death-match . In the death-match mode, players compete against each other in an attempt to earn more frags (kills) than their opponent(s). Note: Novell s Internet Packet Exchange (IPX), was an internetworking protocol primarily for interconnecting LANs (Figure 2.13). It was often combined with Novell s Sequence Packet Exchange (SPX), to form the SPX/IPX stack functionally equivalent to the TCP/IP stack on which today s Internet is based. SPX/IPX could not compete with TCP/IP for wide area performance, and has since all but disappeared.

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