...this is the 2nd part of the video game history blog, if you havent read part 1, I suggest you do...
God games
The new genre of video games that came into popularity in the 90's. Where the player is all powerful and controls everything. Many people normally didn't have the ability to boss everyone around and play God so the games were the one place those people could experience that and feel that sense of power no game ever gave them before. That was the reason these types of games were so popular. A key person here is definitely Will Wright who designed SimCity.
While he was making an arcade shoot em up game in the 80's he had to make a program or tool to create a city for that game to use and to bomb. While he was making the city with the tool, he found out that he really enjoyed it and decided to publish it. These types of games showed players the long term effect of their decisions. Next up was Peter Molyneux who created one of the 1st God games – Populous and later its spiritual descendant Black & White. The game gives you God like powers and leaves you to do what you want with them, to be and evil God who starves his people or a good God and give the people what they want and eventually see the effect of their decisions. The next big game was Civilization created by Sid Meier. In Civilization games, players took over the role at the leader of one small civilization that was just starting out and towards the end of the game, depending how the player progressed and the actions he took, his civilization would be either great and victorious or got conquered by other civilizations. These 3 designers all laid the foundations of what a God game or simulated game should be, they created sandboxes in which the player created his own story.
Online games
Online games have been around ever since the technology allowed them. The predecessor to the internet was called ARPANET, setup in the early 70's and multi-user online games soon followed in the late 70's and 80's. They were MUD (multi-user dungeon) text games played with text commands. Later in the 90's the internet took over the role of ARPANET, more and more people started going online and we started seeing much more online based games called MMOG's. One of the 1st MMORPG's in this era was of course the 2D game Neverwinter Nights, released in 1991 for AOL subscribers. At its release it wasn't as popular but with internet subscription prices dropping, the user base grew. Since it was limited to AOL subscribers the game didn't gain any popularity around the globe and of course couldn't be played with players from other countries. The biggest hit was the later released Ultima Online, the game I think is the father of all MMO's. 2 years later, the 1st 3D MMO was released – EverQuest. 5 years after EverQuest came World of Warcraft, the game that now has over 11 million subscribers! Why so popular? Ever since Neverwinter nights and Ultima, the games were very addictive and basically never ended. Think of Mario trying to rescue Peach but in every castle he defeats, he finds Toad, there is no princess, there is no ending. Now add a role playing game structure to it, where your character is fighting for better weapons or armor and rewarded with experience points for ie. handing in a quest or finding a new region or killing a monster. You just don't get that in real life, no one awards you for cleaning your car or brushing your teeth or going to work/school. Your MMO character is like your second life, a life that's more interesting.
Ultima started it – EverQuest improved it – World of Warcraft completed it
One other MMO worth mentioning is Linden Labs Second life where a player can take on the role of his virtual life and even earn money in the process.
I'm sorry I couldn't offer and history behing non MMO multiplayer gaming like xbox live, but I just dont know much about it.
Where I come in
I started gaming in the 90's (big surprise there!) and I think my 1st game was either Tetris or Donkey Kong which I played on my cousins NES. My father soon later got me a NES of my own and I played a lot of ****c arcade ports on it along with newer Nintendo's games. Naturally after SNES consoles were available here I got that and later the N64. I was always a Nintendo kid although was not a stranger to PC gaming. I remember I played a lot of Duke Nukem 3D, GTA 2, THPS 2,3,4, Citizen kabuto, Aliens vs Predator 2. Those are the games I mostly played on PC and after we got internet, about 10 years ago, I know I was constantly playing trial games from Real Arcade. As for online games, I played AVP2 online the most – from the day I got the game in 2002 pretty much till the day they closed the servers(was it 2008 or 2009) with a 1 or 2 year break in between. My MMO experiences started while in high school. Trough the 4 years I played a free Korean MMO, that was highly addictive but not really as good. I can say I met a lot of interesting people on there :] Now back to the consoles. For a while after N64 I stopped following consoles, apart from getting a DS in 2004, and recently (well, 4 years ago actually) got back into it and got myself a Wii and 360.
...I hope you now know a bit more about how gaming started and what influenced it the most :)...
And tnx for reading this blog!