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Multiplayer fps games
Multiplayer FPS (first person shooter) gaming first made headlines back in 1996 when a company called id Software, well-known for its DOOM and Commander Keen games, released what was considered a gaming phenomenon — a multiplayer test version of its Quake game.
Quake used a 3-D game engine that provided gamers with the capability to play a FPS game in a true 3-D world where objects in the game could be viewed by the player from any angle. Just as amazing was the technology that allowed gamers to play multiplayer deathmatch games via the Internet. Internet play was made possible through the use of a client/server architecture. Anyone could run a server on a computer, which would track the game environments, physics, and players in the game. Other players with the same version of the game could could connect to the Quake server and voila — multiplayer deathmatch!
Naturally, the game connections had issues. For example, a player in Eastern Canada on a 56kps modem playing on even a fast T1 server in the Western part of the United States, for example, would experience such horrid lag in the game that it would almost be unplayable. By the official release of Quake, however, id Software had addressed some of the many bandwidth problems in the game, but how fast and smooth your multiplayer game ran was largely dependent on your Internet connection and the location of the server you were joining.
In addition to the technological advances offered by Quake and the subsequent games that followed, the face of gaming changed due largely in part to the interactive nature of multiplayer games and the communication advantages of the Internet itself. Suddenly people could go into a store and buy a multiplayer game, go home and get online with it and find themselves becoming involved in the social and community aspects of the game. Not only did these games offer you the opportunity to play head-to-head against others, but it also allowed you to join teams and play co-operative multiplayer.
Groups of players would band together as a team, called a Clan, and challenge other clans over the Internet. Frag counts would be posted, people would banter back and forth in IRC chat rooms and on Web site forums bringing a whole new social aspect to multiplayer gaming. The image of a gamer also changed as time progressed. The stereotypical view of a gamer was that of a teen-age boy with a joystick in his hand, but over time people began to accept the notion that people from all walks of life; professionals, students and even women played these games.
While the mid to late '90s seems to be the time where games have made the most of technology and the way gamers played, this was not only happening with popular FPS games. Games like Activision's Interstate '78 racing game and Blizzard's Diablo RPG title, for example, were making the rounds. These titles along with many others put an emphasis on Internet multiplayer capabilities. For gamers on the Internet this increased the gameplay value of the game. Not only could you play a full-length single player game, but you could extend the life of the game by playing with friends and family on the LAN or connect to Internet servers to compete with others.
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