Online gaming is now an incredibly popular form of entertainment, particularly since high speed broadband connections have become commonplace in many peoples homes, allowing for more immersive and advanced online gaming. Most new games released for PCs now have some form of online gaming capability and some a designed solely for the purpose of online gaming, offering no single player option.
Online gaming has advanced significantly since its origins, one of the most widespread an early example of online gaming was the extremely popular Doom, which was released in the early nineties. The game allowed players to compete against each other over a LAN or a modem and set the standard for online gaming in the future as it popularised the concept of the ‘death match’ which is now a standard feature of many online games, particularly first person shooters.
Online gaming has faced a certain level of controversy in recent years, particularly MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role playing games) such as World of Warcraft. These games are often known for being particularly addictive due to their immersive nature and many online gaming fanatics have invested many hundreds of hours of their time playing them. There have been several well documented cases in the media where people have let their online gaming obsession get the better of them, particularly the case of a Chinese World of Warcraft fanatic who died of exhaustion after playing the game continuously over several days.
Iron Fist © 2009