Saturday, February 5, 2011

Massively Multiplayer Online Games

by: Jonathon Hardcastle

The most important aspect of a game that inspires more gamers to play it is the amount of challenge it provides. The best way of making a game more challenging is to make it multiplayer. Because Artificial Intelligence in computer games has not reached a point yet where it can predict every kind of move you make and also every kind of player, they are easy to beat once you understand the patterns they follow. In multiplayer games however, you get to play with and against other gamers, and each time you play someone new you face a new kind of challenge. Owing to this fact, the game developers came up with a new category of games. This category is Massively Multiplayer Online Game or MMOG and enables thousands of players to join and play the game simultaneously via the internet.

There are some MMOG's these days that have servers all around the globe connected to each other, enabling gamers to interact and play each other from every corner of the globe. Most MMOG's create a persistent universe where the game goes on whether any player is online or not. Since however, it stresses on multiplayer gameplay, they usually have Artificial Intelligence, to allow the game to be played in single player mode and people do not leave if there is no other person online.

Unlike single player games MMOG's do not have an end point in the game. They are modeled in a way that the game goes on and the characters within it develop like real life. Only a few MMOG's have a winning condition that too based on the standings of the players after due time the game has been played.

MMOG's are able to support thousands of players online simultaneously. Because of the diversity of gamers playing these games from around the globe and the amount of detail the game developers put into these games, they are very challenging and filled with endless new experiences. Some MMOG's allow clans to be formed, so people can form their own groups of gamers and compete with other groups. This makes the game even more challenging as each clan tried to overpower the other clans.
 

No comments:

Post a Comment