The Song Fight Bulletin Board

Were there any?

My daughter (Spudnut) is doing a timeline/project on on-line gaming, and doesn't have anything for last year.
Any ideas, thoughts, or references would be helpful.

Thanks, SPUD

I don't know what that is...a timeline/project on online gaming. Is she looking for significant new developments that occurred in 2009? Platforms, networks, devices, trends?

Any/all of the above. It's a broad topic. Any new releases, breakthroughs, announcements, events. Any major players join the fray or drop out during 2009? Any systems get overloaded to the point of going down?

Maybe it would help if I gave you examples she already has...

1969 First online game created by Rick Blomme.
1979 Multi-User Dungeons and Dragons
1989 First multi-player first-person shooter for the mac
1994 Warcraft Released
1987 First Massively Multi-Player Game
1997 Ultima Online Introduced
2003 Virtual Worlds such as Second Life become popular
2006 US Congress passed a law making it a federal crime to threaten or harass anyone over the internet
2002 Cyber-wellness task force formed in Singapore
2009 EVE online introduced

That type of thing... If you've got big ones from other years that aren't on this list, feel free to post them, as well.

SPUD

pretty sure there's gotta be something about the iPhone and successful apps like iShoot on there. That's mobile gaming, but almost always online gaming too. The iPhone and the Nintendo DS made mobile online gaming actually viable and it was last year that the iPhone really exploded in popularity. People who never played a video game are playing them now. Kids and adults alike.

She should include online poker on there somewhere, since it's huge. And online betting for that matter. Dunno what developments in that there were this year, though there has to have been some legislation.

The rise of casual gaming on the Internet is a big deal-- Yahoo Games for example, had millions of people playing Scrabble and Billiards against each other.

Then along came Facebook with the Scrabulous affair, really showing how much demand there was for casual online games with your friends. Not sure if that was 2008 or 2009, though it seems like it was early 2009.

The late 2000's was also the beginning of "Alternate Reality Games", primarily as a marketing tool, though lots of people participated in them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game

Beatles Rock Band came out in 2009, and so did the Rock Band Network. And similar music apps came out and were very popular on the iPhone. TapTap Revenge for example, and Rock Band's own game for iPhone.

Seems like last year might have been a peak for MMORPG, 'cause where for the few years previous it was all there was in the news I heard hardly a peep about WOW or others. And when was the last time you heard somebody say "Evercrack"? I think the downturn of things is as meaningful as the upturn.

Or maybe it's not that MMORPGs are going away, it's that they are transitioning-- isn't Mob Wars a different kind of MMORPG? And that Farm game on Facebook? Here's a report from 2008 that says Mob Wars was making $22,000 a day: http://venturebeat.com/2008/08/25/devel ... 000-a-day/

This year? Hello iPad. It's the year of the tablet, and casual gaming is going to grow even more.

What a fun topic. Didn't even mention socially aware gaming (http://www.gamesforchange.org/fest2009), or stuff like Google's Image Labeler game. http://images.google.com/imagelabeler/

If SpudNut's interested in video gaming, she shoudl send email to Moboid. She'd love to encourage young female's interested in video games.

JB

We used to play a multi-player Star Trek ascii game in 1980. It was on the U of Chicago servers. I don't know who created it, some MIS student. I'll try to see if my old roommate remembers more. I think I still have some printouts in VT.

[edit]Crap, I think this might be it (they mean Star Trek, not Wars). It's really a bit hazy, those days back in college.

(Sorry 1969 answer to 2009 question)

the Unix OS was written to make it easier to port a game called space travel to a bigger machine. I dunno if it counts as online or multiplayer, but that game led to Unix - and Unix begat UUCP and ARPAnet and the internut and on-line-ness in general.

http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~lib215/refe ... ravel.html

1824 - The Edinburgh Chess Club challenged the London Chess Club to a game via mail correspondence

"Edinburgh sent the first move on 23 April 1824. London mailed the move for Black and opened a second game five days later. A historic incident occurred when London wanted to withdraw one of two mailed moves in game two..."
Edinburgh won with 2-1 on 31 July 1828.
http://www.endgame.nl/cc-history.htm

What about the release of Spore? Wasn't that a big deal since it was by the guy who invented Sims?

Oh, that was 2008.

maybe something related to this: http://kotaku.com/5204010/will-wright-l ... ing-stupid

Ken