On-Line Games​—A New Trend

The land of Britannia has about 230,000 citizens. They are people of all sorts​—soldiers, tailors, blacksmiths, and musicians. They wage war, build cities, open shops, get married, and die. Yet, this particular Britannia does not exist in reality. It is a virtual medieval world, a place where network players compete and interact with one another simultaneously​—a form of computer game, called an on-line game, that has become increasingly popular and is expected to be the “next big thing” in computer gaming. Launched in 1997, Ultima Online​—which includes the fantasyland Britannia—​was the first Internet-based game. Since then, many other Internet games have arisen, and more are in the works.

What is different about this type of game? The various characters you meet in the game are controlled, not by a computer, but by other players acting simultaneously over the Internet. Thousands of people can participate in the same game. For example, Ultima Online is said to have had players from 114 countries participating at the same time. The popularity of these games may depend a lot on the social contact involved. Players can chat with each other and thus feel that they are part of a global community.

Every day, according to Forrester Research, over a million people log on to different Internet-based games, and it is said that interest in on-line games will increase with the spread of broadband, a type of high-speed Internet connection.