We see thousands of people playing online games such as tetris, ping pong, mario bros, super mario etc for free but despite its history dating back to 1970s, for most people online gaming began with the explosion of Internet in 1993 and with the advent of Doom and Warcraft sometime in 1994 or 1995. This got further boost with publishers starting to add Internet connectivity to computer games in 1994-95.
The media, in fact, have themselves been ignorant about online games history. As far as they are concerned, online gaming just coincidentally happened when their advertisers started producing Internet-capable games.
Serious online gaming began with the first interactive online game called ADVENT. In fact networked gaming got conceptualized with ADVENT. Networked gaming had users playing against each other within an online fantasy world. The first networked game was called Mazewar, a game which involved networked players traveling through a maze and attempting to kill one another.
Next came the interpersonal interaction in a multi-player environment. The first such game was called DUNGEN. DUNGEN had players competing against one another to complete a series...