Online Gaming
George L. Marshall, III
Dr. Denise McManus, Ph.D.
MIS301-01
November 29, 2000
In the connected world, one growing aspect that is becoming
more and more enjoyable is online gaming. Many people take advantage of playing
online games for different options, such as stress remediation and getting to
know others over the Internet. Many people play games online for the enjoyment
it brings to conquer or accomplish a task with real people in a virtual world.
Software companies that produce and manage games that can be played over the
Internet have great success in marketing the games and keeping them alive when
no one loses enjoyment from the game for a while.
Online gaming has played a
significant part in how people have managed their time. It has also caused a
heavy effect on some lives, both to an advantage and to a disadvantage. Some of
the disadvantages it has made are lost jobs, divorces, low school grades, and
even marketing of virtual characters on some games for real time currency. Many
gamers have put too much time into spending on a game and can pay drastically
for it. However, some people have learned that working together with others
across a network can help achieve a goal. It builds strategic and maneuvering
skills for humans as they work together in an effort to kill something or
someone in a game or challenge given to them. With this you have social
interaction, which in turn lets the people communicate and talk as if they were
actually there; only it is virtual.
So one can ask: How can the
advantages enhance the online game? It allows the companies to sell the product
and market it so it appeals to the public as being a challenge that only a
massive team of humans making decisions can solve. One good example of a
massive online game is EverQuest or EQ (Everquest), developed by Sony
Entertainment Corporation and Verant Interactive. EverQuest is a role-playing
game that presents a three-dimensional, first person world that is appealing in
both beauty and game dynamics. You start a character and develop him or her
through a world of cities and monsters. Deep inside the game’s design, you can
do anything from building items (weapons, jewelry, etc) to learning new
languages to killing monsters to even marrying another player. It is very vast
to explain in more detail what it offers, but one can say that it is very much
a virtual online world modeled after what human can do in everyday life. With
EQ, online players can work together, trade to each other, talk to each other
and form a large group to kill a dragon. With all these options given to a
player, it is very hard to resist spending a lot of time to get to learn more
and do more in a game such as this.
Since games have a large virtual
world that must support all the options given to players and all of the players
itself, the companies must form a large support team and build massive servers
to handle the large amount of traffic, data and information that is shared
player to player. Companies must develop a detailed information system that can
handle all internet traffic coming in and going out from their game servers as
well as support players having trouble with both game client and any bugs that
they might find on the server that other players can exploit and cheat from.
Doing this means having several servers to play on, then a management team to
oversee the servers to make sure no cheating or offensive game play is taking
place. With these servers and their management crews, one cannot forget backup
and maintenance aspects. Computer failures can happen at anytime, and losing
data from a player’s data file on the server can mean lost work and time. That
is why it is critical for gaming companies to keep substantial backups of their
servers, and to keep their hardware up to date so that it can support more and
more players and have less network failures.
It goes to show that online gaming
companies must run their servers to support their players just like an
accounting business would manage their servers to support accountants entering
data from their workstations. One thing that is different in this scenario is
the fact that the company must support a whole virtual world to keep their
customers, or the players and characters, happy and content. The company basically
presents a problem or challenge to the players in an enjoyable and entertaining
manner and expects them to work together or sometimes alone to achieve an
answer or common goal. With this problem or challenge, the company closely
watches over the game and makes sure customer satisfaction is being fulfilled.
Online gaming is fun and sometimes learning process for many humans. Companies benefit from it in the marketplace and players benefit from it as far as enjoying a nice relief away from the stresses of everyday life. With the growing age of internet and more connected world, online gaming will continue to increase in popularity as more and more people see how fun it can be to solve a problem or “shoot up” a monster in the game with others who think it is fun too.
1. http://www.gamecenter.com/Reviews/Item/0,6,0-4078,00.html.
Everquest: The Ruins
of Kunark. CNet GameCenter. Accessed: 28 November 2000.