Where We’ve Been…

Once upon a time a few gamers realized that the internet held immense potential for large groups of players to come together, in a centralized location, and virtually slaughter each other. Before the networks that we log on to today, before Xbox Live and before the PlayStation2 was even envisioned, thousands upon thousands of gamers logged on to long forgotten networks and playfully killed each other.

In 1997 I discovered TEN, the Total Entertainment Network, and online network that allowed me, with the help of my dialup connection, to log on and play shareware versions of games for free. Along with my very good friend Brian, TEN opened the door for us and the online realm. Sure, we had played modem games, and the networks at school were just getting equipped with the technology we needed to play LAN games, but TEN was a fun experience. After logging in to your account (which may or may not have worked depending on that days traffic load) you were greeted with a devilish looking alien who would hold the key to your gameplay experience. Mr. Bandwidth was his name, and his proprietary technology signaled green, yellow, or red depending on the strength of your connection. More often than not I was flagged red for my constant reliance on MSN lackluster infrastructure, but those times I received a yellow rating meant good times were ahead.

There were three primary games I played on the network: Shadow Warrior, Duke Nukem, and Warheads. Each was the shareware version of that particular game, but with full multiplayer capabilities, you couldn’t go wrong. Several of the first person shooters allowed for either deathmatch or cooperative games with a maximum of four people. Hearing the racial epithets of Lo Wang in Shadow Warrior (“You want to wash Wang, or watch Wang wash Wang?”) was so much more fun with a friend in tow. Duke was full of his Army-of-Darkness-inspired one-liners and Warheads delivered the classic Scorched Earth gameplay in space coupled with some awesome new weapons.

TEN delivered many sleepless nights with the thoughts of shotguns and power-ups in my head, but it wasn’t the only network on the block. Sega, long before they launched the failed Dreamcast SegaNet network, was in HEAT.

HEAT.net, another very popular online network, had a much larger game library with nearly every game being available. The selection ranged from Kingpin to Quake II, and Links to WarCraft II, if it was a multiplayer game, HEAT had you covered. Blood’s deathmatch announcer relayed to you, which parts of your opponent’s body you had just reamed (“Scrotum separation!”) while you trash talked the night way rocket-jumping in Quake II. I didn’t have a lot of experience with HEAT, mainly because it required mostly licensed versions of the games to play, but some of the first MMORPGs were on HEAT (including the failed 10Six virtual world), and the network was pumped by all the major publishers.

TEN and HEAT weren’t the only networks to emerge in this time. Mplayer, Internet Gaming Zone, and Battle.net all emerged during this time, with only Battle.net still remaining in same form, relatively. These early forays into online gaming would open up the door for the networks we know today, but those of us who were around for the first generation of these services will always remember how it used to be.

Where We’re Going…

HEAT's Mission: Total peace through cyberviolence. The HEAT mission is clear: - Divert your dangerous impulses away from reality and into cyberspace. - Kill pixels not people. - Cyberbullets cause no pain. - Join the movement now! If you already have, then join the fray soldier!

Today millions of Xbox users log on to Live every day and boot up a custom game of Halo 2 or Mechwarrior. Thousands of other players log in to online games via their PlayStation2s for some Final Fantasy XI action or the latest sports game. Still, the cream de la crème of online gaming takes place on the PC with the expansive networks of Sony’s Station, Blizzard’s Battle.net, and IGN Entertainment’s GameSpy Arcade connecting gamers around the country. The demand for more immersive and seamless offline-to-online experiences is making these networks stronger by the day. World of WarCraft, EverQuest and its sequel, together, account for over a million players with more signing up daily.

The online community has grown up to, back when you felt as though everyone was thirteen years old, much like I was, it now seems as though everyone is in their early-twenties. Sure, you will still get the occasional “fcuk u, I r0x0red ur p0w3d ass,” but, more often than not, a game ends with a friendly “gg” even when it isn’t needed, but that’s another article all together.

Looking back at the communities, guilds, and clans I used to belong to stirs up quite a bit of nostalgia for me, after all, some of my first gameplay experiences happen there: my first frag, my first crater, my first online death, my first clan, etc. There’s so much to remember about the past, yet, there’s even more in the future. As games continue to evolve, so will the online networks we play them on, but there’s always going to be that part of you that longs for the days when seeing a green eyed alien meant more to you than the latest technology or the greatest video card. For the instant you saw that “good” rating you knew that it was going to be an excellent night to kill some pixels, not people.