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Online games refer to online video games that are played over the Internet. These include browser games, play-by-email games, MMORPGs, MUDs, and competitive multiplayer games such as Counter-Strike and Halo. Internet games usually allow people to play together, although in the case of some browser games this is sometimes limited to a shared high score list. Many Internet games have associated online communities, making Internet games a form of social activity beyond single player games.
Early Online Games
Online games started in the 1980s with MUDs. These text based games were often played via BBS via a modem. These games were frequently based on fantasy settings, using rules similar to those in the tabletop role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Other styles of games were also available via BBS, such as chess, Scrabble clones, and many others.
Modern Online Games
During the 1990s, online games started to move from a wide variety of LAN protocols (such as IPX) and onto the Internet using the TCP/IP protocol. Doom popularized the concept of deathmatch as an online game. Since Doom, most first-person shooter games contained an online component to allow deathmatch.
With the growth of broadband Internet access in many developed countries, the types of online games playable over the Internet exploded. Massively multiplayer online games were made possible with expanding Internet access, using the Internet to allow hundreds of thousands of players to play the same game together. Today, almost any style of game has been created for play over the Internet. Template:Cvg-stub
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