Introduction The growth of computer technology has seen rise to a new form of entertainment in the electronic media, Online

Multiplayer Video Game Software. This new form of entertainment has taken the world by storm being highly facilitated by the growth in internet technology as well as networking technology. The online multiplayer video game software allow people in different parts of the world to engage in a common game which in the past would have required the individuals to be at the same place at the same time. Online gaming software allow people who have otherwise never met to participate in games that they all enjoy in the comfort of their homes or office desks. Among the fastest growing online gaming markets is the gambling industry. The online gaming market is estimated to have hit US$30 billion by 2012 with the greater percentage of this figure being contributed by online gamblers (Matuszak, 2010). Despite gambling being the highest contributor to the growth on online video game software, there are other forms of online gaming such as racing video games and action video games that have also contributed to its growth as well as research in other online related technologies. The highest participants of online games are children between the ages of 6 16 years albeit there being people of higher age groups taking part as well (Childnet International, 2011). While online gambling media games have been dominating the online gaming market new forms of online video games are making huge strides in the same direction. The fastest growing are the massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). These games support role playing for hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously. The players can cooperate and compete as well as interact outside the game all around the globe. As of March 2011, World of Warcraft was the highest played MMOG with 11.4 million subscribers (ITU, 2011, 5). Such growth in popularity and number of subscribers to these online games contributes highly to the need of higher

processing in the hosting servers, faster transmission and streaming over the internet as well as private networks. Ultimately there is a realized need to expand the capabilities of electronic media involved in online gaming. Background Video games have been around since the early years of computer development. The first video game was made by William Higinbotham and he made a tennis video game for two. This was in the 1950s. The video games were welcomed with a lot of enthusiasm and the industry had since had very many players ranging from individual developers to very large corporate companies (Rabin, 2004). The nature of video games has however since evolved incorporating powerful technology and very high levels of invention and invention. In the recent hardware developers have focused on building powerful terminals and platforms for gamers to enjoy more realistic gaming experience. The most common are the console and handheld console. Microsoft, Nintendo, Sega and Sony have ensued on a bitter rivalry on who will develop the best gaming console with each company creating a unique gaming platform to attract new customers as well as retain those already wooed by their technological prowess. The other platform that has contributed highly to the gaming world is the personal computer (PC). While computer manufactures work to create powerful computers, game developers have also cashed in on these system creating high graphics computer games that are more realistic and require the high processing power. Other emerging platforms are mobile phones and tablets (ITU, 2011, 3). While video games were taking people by storm all over the world, in the CERN Laboratories in Switzerland a new technology was brewing. The World Wide Web (WWW) was officially introduced to the world on August 6, 1991. The WWW allowed for the realization of the true

internet. It allowed people the capabilities of world-wide broadcasting within their public networks (Keefer & Baiget). This new technology was regarded as an information-sharing platform. Technological advancement in both hardware and software however led to a new form of communication using the internet and this was the social networking websites. The social network websites have allowed people easier interaction all over the world as well meeting new people. The growth of the internet and the social network has contributed highly to changing the gaming domain for young men and boys to include people of all ages both male and female. While hardcore gamers still prefer console games, the new population on the internet has taken up interactive gaming over the social network engaging in puzzles, quizzes and card games. Some studios saw this as an opening to create better games over the internet and thus the growth of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs) (ITU, 2011). Current Development The massively multiplayer online games are in several ways different from the conventional online games. MMOGs allow thousands of gamers to engage in a single game environment (Knutsson, Lu, Xu & Hopkins, 2004). The most common method of making multiplayer games popular usually the game development studios give away free-to-play applications that are required to play the games. The most common applications in the modern MMOGs are browser plugins and extensions that allow a player access certain features of the games. The free applications also offer virtual goods which one can trade in with progress throughout the game. However there are other games that provide an entirely independent application for participation (ITU, 2011).

Almost all MMOGs are role-playing games this means that all players are represented in a persistent world by a character of certain capabilities in that world. These are therefore themed and involve skills and character classes. Role playing games were motivated by medievalthemed war games which were played before the development of computer games. Between 1970 and 1971 David Arnerson created a set of rules for a high fantasy war game. The game used representations such the avatars used in the current MMOGs. He added a twist that fellow players speak out the nature of the character they were using, which in the current MMOGs are the characters skills and capabilities. Arnerson later teamed up with Ernest Gary Gygax to release Dungeons and Dragons a book from which the modern MMOGs borrow many of their rules and ideologies. The first computer-based MMOG, Gemstone II, was text-based and was released in 1988. This ideology was adopted by many other developers and there was a rise in world-class game development studios such as Electronic Arts, Sony and Blizzard which currently own the worlds MMOG (Hancocks, 2008, 6 - 7). The implementation of MMOG couldnt have been as successful without the supporting technologies. The most important being the internet and the ever growing technological advancements in transmission bandwidth. The other most important technology that enables the players to share in a single game is the client/server architecture. In a typical setting of client/server architecture the players will connect to a centralized server using the client software provided by the game developers or through the internet browser coupled with a few plugins and extensions such as the Adobe Flash Plugin and Shockwave Plugin. The clients end range from a simple text terminal to a sophisticated 3D rendering platform depending on the type of game. The server acts as the centralized system that is responsible for maintaining game states between players, account management and player authentication. The server also allows scalability and

better maintenance of the game. Basically the MMOGs enjoy all the advantages of a centralized system in terms of scalability, which can be enhanced by server clustering, and security (Knutsson, Lu, Xu & Hopkins, 2004). When it comes to gameplay, in most cases one must have an account with the game provider. Once you have an account you are allowed to choses you avatar. The player will use the avatar to assume a role in a virtual world. The player will be limited to seeing, hearing and doing things through their avatar. The game contains mutable and immutable elements. The mutable elements the player can change through their avatar. Players can also interact through the same avatar. Usually the avatars states and immutable elements will remain unchanged but other games states will change as the game progresses. A typical role playing MMOG will involve quests, weapons, food and other objects that the players pick up through the game. Since the players are so many all quests might get solved or all weapons collected and thus the game has to undergo a game-wide reset. But as the certain elements are respawn in the game there are certain game states that must remain unchanged especially for players having their avatars in the same region of the game. This is to allow proper progress and fair competition among the players (Knutsson, Lu, Xu & Hopkins, 2004). Benefits of MMOGs A game will always remain a game and MMOGs were made for having fun and creating a new form of entertainment over the internet other than just the social network. However they are many other benefits which have to be attributed to the development and huge growth of MMOGs. The first one is revenue and income creation. According to an article published by the Entertainment Software Association, the U.S. interactive entertainment software publishing

industry achieved retail sales of $10.5 billion in 2009. The unit sales of computer and video games had increased for 226.3 million in 2005 to more than 273 million in 2009. There has also been a steady increase in the salary and compensation packages for game developers (Siwek, 2010). In the onset of the video game popularity there were warnings that people would become addicted and that would be the end of the social world as everyone would only be engaging in the addictive games. The behavior of hardcore gamers is thought to a little strange and that their lives revolve around the video games. A recent study has however dispel this notion and suggested the MMOGs be used in classrooms. The research indicated that video games enhance literacy, attention, reaction time and higher-level thinking. The study showed a well-designed video game can in fact be used as a learning tool in classrooms (Delwiche, 2006). The other common inter-personal benefits of online games include relating with people and teamwork, setting and achieving goals, self-confidence and positive reinforcement. There are several technological advancements that owe much of their development and creation to video games. Motion sensing and natural user interfaces were developed in a bid to create a more realistic gaming experience. The most popular being the Microsoft Kinact. This technology has paved way to development of other technologies outside of the gaming world such as virtualized networks and automatically configured systems. There has also been ongoing research for self-driven cars based mostly on the sensor technology developed for video games (ITU, 2011). However there is a major drawback relating to this new technology and it has drummed up attention all over the world and several stakeholders have stepped up to try and change the

situation. The first part of security is system security itself. Bugs and flaws in the development of the game software can lead to complex system state shared in the distributed systems. Such system can cause serious security breaches by making accidentally making confidential information available to unauthorized persons. While security concerns caused by bugs and flaws may be accidental and easier to deal with there still exist the possibility of telehacking. Since the client software is trusted to make changes in the main server. A malicious individual might have the capability to manipulate the client elements to perform malicious actions on the server. Given the distributed nature of the online games the effects can be far reaching to include not only the server but also other clients (McGraw & Hoglund, 2007). It is thus empirical that security measures be implemented to include the client software as well. The other challenge faced from online games involves effects on individuals especially children. Parents are concerned that some of the games graphics are very high and not suitable for children. Other dangers involve the sharing of personal information with unknown persons. The children might also acquire behavioral attributes from the games as well as from interacting with other payers online. The following SMART rules were developed to help protect children. S Safe: Keep safe by being careful not to give out personal information when youre chatting or posting online. Personal information includes your e-mail address, phone number and password. M Meeting: Meeting someone you have only been in touch with online can be dangerous. Only do so with your parents or carers permission and even then only when they can be present. Remember online friends are still strangers even if you have been talking to them for a long time. A Accepting: Accepting e-mails, IM messages, or opening files, pictures or texts from people you dont know or trust can lead to problems they may contain viruses or nasty messages!

R Reliable: Someone online might lie about who they are and information on the internet may not be true. Always check information with other websites, books or someone who knows. If you like chatting online its best to only chat to your real world friends and family. T Tell: Tell your parent, carer or a trusted adult if someone or something makes you feel uncomfortable or worried, or if you or someone you know is being bullied online. (Childnet International, 2011) Conclusion MMOGs have come a long way and have helped in the development of new technologies. There has also been research to incorporate upcoming technologies such as 3D viewing. It has also created a new form of interaction for people all over the world. The need for better interactive games has also triggered new trends in processor technology. Hardware developers have also started creating more powerful dedicated graphic processors that can support MMOGs. MMOG developers still have a lot of work to do. There have been studies to provide MMOGs with a peer-to-peer architecture. This means that all participants will contribute to the processing power and memory of the game (Knutsson, Lu, Xu & Hopkins, 2004). Given the growing market for more powerful and portable devices such as smartphones and tablets that internet oriented MMOGs will soon be the main form of gaming all over the world (ITU, 2011). References ITU, (2011), Trends in Video Games and Gaming ITU-T Technology Watch Report September 2011

KPMG INTERNATIONAL, (2010), Online Gaming A Gamble or a Sure Bet?, Information, Communication and Entertainment, KPMG Childnet International (2011), ONLINE GAMING:An introduction for parents and carers, Childnet International. McGraw G. & Hoglund G., (2007), Online Games and Security, IEEE Siwek S. (2010), Video Games in the 21st Century, The 2010 Report, Entertainment Software Association. Delwiche, A. (2006). Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) in the new media classroom. Educational Technology & Society, 9 (3), 160-172. Knutsson B., Lu M., Xu W. & Hopkins B., 2004, Peer-to-Peer Support for Massively Multiplayer Games, Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania Rabin S. (2004), Introduction to Game Development, Charles River Media, INC, Hingham, Massachusetts Alice Keefer and Tomas Baiget, How it all began: a brief history of the Internet, VINE 124