Game for it - Brief Article

Electronics Times, Oct 2, 2000

Keri Allen looks at playing computer games with strangers over the Internet

It used to be that, if you wanted to play a computer game with someone other than the computer, you would have to ask a friend round for an afternoon of Donkey Kong or Pacman. Failing that, your dad was always up for an embarrassing thrashing at Space Invaders. Nowadays you don't have to have any friends to play the latest games - you can play with other people from across the globe over the Internet.

Internet connected consoles are becoming ever more popular and, at the moment, they are experiencing explosive growth. This in turn is fuelling the expansion of electronic gaming itself. Online gaming, believe it or not, is seen as a sociable activity and is slowly becoming the preferred form of entertainment for the gaming community. A survey by CMP Europe last month showed that, with a choice of interactive TV, WAP and online gaming, 67% of people polled believed gaming would become the biggest area of growth in interactive entertainment.

This gives extra backing to the research undertaken by Datamonitor, entitled The New Face of Gaming. The research indicated that online gaming is set to rise from the 20 million online gamers that existed in 1999 to 80 million by 2004 in Europe alone, (see graph).

According to Datamonitor, the Internet has revamped traditional platforms such as original consoles and PCs, and believes that the online games market for both PCs and next generation consoles will be worth $4.9bn in less than four years' time. It could be said that the first step in this direction happened in Japan in 1998 with the launch of Sega's next generation console, the Dreamcast, which was the first to enter the market with Internet capabilities.

A preview to research being published later this year, by Screen Digest and the European Leisure Software Publishers Association reports that: "After a year in Europe, Sega has an installed base with which to work and an impressive 320,000 registered online users. Although embryonic, the Dreamcast online operation is functioning and beginning to capture the attention of hardcore gamers."

The next move will be that all new consoles coming out will have Internet access available on launch, or if not, soon after. Sony's Playstation II is hitting Europe before the end of the year, followed next year by the Launch of Nintendo's Gamecube and Microsoft's leap into the console market, the X-Box.

BACKBONE OF ONLINE GAMING

Let us not forget the PC - the backbone of online gaming. Firstly with downloadable extras for games and then simple text-only online games such as MUDs, and then with advances in technology, graphics became more common too - although many text-only games are still played over the Net.

So how does technology make it possible for these online games to work to a standard that guarantees everyone can connect to them? When it comes to connection speeds, does it make sense to try to play a game when a few other million people might be trying to connect to the same computer?

Over time, companies have made improvements to servers and increased connection speeds. But arguably the largest step forward has happened with Terraplay - which gives the best online gaming capabilities a surfer has seen to date.

An IP-based system, the Terraplay platform by Terraplay Systems was launched last month and enables hundreds of participants to play realtime, online games without losing quality, no matter what connections they use - whether it be modem, broadband or wireless.

Founded in February, Terraplay Systems was set up by Ericsson Business innovation and IT-Provider, a venture capital company. Bengt Lilliequist, CEO at Terraplay, said: "Our service has clear advantages for game developers and Internet providers. Our goal is to make Terraplay an accepted standard for the entire industry. Terraplay makes bandwidth use more effective, which is important for the many players who use ordinary modems and will continue to do so. Effective use of bandwidth is also a key factor for wireless communications."

MULTIPLE GAMING SESSIONS

The IP-based system prioritises and routes real-time data. It is made up of four separate components which include: game access servers (GAS) - which can be networked to support multiple gaming sessions; the common network interface, which allows game clients to connect with a network-installed GAS via an access system such as PSTN modems or cellular packet data. This is enabled using a powerful development toolkit. Next there are game lobby servers and finally a network management system, which automatically configures Terraplay resources and sessions.

Where is the technology likely to take us in the future? It looks like the Internet could be the way forward for gaming.

"An entire entertainment world is being developed for the Internet, and online game playing has advanced quite far," said Lilliequist. "Technological achievements, such as Terraplay, make it possible to offer high-quality online games today - thus reaching new and larger target groups. Online gaming will be boosted even further when wireless data technology makes a more substantial breakthrough."