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Video game of multiple players

"Multiplayer" redirects here. For other multiplayer games, see Game § Multiplayer

A multiplayer video game is a 🔔 video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either 🔔 locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or via a 🔔 wide area network, most commonly the Internet (e.g. World of Warcraft, Call of Duty, DayZ). Multiplayer games usually require players 🔔 to share a single game system or use networking technology to play together over a greater distance; players may compete 🔔 against one or more human contestants, work cooperatively with a human partner to achieve a common goal, or supervise other 🔔 players' activity. Due to multiplayer games allowing players to interact with other individuals, they provide an element of social communication 🔔 absent from single-player games.

History [ edit ]

Some of the earliest video games were two-player games, including early sports games (such 🔔 as 1958's Tennis For Two and 1972's Pong), early shooter games such as Spacewar! (1962)[1] and early racing video games 🔔 such as Astro Race (1973).[2] The first examples of multiplayer real-time games were developed on the PLATO system about 1973. 🔔 Multi-user games developed on this system included 1973's Empire and 1974's Spasim; the latter was an early first-person shooter. Other 🔔 early video games included turn-based multiplayer modes, popular in tabletop arcade machines. In such games, play is alternated at some 🔔 point (often after the loss of a life). All players' scores are often displayed onscreen so players can see their 🔔 relative standing. Danielle Bunten Berry created some of the first multiplayer video games, such as her debut, Wheeler Dealers (1978) 🔔 and her most notable work, M.U.L.E. (1983).

Gauntlet (1985) and Quartet (1986) introduced co-operative 4-player gaming to the arcades. The games 🔔 had broader consoles to allow for four sets of controls.

Networked [ edit ]

Ken Wasserman and Tim Stryker identified three factors 🔔 which make networked computer games appealing:[3]

Multiple humans competing with each other instead of a computer Incomplete information resulting in suspense 🔔 and risk-taking Real-time play requiring quick reaction

John G. Kemeny wrote in 1972 that software running on the Dartmouth Time Sharing 🔔 System (DTSS) had recently gained the ability to support multiple simultaneous users, and that games were the first use of 🔔 the functionality. DTSS's popular American football game, he said, now supported head-to-head play by two humans.[4]

The first large-scale serial sessions 🔔 using a single computer[citation needed] were STAR (based on Star Trek), OCEAN (a battle using ships, submarines and helicopters, with 🔔 players divided between two combating cities) and 1975's CAVE (based on Dungeons & Dragons), created by Christopher Caldwell (with artwork 🔔 and suggestions by Roger Long and assembly coding by Robert Kenney) on the University of New Hampshire's DECsystem-1090. The university's 🔔 computer system had hundreds of terminals, connected (via serial lines) through cluster PDP-11s for student, teacher, and staff access. The 🔔 games had a program running on each terminal (for each player), sharing a segment of shared memory (known as the 🔔 "high segment" in the OS TOPS-10). The games became popular, and the university often banned them because of their RAM 🔔 use. STAR was based on 1974's single-user, turn-oriented BASIC program STAR, written by Michael O'Shaughnessy at UNH.

Wasserman and Stryker in 🔔 1980 described in BYTE how to network two Commodore PET computers with a cable. Their article includes a type-in, two-player 🔔 Hangman, and describes the authors' more-sophisticated Flash Attack.[3] Digital Equipment Corporation distributed another multi-user version of Star Trek, Decwar, without 🔔 real-time screen updating; it was widely distributed to universities with DECsystem-10s. In 1981 Cliff Zimmerman wrote an homage to Star 🔔 Trek in MACRO-10 for DECsystem-10s and -20s using VT100-series graphics. "VTtrek" pitted four Federation players against four Klingons in a 🔔 three-dimensional universe.

Flight Simulator II, released in 1986 for the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga, allowed two players to connect via 🔔 modem or serial cable and fly together in a shared environment.

MIDI Maze, an early first-person shooter released in 1987 for 🔔 the Atari ST, featured network multiplay through a MIDI interface before Ethernet and Internet play became common. It is considered[by 🔔 whom?] the first multiplayer 3D shooter on a mainstream system, and the first network multiplayer action-game (with support for up 🔔 to 16 players). There followed ports to a number of platforms (including Game Boy and Super NES) in 1991 under 🔔 the title Faceball 2000, making it one of the first handheld, multi-platform first-person shooters and an early console example of 🔔 the genre.[5]

Networked multiplayer gaming modes are known as "netplay". The first popular video-game title with a Local Area Network(LAN) version, 🔔 1991's Spectre for the Apple Macintosh, featured AppleTalk support for up to eight players. Spectre's popularity was partially attributed[by whom?] 🔔 to the display of a player's name above their cybertank. There followed 1993's Doom, whose first network version allowed four 🔔 simultaneous players.[6]

Play-by-email multiplayer games use email to communicate between computers. Other turn-based variations not requiring players to be online simultaneously 🔔 are Play-by-post gaming and Play-by-Internet. Some online games are "massively multiplayer", with many players participating simultaneously. Two massively multiplayer genres 🔔 are MMORPG (such as World of Warcraft or EverQuest) and MMORTS.

First-person shooters have become popular multiplayer games; Battlefield 1942 and 🔔 Counter-Strike have little (or no) single-player gameplay. Developer and gaming site OMGPOP's library included multiplayer Flash games for the casual 🔔 player until it was shut down in 2013. Some networked multiplayer games, including MUDs and massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) 🔔 such as RuneScape, omit a single-player mode. The largest MMO in 2008 was World of Warcraft, with over 10 million 🔔 registered players worldwide. World of Warcraft would hit its peak at 12 million players two years later in 2010, and 🔔 in 2024 earned the Guinness World Record for best selling MMO video game.[7] This category of games requires multiple machines 🔔 to connect via the Internet; before the Internet became popular, MUDs were played on time-sharing computer systems and games like 🔔 Doom were played on a LAN.

Beginning with the Sega NetLink in 1996, Game in 1997 and Dreamcast in 2000, game 🔔 consoles support network gaming over LANs and the Internet. Many mobile phones and handheld consoles also offer wireless gaming with 🔔 Bluetooth (or similar) technology. By the early 2010s online gaming had become a mainstay of console platforms such as Xbox 🔔 and PlayStation.[citation needed] During the 2010s, as the number of Internet users increased, two new video game genres rapidly gained 🔔 worldwide popularity – multiplayer online battle arena and battle royale game, both designed exclusively for multiplayer gameplay over the Internet.

Over 🔔 time the number of people playing video games has increased. In 2024, the majority of households in the United States 🔔 have an occupant that plays video games, and 65% of gamers play multiplayer games with others either online or in 🔔 person.[8]

Local multiplayer [ edit ]

A LAN party

For some games, "multiplayer" implies that players are playing on the same gaming system 🔔 or network. This applies to all arcade games, but also to a number of console, and personal computer games too. 🔔 Local multiplayer games played on a singular system sometimes use split screen, so each player has an individual view of 🔔 the action (important in first-person shooters and in racing video games) Nearly all multiplayer modes on beat 'em up games 🔔 have a single-system option, but racing games have started to abandon split-screen in favor of a multiple-system, multiplayer mode. Turn-based 🔔 games such as chess also lend themselves to single system single screen and even to a single controller.

Multiple types of 🔔 games allow players to use local multiplayer. The term "local co-op" or "couch co-op" refers to local multiplayer games played 🔔 in a cooperative manner on the same system; these may use split-screen or some other display method. Another option is 🔔 hot-seat games. Hot-seat games are typically turn-based games with only one controller or input set – such as a single 🔔 keyboard/mouse on the system. Players rotate using the input device to perform their turn such that each is taking a 🔔 turn on the "hot-seat".

Not all local multiplayer games are played on the same console or personal computer. Some local multiplayer 🔔 games are played over a LAN. This involves multiple devices using one local network to play together. Networked multiplayer games 🔔 on LAN eliminate common problems faced when playing online such as lag and anonymity. Games played on a LAN network 🔔 are the focus of LAN parties. While local co-op and LAN parties still take place, there has been a decrease 🔔 in both due to an increasing number of players and games utilizing online multiplayer gaming.[9]

Online multiplayer [ edit ]

Online multiplayer 🔔 games connect players over a wide area network (a common example being the Internet). Unlike local multiplayer, players playing online 🔔 multiplayer are not restricted to the same local network. This allows players to interact with others from a much greater 🔔 distance.

Playing multiplayer online offers the benefits of distance, but it also comes with its own unique challenges. Gamers refer to 🔔 latency using the term "ping", after a utility which measures round-trip network communication delays (by the use of ICMP packets). 🔔 A player on a DSL connection with a 50-ms ping can react faster than a modem user with a 350-ms 🔔 average latency. Other problems include packet loss and choke, which can prevent a player from "registering" their actions with a 🔔 server. In first-person shooters, this problem appears when bullets hit the enemy without damage. The player's connection is not the 🔔 only factor; some servers are slower than others.

Asymmetrical gameplay [ edit ]

Asymmetrical multiplayer is a type of gameplay in which 🔔 players can have significantly different roles or abilities from each other – enough to provide a significantly different experience of 🔔 the game.[10] In games with light asymmetry, the players share some of the same basic mechanics (such as movement and 🔔 death), yet have different roles in the game; this is a common feature of the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) 🔔 genre such as League of Legends and Dota 2, and in hero shooters such as Overwatch and Apex Legends. In 🔔 games with stronger elements of asymmetry, one player/team may have one gameplay experience (or be in softly asymmetric roles) while 🔔 the other player or team play in a drastically different way, with different mechanics, a different type of objective, or 🔔 both. Examples of games with strong asymmetry include Dead by Daylight, Evolve, and Left 4 Dead.[10]

Asynchronous multiplayer [ edit ]

Asynchronous 🔔 multiplayer is a form of multiplayer gameplay where players do not have to be playing at the same time.[11] This 🔔 form of multiplayer game has its origins in play-by-mail games, where players would send their moves through postal mail to 🔔 a game master, who then would compile and send out results for the next turn. Play-by-mail games transitioned to electronic 🔔 form as play-by-email games.[12] Similar games were developed for bulletin board systems, such as Trade Wars, where the turn structure 🔔 may not be as rigorous and allow players to take actions at any time in a persistence space alongside all 🔔 other players, a concept known as sporadic play.[13]

These types of asynchronous multiplayer games waned with the widespread availability of the 🔔 Internet which allowed players to play against each other simultaneously, but remains an option in many strategy-related games, such as 🔔 the Civilization series. Coordination of turns are subsequently managed by one computer or a centralized server. Further, many mobile games 🔔 are based on sporadic play and use social interactions with other players, lacking direct player versus player game modes but 🔔 allowing players to influence other players' games, coordinated through central game servers, another facet of asynchronous play.[13]

Online cheating [ edit 🔔 ]

Online cheating (in gaming) usually refers to modifying the game experience to give one player an advantage over others, such 🔔 as using an "aimbot" – a program which automatically locks the player's crosshairs onto a target – in shooting games.[14][15][16] 🔔 This is also known as "hacking" or "glitching" ("glitching" refers to using a glitch, or a mistake in the code 🔔 of a game, whereas "hacking" is manipulating the code of a game). Cheating in video games is often done via 🔔 a third-party program that modifies the game's code at runtime to give one or more players an advantage. In other 🔔 situations, it is frequently done by changing the game's files to change the game's mechanics.[17]