The games that people usually play on their personal computer are called personal computer games (or PC video games, PC games, computer games). When the compute games were at it’s dawn, they were with simple graphics, characters and gameplay. However, modern games are more complex and detailed than ever and they are evolving each and every year. They are like a bid budget Hollywood movie with all the effects and computer rendered animations.
LAN games
Gamers were able to compete against each other only through the local area networks. Later, the broadband internet came out, because the Dial-Up speeds were not satisfying for the new internet users. This allowed masses of players to join and play together, either against each other in massive RPGs like World of Warcraft or fighting in a group against hordes of enemies, like in the recent World War II shooter Call of Duty 5: Warld at War or Valve’s Left 4 Dead.
The LAN games require at least two computers, connected with a wire and a router to include them in a network. Optionally LAN may include an connection card for external Internet (Internet outside the local network, which the PCs in the network can use).
Online Games
Multiplayer games have evoluted to a level, where competing just against a bunch of your friends is not satisfactory enough. That is where the online gaming kicked in. Using the modern broadband internet capabilities, people are now able to communicate, compete, collaborate with other players from all around the world. Online gaming allows players to compete against masses of other players in online RPGs and multimillion games such as World of Warcraft and World War II Online.
You may play online games with dial-up connection too, but in order to reduce the “lag” between players, broadband is a necessity. Online games also require a virtual environment that the players play, which is usually called a Game Server. Those are either created by players that can spare an old PC or resources on their current one to run a Game Server, or provided and supported by the game developers. Blizzard is the company behind the World of Warcraft games and they provide several official servers which can be played by all people who buy a legal copy of the game and pay the monthly fee to play on the server.
That’s how those companies can afford to develop such expensive projects like the “endless” world of WoW.
The best part of the online games is the ability to customize your character and environment as you like. There is currently know that there are more than 10, 000 free server in Bulgaria (an small country with population of 8 million and around 30% internet usage).
Popularity: 13% [?]
