Online Gaming is today one of the most popular entertainment activities on the World Wide Web. As broadband Internet connectivity becomes cheaper and more accessible with each passing year, the phenomenon of Online Gaming keeps getting more widespread and more creative.

The earliest online gaming activities originated around 1969, but they started gaining in popularity only around late 1970s and early 1980s when Dial-up Bulletin Boards became popular, and the users started playing online games over them. These bulletin boards provided a multi-user platform, so they became the earliest base for multi-user games, which have finally transformed into what is today popularly known all over the world as the "MMORPG" (Massively Multi-player Online Role-Playing Games).

Commercial Online Services were introduced in the 1980s, and gradually interactive online games started being offered to the users as an added attraction with these services.

In the 1990s, with the evolution of advanced Internet technologies such as Flash and Java led to an explosion in the usage of Internet, with millions of new websites mushrooming across the World Wide Web, offering great opportunities for interactive computing to the users.

This led to a revolution in the field of online gaming as the number of younger web users increased, and they charged up the demand for online games across the Asian, American, and European continents. Many online gaming sites offered services against paid subscription, while many other sites started offering free gaming usage in order to increase their web traffic and earn advertising revenues.

The global Dot Com bubble bust of 2001 posed a sudden slowdown in the online gaming activities, but the phenomenon proved too real to die out so easily.

Eventually, technological giants such as Sony, Microsoft and Ninetendo came out with advanced gaming consoles and some fascinating gaming software that changed the face of online gaming forever. The market for online gaming has boomed since then all over the world, with millions of new users getting added every year.

Here is a brief timeline of the evolution of online gaming:

1969:

PLATO Internet Service offers a 2-player "Space War" online game. By 1972, the service was able to host over a thousand users simultaneously.

1970 to 1977:

Many more multi-player games appear on the PLATO service.

1979-1980:

Essex University, U.K. hosts the first classic "MUD" game on its system.

1982-1983:

Kesmai Corporation is established to develop an ASCII role-playing online game. Their first game "Mega Wars" is launched in 1983.

1983-1993:

Many new games are launched as the popularity of online gaming picks up momentum.

1994-1995:

Sony releases its PlayStation and Nintendo 64 is launched around the same time.

1997:

Sony sells its 20 millionth PlayStation.

1998-2008:

Sony's PlayStation, Microsoft's X-box Live, and the Japanese company Nintendo create some of the world's most popular online games that attract an unprecedented number of new users to the world of online gaming.

SUMMARY:

Online Gaming, like any other new technology, took off to a slow start with very few early adopters who experimented with it. But its true power came to be seen as the gaming technology advanced and the Broadband Internet usage costs reduced. Today it is a leading pastime among the young generations across cultures and across geographical boundaries.