The Golden Age of Computer Gaming

Chapter 6: When Gaming Connected

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When Gaming Connected

THE BIRTH OF VIRTUAL WORLDS

By the mid-1990s, something profound was happening in basements and dorm rooms across America. Players weren't just loading games from disks anymore - they were connecting to worlds that existed beyond their computers, places where thousands of other real people were living parallel digital lives.

The transformation didn't happen overnight. It began with crackling modems, dropped connections, and the patience of pioneers who understood they were witnessing the birth of something unprecedented. Before social media, before streaming, before the internet became ubiquitous, gamers were creating the first true online communities.

THE TELEPHONE LINE REVOLUTION

In the early 1990s, connecting to another player required dedication that bordered on obsession. You needed a modem, a phone line your parents would surrender for hours, and enough technical knowledge to navigate IP addresses and port configurations. Every connection was precious because every minute online meant tying up the family phone.

Players would coordinate elaborate schedules, trading phone numbers and planning gaming sessions like military operations. The ritual was as important as the game itself: the screech of modem handshakes, the nervous wait to see if the connection would hold, the collective cheer when eight players successfully linked up for a match that had taken an hour to organize.

These early multiplayer experiences were raw and immediate in ways that modern gaming struggles to recapture. Every match felt like an event because it was genuinely difficult to achieve. When your connection dropped, it wasn't just an inconvenience - it was a personal failure that disappointed seven other people who had carved time out of their lives to play with you.

ULTIMA ONLINE: THE GREAT EXPERIMENT

In 1997, Richard Garriott didn't just want to put Ultima on the internet - he wanted to create a completely new kind of experience. Ultima Online would become the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game to capture the public imagination, but more importantly, it would prove that virtual worlds could develop their own economies, societies, and cultures.

The project began as Garriott's response to the limitations of traditional gaming. In single-player Ultima games, he controlled every narrative element, every quest outcome, every moral choice. But what if thousands of players could inhabit Britannia simultaneously, making their own choices and dealing with the consequences? What if the story wasn't written by designers but emerged from the collective actions of real people?

Development started in 1995 with a budget of $2.5 million - enormous for the time. The team faced technical challenges that no one had solved before. How do you create a persistent world that continues to exist even when individual players log off? How do you prevent players from destroying the experience for others? How do you build an economy that functions when every participant is a real person with their own agenda?

THE SOCIAL LABORATORY

When Ultima Online launched on September 24, 1997, it immediately became something its creators hadn't fully anticipated: a social laboratory where human nature played out in ways both wonderful and terrible. The game featured unrestricted player-versus-player combat, meaning anyone could attack anyone else at any time. What emerged was a complex ecosystem of cooperation and conflict that reflected real-world social dynamics.

Players formed guilds not just for gameplay advantages but for protection and companionship. Elaborate hierarchies developed, with veteran players mentoring newcomers and establishing codes of conduct that existed entirely outside the game's programmed rules. Some players became dedicated craftsmen, others emerged as diplomats negotiating between rival factions, and still others carved out niches as information brokers or hired muscle.

The game's economy became genuinely sophisticated, with players cornering markets on essential resources, establishing trade routes between cities, and even creating player-run banking systems. When someone discovered a new way to make money, word would spread through the community, prices would shift, and the entire economic landscape would reorganize itself. These weren't programmed events - they were emergent behaviors arising from thousands of individual decisions.

THE PROBLEMS OF PARADISE

Ultima Online's radical openness also created problems that the development team struggled to address. Player killers would hunt newcomers, not for any in-game reward but simply for the pleasure of ruining someone else's experience. Thieves could steal hours of work in seconds. Entire guilds would dedicate themselves to griefing other players, finding creative ways to exploit the game's systems for maximum disruption.

These issues weren't bugs to be fixed - they were fundamental aspects of human nature playing out in a consequence-free environment. The development team, led by producer Starr Long and designer Raph Koster, found themselves in the unprecedented position of governing a digital society where their citizens were real people with real emotions invested in virtual achievements.

The solution came in the form of Trammel, an alternate version of the game world where player-versus-player combat was restricted. This split the community between those who preferred the lawless frontier of Felucca and those who wanted to explore and build without constant threat. It was a compromise that satisfied neither group completely but allowed the game to serve both types of players.

EVERQUEST: THE ADDICTION ENGINE

While Ultima Online was proving that virtual societies could function, a small team at Sony's 989 Studios was working on something different. EverQuest wouldn't be about player freedom or emergent societies - it would be about creating the most compelling virtual world possible, a place so engaging that players would struggle to leave.

The project began in 1996 when John Smedley, an executive at Sony Interactive Studios America, secured funding for a 3D game inspired by text-based MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons). He recruited two programmers who had been working on a role-playing game called WarWizard: Brad McQuaid and Steve Clover. Their shared vision was to create a 3D evolution of the dungeon-crawling experiences they had loved in text form.

McQuaid's original design document was reportedly only 10-15 pages long, but it contained a clear vision that would remain remarkably consistent throughout development. Unlike Ultima Online's focus on player agency and social dynamics, EverQuest would emphasize structured cooperation, with players forced to work together to overcome challenges that were impossible to solo.

THE ARCHITECTURE OF OBSESSION

EverQuest launched on March 16, 1999, with modest expectations from Sony executives. The game required significantly more powerful hardware than Ultima Online - a Pentium processor, 3D acceleration, and substantial memory. Many industry observers wondered if enough players would have the necessary equipment to make the game viable.

They needn't have worried. EverQuest sold 10,000 copies on its first day, crashing servers and overwhelming San Diego's internet infrastructure. The unexpected demand revealed something profound about the hunger for virtual worlds. Players weren't just interested in online gaming - they were desperately seeking the social experiences and long-term progression that only persistent worlds could provide.

The game's design created natural dependency loops that kept players engaged far longer than traditional games. Characters were specialized to the point where no one could survive alone. Warriors needed healers to stay alive, healers needed protection to survive, and damage dealers needed both to be effective. This forced interdependence created social bonds that extended far beyond the game itself.

THE CULTURE OF COMMITMENT

EverQuest's most innovative feature might have been its approach to time investment. Unlike most games, where progress was measured in sessions or levels, EverQuest measured commitment in weeks and months. Major achievements required sustained cooperation between large groups of players, creating a culture where showing up consistently was as important as playing skillfully.

Raid encounters might require forty players to coordinate their schedules, spending hours in careful preparation before attempting content that could end in failure after minutes of combat. These weren't just gaming sessions - they were social events that required the kind of commitment usually reserved for jobs or relationships. Players would call in sick to work for particularly important raids, plan vacations around guild schedules, and maintain friendships that existed primarily in the context of Norrath.

The game's death penalty system reinforced these social bonds through shared adversity. When characters died, they lost experience points and had to retrieve their corpses from dangerous locations. This often required friends to risk their own characters helping with corpse recovery, creating cycles of mutual obligation that strengthened group cohesion. Players weren't just losing game progress when they died - they were inconveniencing people they cared about.

THE RIPPLE EFFECTS

By 2000, EverQuest had surpassed Ultima Online in subscriber numbers and was generating unprecedented profits for Sony. The success prompted a corporate reorganization that transformed Verant Interactive into Sony Online Entertainment, with John Smedley retaining control. More importantly, it proved to the entire industry that subscription-based online games could be massively profitable.

EverQuest's influence extended far beyond its direct financial success. The game's class-based design, quest structure, and social mechanics would become the template for nearly every major MMO that followed. When Blizzard began development on World of Warcraft, they explicitly used EverQuest as their primary reference point, taking its core concepts and refining them for a broader audience.

The human cost of these innovations was substantial. EverQuest created the first generation of players who struggled with what would later be recognized as gaming addiction. The game's design encouraged behavior patterns that resembled substance dependency: tolerance requiring ever-increasing time investment, withdrawal symptoms when unable to play, and social isolation as virtual relationships replaced real-world ones.

THE SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION

These early online games didn't just change how games were played - they changed who played them and why. Traditional gaming had been primarily a solitary activity or local social experience. Online worlds created the first global communities organized around shared virtual experiences rather than geographic proximity or cultural background.

Players developed new forms of communication, creating jargon and social conventions that existed nowhere else. They learned to collaborate with strangers, negotiate complex social situations, and maintain relationships that existed entirely in digital space. These weren't just games anymore - they were platforms for human interaction that happened to use fantasy themes and game mechanics as their organizing principle.

The economic implications were equally significant. Players began spending real money on virtual items, creating secondary markets that existed entirely outside the games' official economies. When a castle in Ultima Online sold for thousands of dollars on eBay, it signaled the emergence of virtual property as a genuine economic category. These transactions weren't just curiosities - they were early indicators of how digital ownership would reshape commerce in the internet age.

THE PIONEERS' LEGACY

Richard Garriott coined the term "MMORPG" in 1997 to distinguish Ultima Online from the text-based MUDs that preceded it. Brad McQuaid and his team created the gameplay loops that would define the genre for decades. John Smedley demonstrated that online games could be sustainable businesses rather than experimental curiosities. Together, these pioneers established the foundations for what would become a multi-billion-dollar industry.

More importantly, they proved that virtual worlds could support genuine human communities. The friendships formed in early Britannia and Norrath would last for decades, surviving the games themselves. Players who met online would attend each other's weddings, support each other through real-world crises, and maintain connections that transcended their original digital context.

THE END OF THE BEGINNING

By 2000, online gaming had evolved from a niche hobby requiring technical expertise to a mainstream entertainment medium accessible to millions. The infrastructure challenges had been largely solved, the social conventions had been established, and the business models had been proven. What had begun as experiments in digital communication had become permanent fixtures in popular culture.

The golden age of online gaming wasn't defined by the technology - dial-up modems and primitive 3D graphics would seem laughably obsolete within a few years. It was defined by the sense of discovery that accompanied each new development. Every successful connection felt like a small miracle. Every virtual achievement carried weight because it required genuine social cooperation. Every friendship formed online was proof that human connections could transcend physical space.

These early online worlds succeeded because they understood something that much of modern gaming has forgotten: players don't just want better graphics or more content. They want to be part of something larger than themselves. They want their actions to matter, their relationships to have meaning, and their investments of time and emotion to be respected by both developers and fellow players.

The technical limitations that seemed so frustrating at the time - the dropped connections, the long loading times, the complex social negotiations required for simple activities - actually enhanced the sense of achievement when things worked properly. Every successful raid, every profitable trade, every new friendship felt earned in ways that modern gaming's convenience and accessibility sometimes struggle to match.

As the internet became faster and more reliable, as graphics became more sophisticated and gameplay became more streamlined, something of that original magic was inevitably lost. But the foundations these pioneers laid would support an industry that would eventually reach billions of players worldwide. They had proven that virtual worlds could be more than entertainment - they could be platforms for human connection, economic innovation, and social experimentation that would influence culture far beyond gaming itself.