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Computer games have evolved from text adventures to graphical games, with the addition of the mouse as an input device. First-person shooters like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom became popular in the 90s, and games like Warcraft and The Sims emerged in the 2000s. Massive online RPGs have become a huge market share and social phenomenon.
Computer games are a type of video game played on a personal computer, rather than a dedicated video game console. Computer games have changed in popularity over the years as prices and performance have fluctuated between consoles and personal computers. Nowadays, it has largely stabilized on its own, with a number of games lending themselves exclusively to computers, while other types of games are more suited to consoles.
Early games largely revolved around text adventures, as this was one area where they could immediately differentiate themselves from arcade games. While there were early graphical computer games, such as Spacewar!, which was perhaps the first ever computer game, many of the more popular ones were simple text input. The original, and perhaps most famous, of these was the adventure game, and subsequent games built on its success. Graphics were eventually added to the text game idea, with text remaining as command input, though the simple graphics helped build the scene.
In the early 1980s, gaming saw a boom in popularity, as the market for console video games collapsed. A glut of bad console games, combined with lower prices for home computers, has made gaming an obvious choice for many people. When the Nintendo Entertainment System was released, this boom slowed somewhat, although it continued for several more years in Europe.
With the addition of the mouse as an input device for computers, graphical games started to make a lot more sense. Graphic adventure games, such as the popular King’s Quest series, used the mouse to allow the player to interact with an environment of static images. At the same time, a new genre began to emerge – the first-person shooter. One of the earliest, Wolfenstein 3D, was released by id Software in 1992 and helped popularize the idea of first-person shooters.
The following year, taking advantage of the ever-increasing processing power of computers, id Software released Doom, a groundbreaking first-person shooter game that was one of the most popular games of the time. The industry would remain relatively stable until 1996, when further innovations in video card technology allowed for even more elaborate and jaw-dropping games, with Tomb Raider being one of the first third-person shooters to harness the processing power of computers at the time .
Toward the turn of the millennium, computer games exploded into an even larger market than they traditionally had been, becoming one of the primary uses of computers in most homes. Games became even more complex as technology advanced further and game developers began experimenting with new methods of interaction that differentiated the computer platform from the console. Games like Warcraft and Starcraft, Command and Conquer, Black & White and The Sims are all examples of this type of game.
The origin of massive graphical online RPGs was the next big thing in computer gaming. Similar in concept to the text-based MUDs that have existed since the early days of the Internet, these massive games took full advantage of the ubiquity of high-speed Internet and powerful computers. By allowing thousands or hundreds of thousands of gamers to interact in a virtual world, they have become a huge market share of the video game market and a social phenomenon in their own right.
