Thoughts on gaming

I have been thinking about gaming and gamers a fair amount lately. Seems that this is latest manufactured marketplace. What does that mean?

Well, years ago I was an IT professional. I sort of fell into the position because I could read the LAN manuals. I found I liked it. So, i started coding, DBM, etc. Being a D&D player, somewhere along the way I discovered or was introduced to online and PC gaming. BBSes, door games, direct connection to another machine and across the company LAN were the early days of competitive gaming. Then came MUDS. In their heyday MUDS would have maybe 200 people logged in. If their muxes and modem banks could take it.

Then Consoles got into the act (Yes, I am skipping a lot.) Dreamcast started Phantasy Star online. It was a big hit. But the Sega died in the Hdw market, But not the idea. Now Xbox, Wii, PS all have online possibilities. WoW has taken D&D's spotlight as the devil incarnate. And suddenly thousands logged into one game is not uncommon.

Yet still the gaming companies seeks more for their market. So what happened? Why the boom in gaming? Or s it just that we all came out of the closet at once? I suspect it is not so much a boom as a unification in some ways. Remember when I mentioned back there that MUDS had maybe 200 logged in at a time? Multiply that by the list of MUDS that are active on The Mud Connector. Now add a few hundred more MUDs.

It is not that there are more gamers. It is that we are now identifiable. Yet to the gaming companies it looks like a jump. More on this next time.