Multiplayer games have always been a major aspect of gaming – whether through the internet or local area networks or just co-op mode for playing together in-person. Such games are among the most popular titles in gaming, many of them have become massive esports, and multiplayer gaming itself has evolved steadily over the years to become increasingly complex and nuanced. In this blog we will discuss the history of multiplayer gaming, from the 1980’s to 2010, with a special focus on the two decades from 1990 to 2010, when multiplayer evolved rapidly and matured into a staple of our gaming experience.

What is Online Multiplayer and Why it’s Important

A multiplayer video game can be played by more than one person in the same game environment simultaneously – either locally, on the same computing system, or through networks shared by multiple systems. Online multiplayer refers to games played over the internet and networked multiplayer refers to games played on different systems through a local area network. In a multiplayer game, players or teams of players can compete with each other or cooperate toward a common goal. Multiplayer games involve a social element not found in single-player titles and can also offer a higher level of challenge as compared to playing against AI.Modern multiplayer games often share certain common characteristics – various ‘modes’, which may involve competition or cooperation, a progression system with ‘unlockables’, a steady stream of new content (though this is more applicable to live-service games in general), a system by which players can communicate using voice and/or text, a dedicated server or a single terminal hosting the game, and more. A look at Steam stats reveals that multiplayer games are among the most-played, with thousands of daily users. There were 932 million online gamers by 2020 and as of 2022, 54% of the most active gamers worldwide play multiplayer games at least once a week, for seven hours on average. As of 2022, 83% of US gamers play with each other, either in person or online. In comparison, the figure was 65% in 2020. This spike is attributed to Covid-period lockdowns – in fact, the multiplayer game Among US (2018) surged in popularity during the pandemic, amassing a user base of nearly half a billion players. The global online gaming market size was valued at $56 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow to $132 billion by 2030, at a cumulative annual growth rate of 10.2%. In the following sections, we will delve into the history and evolution of multiplayer and its rise to prominence among gamers.  

The Origins and Early History of Online Multiplayer

The early years of online multiplayer saw the advent of multi-user dungeons, or MUDs, where multiple players engaged in text-based games through typing commands. This was followed by the arrival of multiplayer FPS in the ’90s– legendary games such as Doom and Quake not only pioneered the FPS genre as we know it today, but also created multiplayer modes that allowed gamers to team up with or fight against each other. Over the course of the decade, as the internet became commonplace, many MMORPGs emerged to the fore, whose graphics brought to life the text-based experience of the early MUDs. 

Early Years: The Multi-User Dungeon and the Internet

In 1978, two University of Essex students, Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle, created a multiplayer adventure that they would call ‘MUD’, or multi-user dungeon. The text-based game was a revelation that allowed you to live in a persistent fantasy world through the networked computers of the institute. A persistent world is a virtual environment that changes dynamically even when the player is logged off. The world continues to exist on the network, enabling other players to continue playing, thereby presenting new activities to any player who logs back in after a certain interval. Bartle and Trubshaw’s text-based world may not have had any graphics to speak of, but its dynamic persistent world gave the fantasy environment a life of its own, independent of player actions.

A MUD can be text-based or may use storyboards to flesh out its world. MUDs combine elements of role-playing games, interactive fiction and online chat to create a real-time virtual world where players interact with the game world and each other using text-based commands. Bartle and Trubshaw’s game counts as one of the first of its kind and was also the first MUD to be playable on the internet, when the university connected its internal network to the ARPANET. Multi-user dungeons with persistent worlds would influence the MMORPGs to come.In 1985, University of Virginia classmates John Taylor and Kelton Flinn created a MUD-like game called Island of Kesmai, a multiplayer adventure that used ASCII-based graphics. Considered a direct forerunner of subsequent MMORPGs, the game was available on the early CompuServe online service and allowed upto 100 players to play simultaneously. 

The Emergence of Multiplayer FPS

Multiplayer gaming over networks came into its own in the 1990s, with the release of major first-person shooter titles such as Pathway to Darkness and the legendary Doom in 1993. The games’ multiplayer modes led to the birth of the LAN party – people coming together and creating a local area network to play multiplayer games together. Doom was not just a revolutionary game, it also pushed multiplayer to new directions. The game offered networked multiplayer supporting two-player teams, and a special matchmaking service known as DWANGO supported online multiplayer, allowing four-player teams to either cooperate in Doom’s main campaign or fight against each other in a deathmatch mode. Doom was one of the first games in the world to offer online multiplayer via a matchmaking service. It was also a highly popular LAN party game, along with Pathway to Darkness, and Marathon (1994), another first-person shooter. Multiplayer over LAN would remain prominent until the internet became more widespread and ushered in online multiplayer on a large scale.

The same year Doom was released, CERN made the software for the world-wide-web open source – a move that would eventually result in our world of browsers, email, streaming services and internet-based multiplayer games played by millions of people simultaneously. Just three years after the world wide web went open-source, id would release Quake, a major milestone in online multiplayer gaming. 

Quake was not only the first game to feature full real-time rendering of 3D environments and 3D acceleration, it was also the first game to enable online multiplayer over TCP/IP on the internet. Multiplayer was easier than ever before because all one had to do was enter an IP address and connect with a friend or a server over the internet to play cooperative or competitive multiplayer. The multiplayer mode ran on dedicated servers, but Quake also allowed players to turn their own machines into custom servers. 

In december 1996, id released QuakeWorld, an update to the Quake engine, which introduced a network optimization feature called client-side prediction to enable an online gaming experience comparable to single player even for players on high-latency connections. An IGN article describes the QuakeWorld update as the first successful large-scale implementation of online multiplayer mode. In 1997, id hosted a nationwide esports tournament in the US called Red Annihilation, featuring Quake, and the winner, Dennis ‘Thresh’ Fong, won a 1987 Ferrari 328 GTS cabriolet that belonged to John Carmack, the wizard behind Quake, Doom and many of id’s hit IPs.

Multiplayer Grows in Variety

The late ’90s saw the arrival of yet another hugely popular multiplayer genre – the massively multiplayer online role playing game. In an MMORPG, players adopt the role of a character with distinct abilities, traits and weaknesses and take part in a huge persistent world filled with thousands – even millions – of concurrent players. Progression is a key aspect of the MMORPG, where player actions earn them points that they can then use to level up their skills. Like classic MUDs, the world of an MMORPG continues to change even when the player is offline.

MMORPGs such as Meridian 59 (1996), Ultima Online (1997) and EverQuest (1999), emerged as internet technology matured in the 90s – they were still called ‘graphical MUDs’, evoking their origins in the MUDs of the 80s, and featured persistent worlds with real interactions with other online players, and made their mark as a new genre for online multiplayer. 

While Meridian 59 and Ultima Online helped establish the MMORPG, EverQuest built on the genre’s potential. The game offered a great degree of player choice, a huge world ready to explore and (for its time) high-quality graphics. The title boasted 10,000 active subscribers 24 hours after its launch, and within the year, it had 150,00 active subscribers. EverQuest continues to be played, with a user base of 66,000 subscribers. 

Soon after EverQuest, the real-time strategy (RTS) title StarCraft (1998) emerged as a major online multiplayer game. Blizzard’s StarCraft built on the popularity of the RTS genre, which had successful franchises such as Sid Meier’s Civilization series, Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, and WarCraft – StarCraft would introduce sophisticated multiplayer gameplay to this genre. 

StarCraft’s multiplayer mode was facilitated by Blizzard’s Battle.net, a free game hosting and matchmaking service that helped StarCraft – and other Blizzard games – reach huge audiences. By the time StarCraft’s expansion, Brood Wars, was released, the title had become a phenomenon in South Korea, which accounted for a third of StarCraft’s global sales, and spawned a professional esports scene that was broadcast over South Korean media. Starcraft’s masterful game balancing and potential for complex strategies enhanced its multiplayer greatly, allowing for immense variation in gameplay. The game’s success led to increased usage of Blizzard’s Battle.net service, which hosts tens of millions of active players across Blizzard’s library of games today.

The FPS genre then made a resounding comeback in 1999 with the release of Epic’s Unreal Tournament and id’s Quake III Arena, both of which would make multiplayer the main gameplay mode – the first Unreal game released in 1998 did not deliver good multiplayer gameplay, and it became a top priority to improve the multiplayer code, with Epic CEO Tim Sweeney even apologising for Unreal’s poor multiplayer. Epic intended to deliver the updated multiplayer gameplay as an expansion for Unreal, but then decided to make a standalone, multiplayer-focussed instalment called Unreal Tournament, which was hailed as one of the best multiplayer games of the year, along with Quake III Arena. Both games dispensed with plot-based single-player campaigns and featured single-player modes that merely pitted players against bots. Even now, critics cannot decide which offers a better experience – both are incredible in their own ways. The Unreal Engine, used to build Unreal Tournament, would go on to become an industry-standard game engine that would spawn a host of award-winning titles.

Another important FPS multiplayer game released in 1999 was Counter-Strike, a Half-Life mod that would later be purchased by Valve after the title became a staple of LAN events and a hugely successful multiplayer experience. Like StarCraft, CounterStrike would spawn its own esports scene. 

The Development of Multiplayer in the 2000s

By the second half of the nineties, the internet and the world-wide web had become commonplace. The web rose in prominence until the dotcom crash in 2000, and within a year, dotcom companies had folded, wiping out trillions of dollars of investment. RuneScape (2001) emerged from the ruins of the dotcom bubble to become one of the most enduring MMORPGs of all time. RuneScape is playable in a browser and was supported purely by ads until the crash. It pivoted to a freemium model, where premium users got access to more content, after the dotcom bubble burst. The browser-based MMORPG drew in droves of players, and continues to attract gamers today – nearly 17 million players are estimated to have played RuneScape, and in 2020, it reached its highest-ever concurrent user count, at more than 170,000. RuneScape’s success indicated that online multiplayer games could weather market crises and the 2000s were marked by constant innovation in the field. 

Console Makers Enter the Fray

Microsoft launched Xbox Live in 2002, a dedicated service for online multiplayer that would become hugely popular with the release of Halo 2. While the first game in the Halo franchise (2001) was shipped before Xbox Live, its sequel, Halo 2 (2004), offered multiplayer modes with the Xbox’s unified online service. While many aspects of Halo 2 were lauded by gamers and critics alike, it is now known for ‘changing online multiplayer gaming forever’ and is considered the ‘game which showed the world how console multiplayer should be done’. Until Halo 2 launched, few gamers were using Xbox Live, although the Xbox itself offered sophisticated broadband compatibility at a time when the technology was still uncommon. By the time Halo 2 was released, broadband infrastructure had grown widespread, and Halo 2 could exploit the possibilities of Xbox Live to the fullest, creating an unprecedented online multiplayer experience on console. While Halo: Combat Evolved had become the killer app for the Xbox, Halo 2 became the killer app for Xbox Live, and made console-based online gaming straightforward and intuitive.

Sony’s PlayStation 2 also offered online multiplayer with a separate network adapter, which was integrated later with the PS2 Slimline model. The console offered both dial-up and broadband-based connectivity and networked multiplayer using ethernet cables or a router network. Unlike Xbox Live, which functioned as a unified service for all Xbox games, providing online multiplayer for PS2 games was the responsibility of the publisher, who had to use third-party servers.

Sony would catch up with Xbox Live in 2006 with the PlayStation Network – a free, unified service for online multiplayer for the PlayStation 3 that also featured an online store from which to buy games digitally. Online gaming was free for the PS3, but required a subscription to the PlayStation Plus service for the PS4 and PS5. The introduction of online multiplayer for consoles would lead to many games offering the feature out of the box, making online multiplayer gaming a staple for gamers, despite the fact that both Microsoft and Sony charge for the service. 

Modders Create a New Multiplayer Genre: MOBA

In 2003, a WarCraft III fan released a mod called Dota – Defense of the Ancients. The mod would spawn an entirely new genre in gaming, the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). Dota enabled players to control hero units and fight an opposing team across three lanes that connected each team’s base. The game involved two teams of five player-controlled characters that battled each other, with the mission being to destroy the opposing team’s base. Soon, other modders were creating their own version of the map, adding new heroes and items. Eventually, modder Steve Feak would develop Dota Allstars, a version that would incorporate the best elements from multiple Dota iterations, and would become the most popular version of the mod. As the game was a modification of WarCraft III, modders could not add any original content (such as models/textures or characters) not provided in the modding resources released by Blizzard. Nor could Dota’s popularity result in any monetary gains for the modders. 

Steve Feak would hand over the reins of managing Dota to IceFrog, who would go on to collaborate with developers at Steam to release Dota 2 in 2013, one of the biggest esports in the world in terms of prize pools. Feak would himself be hired by Riot Games to develop the free-to-play MOBA League of Legends, one of the most popular esports in the world. A fan-made mod has spawned not one, but two major esports and changed gaming – especially online multiplayer gaming – forever. 

Online Multiplayer Goes To War

Around the time when Dota was becoming a phenomenon, two studios released two FPS titles that changed both online multiplayer and the FPS genre beyond recognition. In 2002, Electronic Arts released Battlefield 1942, and in 2003, Activision released Call of Duty, marking the start of a rivalry that has lasted nearly two decades. Both games had a World War II setting, and both of them fleshed out this conflict in masterful detail.  

Both games excelled at multiplayer – the Encyclopaedia Britannica credits Call of Duty for breathing new life into the multiplayer FPS genre spawned by Quake and Unreal Tournament. The first Call of Duty title was a visceral experience, set in World War II, and featured immersive audio-visual effects – when the player is close to an explosion, sounds are muffled, there is a ringing noise in the ear (simulating tinnitus) and vision is blurred as well. The game also featured excellent NPC AI (who are programmed to flank the player and move from cover to cover) and its multiplayer features could easily be modded by gamers themselves. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2007), would take the IP to modern settings and advance the multiplayer experience even further, with the introduction of killstreaks, where the player gains special abilities by killing opponents without dying. Staying alive while killing your enemies allowed you to call in UAV reconnaissance scans, airstrikes, and even attack helicopters. 

Battlefield 1942’s contributions are just as significant – its online multiplayer allowed for epic, chaotic battles fought by dozens of players in large, detailed maps. The game established the 64-player online gameplay of the series, set in environments with multiple vehicles that you could use while battling with your foes. Its 22 maps were actual real-world settings such as El Alamein, Iwo Jima and Stalingrad from World War II. The game’s numerous vehicles, including tanks, planes, carriers and even submarines, added to the chaos of multiplayer and resulted in innovative tactics. The game’s active modding community introduced various weapons, settings and themes to the title – the well-known Desert Combat mod added modern assault rifles, rocket launchers, helicopters, and planes, while total conversions such as Galactic Conquest attempted to turn the game into a Star Wars title.

The two franchises dominated online multiplayer during the 2000s, and have continued to remain popular, releasing a new game every year. The Call of Duty franchise’s popularity has grown dramatically in recent years, following the release of its first mobile title in 2019 and its free-to-play title Call of Duty: Warzone in early 2020 – the series’ user base grew from 70 million in 2018 to more than 250 million in 2020.

Massive Communities and the Proto-Metaverse

The success of multiplayer games starting from RuneScape to Call of Duty would set the stage for the behemoth that was World of Warcraft (2004). The MMORPG still boasts a huge player count and it is known for its large expansion packs, complex lore and gameplay. It has been praised for its fluid combat, and the classic version of the game, as opposed to the retail version, is also known for being more challenging. Despite being around for nearly two decades, WoW is still very accessible, allowing new players to experience it on their own terms, and the latest expansion Shadowlands even includes the tutorial phase, like in the first release of WoW. The game boasts a total of over 120 million registered players.

But World of Warcraft is not just about gaming – the game would implement many features that would later be associated with today’s nascent metaverse. WoW was not the first game to come up with player-driven economies, social gathering points or the sale of virtual real estate, but it was the first widespread game to make these features part of the gaming landscape. With its massive community and metaverse-like features, WoW can be considered a proto-metaverse, and we have argued elsewhere that Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard qualifies as a metaverse play, precisely because Activision Blizzard is used to handling an enormous global community and can help Microsoft get a headstart on its metaverse initiatives.  

Second Life (2003) is another title that can count as a proto-metaverse – it is a vast 3D virtual world and platform where people can interact with each other and with user-generated content in real time. Players, known as ‘residents’, create a digital avatar and freely explore the world, create their own content and even trade goods and services with the in-world currency, the Linden dollar – Second Life hence boasts a thriving in-world economy. The platform has a daily average of 200,000 users from 200 countries, and over 70 million users spread out over 27,334 regions in the world.

Unlike games, Second Life has no goals or objectives and social interaction is the core aspect of the experience. Residents have married and even raised children, and created communities with unique customs. The game actively fosters such interaction by ensuring that everyone in any part of the platform will experience the same thing – Second Life consists of an integrated space and not disparate instances. 

The platform even created an early version of the non-fungible token – the digital assets in the world contain tags that record who made them, who owns them, what they cost and what a buyer can do with them. 

While the platform has been hailed as one of the longest-running experiments in a metaverse-like experience, creator Philip Rosedale is sceptical about present-day metaverse initiatives. Rosedale believes that a true metaverse would have to be built by its users rather than software companies, just as Second Life residents create digital assets to enhance their virtual world. Rosedale is also wary of the blockchain, and believes that the metaverse needs a centralised economy to prevent wealth disparity. Second Life is not just a proto-metaverse, it has yielded insight into the possible problems with current conceptions of the metaverse.

Multiplayer Matures, Becomes the Norm

By the late 2000s, online multiplayer was ubiquitous – and some of the best games of the decade were focussed on delivering memorable (and addictive) multiplayer experiences, supporting millions of connected players. Console games such as Halo 2 and its sequels thrived on the back of their multiplayer mode, modders created an entire genre of multiplayer – MOBA – on their own, games like Battlefield and Call of Duty raised the bar for what could be achieved in multiplayer FPS and became a staple of the multiplayer gaming scene throughout the 2000s and beyond, and MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft and the social platform Second Life led to the formation of massive online communities that persist to this date.Throughout the course of the 2000s, long-running sports game franchises such as FIFA, Madden and NBA also started to offer robust multiplayer on multiple platforms and spawned their own esports communities and events. League of Legends was released towards the end of the decade and is one of the first MOBA games to launch as free-to-play, and to employ a live-service model with continual updates, new heroes, and game-balancing patches. The League of Legends franchise, comprising multiple games, registered a staggering 180 million active players in October 2021. The desktop version is one of the highest grossing free-to-play games as well, and its mobile version is one of the most popular mobile MOBA games as of 2022. Many multiplayer-focussed titles of the 2010s would take a cue from LoL and go free-to-play, deriving revenues from cosmetic upgrades and other microtransactions.  

Conclusion

Online multiplayer began as text-based adventures and matured into massively multiplayer games with high-fidelity graphics that support millions of active players. This evolution was spurred in part by developments in internet technology, but was also the result of game developers pushing the limits of what could be achieved with the network infrastructures they had access to. The early MUDs depended on university networks and then the ARPANET, while Doom used a matchmaking service based on a dial-up connection until the arrival of the internet, which QuakeWorld, Unreal Tournament and Quake III Arena used to maximal effect with code bases optimised for online multiplayer. The efforts of these pioneers led to widespread online multiplayer in the 2000s, where millions of gamers could participate in MMORPGs, MOBAs, multiplayer FPS games and more. The development of online multiplayer, especially from the ’90s to the 2000s, is characterised by ceaseless innovation and pushing the limits of what can be achieved in a multiplayer experience over the internet.In a subsequent blog, we will discuss current trends in online multiplayer – the shift toward mobile multiplayer, the rise to prominence of the hero shooter and battle royale genres, and how multiplayer rose in prominence during the pandemic period.Gameopedia works with clients across the industry on custom requests and can provide in-depth data about online multiplayer games. Reach out to us for data that can yield novel insights about the billion-dollar online multiplayer gaming market.