As mentioned in previous articles on this website, the difference between networked games of the past and the present is a clear indicator of how games have adapted with the increased capabilities offered by technological advances in the field of networking through time. The major events in the history of networked games were obviously the advent of LANs and later the Internet. Such advances saw the evolution from play by email games to MUD and MUSH type games and eventually to First Person Shooter (Quake series) Internet real time games. It almost seems that with Quake 3, for example played in real time over the Internet with almost any number of opponents located anywhere in the world, we have reached the peak of multiplayer gaming. Of course this is not the case. Networked gaming has always kept pace with technological developments, in the fields of CPU, graphics sound etc.. and of course, network technology.

So what are the most recent technological developments in the field of networking? What ongoing research could at some point have a major influence on gaming? There are a number of different areas which could shape networked gaming in the future. This article will be discuss some of these.

By far the most obvious way in which gaming could develop, is in line with recent developments in mobile communications. Already, attempts have been made to develop games using this new technology. These attempts are normally cantered around two approaches, the wireless ad-hoc network, and 2nd/3rd generation mobile phones.

A wireless ad-hoc network consists of a collection of mobile nodes forming a temporary network without the aid of any centralised administration service, or standard support services. Experiments linking this type of network to gaming have been carried out by a number of research groups, including Trinity’s own Distributed Systems Group (FLARE project: Framework for Location Aware Augmented Reality Environments). These studies aim to put the player of say, Quake 3, into the game. The player has a radio transmitter and wearable computer along with location sensing equipment (e.g. GPS, Inertial sensors, Infrared sensors etc..). The player runs around some location, which is mapped to a virtual map in the game, and attempts, for example, to kill, his fellow opponents (That’s usually what happens in games anyway!). Often, game information can be overloaded onto the real world, a player can pick up med kits for example, graphical information may be presented to the player via a wearable computer screen or retinal projection device. This is referred to as an augmented reality environment, augmenting the physical environment with the sounds, images and game play created by the game engine - a concept which makes the future of networked gaming very exciting indeed.

The driving technology is the wireless ad-hoc network. A technology which, thanks to recent developments in wireless communications and increased bandwidth, is up to the standard required for such games. As with any new technology however, there are certain problems associated with it which need to be ironed out before it will function correctly. For instance, what happens if two nodes needing to communicate are out of range of each other? An intermediate node is employed to relay this data. But what if the network partitions into two sub-networks? With no means of intercommunication? In the world in which we have lived up to now, this was not seen as a major problem, in wire-based networked games (as with applications), network partition was rare, and usually due to some fatal fault anyway. It will be a way of life for future ad-hoc networks however. Research is ongoing into methods to successfully run the two partitions of a networked game, and, more importantly, resynchronise them when players come back within range, and probably sight of each other. This is just one example of the many challenges facing researchers in this are today.

Mobile phone based wireless networked games are fast becoming a reality. Four, if not THE four, major manufactures of mobile phones, Nokia, Siemens, Ericsson and Motorola recently set up the Mobile Games Interoperability Forum (MGI), which aims to define an open-standards mobile games interoperability specification that will let game developers create and deploy products that can be distributed across multiple game servers and wireless networks and that can be played using different mobile devices. The forum represents "a joint commitment by the companies to the mobile games industry as a whole and to their work on creating APIs for game developers" the organisation said.

At the moment, the technology available for mobile phones is somewhat smaller scale than what has been mentioned above for the wireless ad-hoc network, which is consequently much more expensive. The processing power and bandwidth available in mobile phones is significantly lower than what is available in the expensive ad-hoc structure. As such, mobile phone games of the moment are in one sense following along the path that Internet gaming took, when technology was on a similar scale. Ericsson, for example, are working on a secure betting service for WAP enabled mobile phones. Nokia are working on implementing very simple 2 player games (such as Boxes, Concentration and Truth or Bluff) into WAP.

The real advances, however, will come along with 3rd generation wireless networks. Companies are already working on systems which will run on the more advanced platforms and take advantage of increased bandwidth for some real time multiplayer arcade game play. Versaly Games (www.versaly.com) is already working on games for Microsoft’s Smartphone platform. This platform is a pocket PC, mobile phone hybrid, and will offer more processing power than a Nintendo Gameboy AND a larger screen. Along with network access. 3rd generation mobiles should be fun! So, when the time comes, it will be reasonable to assume that mobile phone based games will be close to the standard of current wire-based networked games. In future, however, it is predicted that mobile phones will begin to incorporate a players physical location into games. At this stage it is not known to what degree this will be implemented or how. The research being done into wireless ad-hoc networks however will yield the answers, when the more commercially viable option of mobile phone based gaming takes off.

"Traditional" Network gaming should not be overlooked however. Although wireless networks offer many new concepts in terms of Networked gaming. Desktop computers and Wire based networks, are, for the foreseeable future at least, always going to be one step ahead in terms of performance, and, as such, at the pinnacle of networked gaming. As network speed and bandwidth increases, the volume of information which can be distributed from a server to individual players is growing. As such, networked games are becoming much more realistic, more information means more up to date information about players position and movements etc. Massively multiplayer games are taking off. With servers running distributed applications and capable of supporting many users online at the one time.

It is definite that traditional multiplayer gaming will take on new forms, as it has done in the past, with the advent of new and improved networking technology. Wireless communication will mean that at any time, in any place users can indulge in multiplayer gaming. At the same time, the games we play now will evolve as the boundaries imposed on them by technology are extended. Networking Technology is THE driving force behind the direction that modern computer games are taking.

References

Interview with Charles Bellfield by Ivan Trembow
Forum Pushes Open Standards for Next-Generation Wireless Gaming by Jay Wrolstad
The Move Towards Wireless Gaming by Carlos Camacho
Software & Information Industry Association
Wireless Games Mean Big Bucks by Jay Wrolstad
Nokia Guns for Wireless Gaming Content by Mike Mayor
Wireless Gaming: The Next Generation by J.B. Houck
Nokia Lines Up Wireless Gaming Deals by J.B. Houck
FLARE Project
Funky Gamer website
GameDev website