Video games have been a pastime for children and adults for many years now. However, the recent surge of high-speed internet connections becoming more widely available has caused video gaming in general to spring in a new direction. Technology watchers should take note; the idea of online gaming was once a good idea without the resources necessary to come to fruition. Dial-up connections were just to slow to support anything other than the simplest of text-based or 2D graphical games.

However, cable and DSL, among others, came along and brought high-speed internet to the mainstream. Anyone that has tried a high-speed connection knows there is no comparison. You can no longer tolerate dial-up once you've seen the promised land of cable. With these much higher transfer speeds came the capability for all sorts of gaming devices to take the game online.

Now Playstation and Xbox both have online services where players can match their skills up with people all over the world in realtime. The cool thing about this is it makes some games lifespan so much longer. For example, sports games may have lost their luster once you've gotten proficient at handily beating the computer. But if you decide to take your game online, it's literally a whole new ballgame. The fruits of playing against another real person is they are completely unpredictable. They also make adjustments as the game goes along, something the artificial intelligence of computer opponents is supposed to do, but it doesn't always pan out.

War games like Call of Duty and Halo are enriched by online opposition. Many of these games are being purchased more for their online play than the offline content. There's just something satisfying about squaring off against another human opponent. And headsets allowing players to converse in real time while they play makes the prospect of online play that much more inviting.

On the PC, World of Warcraft is a culture all its own. By far the most prolific online game, World of Warcraft has legions of dedicated gamers that will be in line to purchase the next expansion packs as they are released. It's such a big business that people are even able to build their characters up on the game and then sell them to people who don't want to put in the time to get to those levels.

Despite the huge advancements in the last couple of years, online gaming is an invention that is still in its infancy. Now, as games are released, an online element is becoming more and more of a necessity. I believe there will soon be games on the consoles that are released solely for the purpose of online play. When a company finds a way to build a World of Warcraft-like culture on the consoles, they will capture a huge market that is more definitely going to be out there with money in hand.

Thanks for reading and happy gaming!
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