The Social Media Bible: Tactics, Tools, and Strategies for Business Success, 3rd Edition

Back to the Beginning

As mentioned in the previous chapter on Virtual Worlds, a very fine line exists between participating in online gaming and a virtual environment. Nearly every successful MMORPG today is a role-playing, full-immersion, three-dimensional virtual world scenario. This type of game play dates back to the early 1990s, while the earliest online game—called MazeWar, or the Maze—which was much like the later Pac-Man, in which you maneuvered through a maze while being chased by objects that would harm you—began back in the 1970s (again, see Chapter 15, Virtual Worlds—Real Impact, for more information). The first fully graphical multiplayer game, Neverwinter Nights, a role-playing game (RPG) set in a huge medieval fantasy world of Dungeons & Dragons, hit the Internet in 1991 and received promotion from then-president of America Online (AOL) Steve Case. Then there were MMORPGs from the Sierra Network—the first online multiplayer gaming system—that became popular in the early 1990s, like The Shadow of Yserbius (released in 1992), The Fates of Twinion (1993), and The Ruins of Cawdor (1995).

There are basically three MMORPG business revenue models: pay-to-play, free-to-play with in-game advertising and merchandising, and buy-to-play. Pay-to-play is when the player sets up an account and pays what is usually a monthly subscription to have access to the game. Free-to-play is when a player can log on and just play for free. And buy-to-play is when the player first buys the ...