Editing History of video games (section)

===Early online games===
{{See also|History of massively multiplayer online games}}
[[Dial-up Internet access|Dial-up]] [[bulletin board system]]s were popular in the 1980s, and sometimes used for online gaming. The earliest such systems were in the late 1970s and early 1980s and had a crude plain-text interface. Later systems made use of terminal-control codes (the so-called [[ANSI art]], which included the use of IBM-PC-specific characters not part of an [[American National Standards Institute]] (ANSI) standard) to get a [[Box-drawing character|pseudo-graphical]] interface. Some BBSs offered access to various games which were playable through such an interface, ranging from text adventures to gambling games like [[blackjack]] (generally played for "points" rather than real money). On some multiuser BBSs (where more than one person could be online at once), there were games allowing users to interact with one another.

[[SuperSet Software]] created ''[[Snipes (video game)|Snipes]]'', a text-mode networked computer game in 1983 to test a new [[IBM Personal Computer]]–based computer network and demonstrate its abilities. ''Snipes'' is officially credited as being the original inspiration for [[NetWare]]. It is believed to be the first network game ever written for a commercial personal computer and is recognized alongside 1974 game ''[[Maze (1973 video game)|Maze War]]'' (a networked multiplayer maze game for several research machines) and ''[[Spasim]]'' (a 3D multiplayer space simulation for time shared [[mainframe computer|mainframes]]) as the precursor to multiplayer games such as 1987's ''[[MIDI Maze]]'', and ''[[Doom (1993 video game)|Doom]]'' in 1993. In 1995, iDoom (later [[Kali (software)|Kali.net]]) was created for games that only allowed local network play to connect over the internet.  Other services such as [[Kahn (software)|Kahn]], [[Total Entertainment Network|TEN]], [[Mplayer.com|Mplayer]], and [[Heat.net]] soon followed.  These services ultimately became obsolete when game producers began including their own online software such as [[Battle.net]], [[World Opponent Network|WON]] and later [[Steam (service)|Steam]].

The first user interfaces were plain-text—similar to BBSs—but they operated on large mainframe computers, permitting larger numbers of users to be online at once. By the end of the decade, inline services had fully graphical environments using software specific to each personal computer platform. Popular text-based services included [[CompuServe]], [[The Source (online service)|The Source]], and [[GEnie]], while platform-specific graphical services included [[PlayNET]] and [[Quantum Link]] for the [[Commodore 64]], [[AppleLink]] for the [[Apple II]] and [[Mac (computer)|Macintosh]], and [[AOL#History|PC Link]] for the [[IBM Personal Computer|IBM PC]]—all of which were run by the company which eventually became [[AOL|America Online]]—and a competing service, [[Prodigy (online service)|Prodigy]]. Interactive games were a feature of these services, though until 1987 they used text-based displays, not graphics.

Meanwhile, schools and other institutions gained access to [[ARPANET]], the precursor to the modern [[internet]], in the mid-1980s. While the ARPANET connections were intended for research purposes, students explored ways to use this connectivity for video games. ''[[MUD1|Multi-User Dungeon]]'' (''MUD'') originally was developed by Roy Trubshaw and [[Richard Bartle]] at the [[University of Essex]] in 1978 as a multiplayer game but limited to the school's mainframe system, but was adapted to use ARPANET when the school gained access to it in 1981, making it the first internet-connected game, and the first such [[Multi-user dungeon|MUD]] and an early title of [[massively multiplayer online game]]s.<ref>{{cite book  | last1 = Mulligan | first1 = Jessica | last2 = Patrovsky | first2 = Bridgette | year = 2003  | title = Developing Online Games: An Insider's Guide | publisher = New Riders | page = 444 | quote = 1980 ... Final version of ''MUD1'' completed by Richard Bartle.  Essex goes on the ARPANet, resulting in Internet MUDs | isbn = 1-59273-000-0 }}</ref>