A multiplayer video game is one which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time. Unlike most other games, computer and video games are often single-player activities that put the player against preprogrammed challenges and/or AI-controlled opponents, which often lack the flexibility and ingenuity of regular human thinking.
Multiplayer components allow players to enjoy interaction with other individuals, be it in the form of partnership, competition or rivalry, and provide them with a form of social communication that is almost always missing in single-player oriented games. In a variety of different multiplayer game types, players may individually compete against two or more human contestants, work cooperatively with a human partner(s) in order to achieve a common goal, supervise activities of other players, or engage in a game type that incorporates any possible combination of the above. Examples of better-known multiplayer game types include deathmatch and team death match, MMORPG-associated forms of PVP and Team PvE, capture the flag, domination (competition over control of resources), co-op, and various objective-based modes, often expressed in terms of "assault/defend a control point". Multiplayer games typically require the players to share resources of a single game system or use networking technologies that allow players to play together over greater distances.
Read more about Multiplayer Video Game: History, Single-system
Famous quotes containing the words video game, video and/or game:
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“We attempt to remember our collective American childhood, the way it was, but what we often remember is a combination of real past, pieces reshaped by bitterness and love, and, of course, the video past—the portrayals of family life on such television programs as “Leave it to Beaver” and “Father Knows Best” and all the rest.”
—Richard Louv (20th century)
“A man’s idea in a card game is war—cruel, devastating and pitiless. A lady’s idea of it is a combination of larceny, embezzlement and burglary.”
—Finley Peter Dunne (1867–1936)