Comments on: What are some benchmarks in the history of online (multiplayer) gaming lobbies?

Question: What are some benchmarks in the history of online (multiplayer) gaming lobbies?

serial_consign — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:28:53 -0800

What are some benchmarks in the history of multiplayer game lobbies?

I'm doing a bit of research on game lobbies and thought perhaps the meta hive-mind could provide me with some links and input. What was the first multiplayer (say >4 players) game that you played that had one?
I'm interested in the history of game lobbies.. what do I need to look at? I know battle.net was pretty important.. what else is out there? (I'm interested in all platforms).

By: selfnoise

selfnoise — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:38:20 -0800

You probably want to look at Kali, which got a lot of its popularity from players who wanted a matching service for WCII: TOD before Blizzard had envisioned Battle.net. I think a version of Kali actually came with that game.

The main thing that Kali allowed was the playing of IPX-coded multiplayer games over TCP/IP.

By: knowles

knowles — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:52:53 -0800

Point some attention towards The Sierra Network, one of the first and finest online gaming communities to cost billions of dollars a second for blazing dialup speeds.

By: selfnoise

selfnoise — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:48:11 -0800

Also GEnie, where pioneering and now defunct online gaming company Kesmai got their start matching players in Air Warrior and other games.

By: Diskeater

Diskeater — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 08:58:16 -0800

WON was a precursor to Steam and I believe it had some form of a lobby.

By: SatansCabanaboy

SatansCabanaboy — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:40:24 -0800

I remember playing on the imagination way back