Firstly. . .

Is online gaming going to survive, with the increasing problem of lagging and idiots online and of course those who use cheats!

With a lack of really good quality online games, is the future of online gaming a secure one?

or

Is the complete opposite going to happen, is the rise of online gaming killing off the single player game, the likes of CoD4 is a good example where the delvelopers have concentrated on the online side of the game, leaving the single players out there with a shamefully short "shelf life" shooter!

Increasing numbers of games have short single player versions, i suppose this is ideal for software companies, it saves time and money having to develop a STORY, LEVEL DESIGN etc, online games only need a map!!!

My major issue with online gaming, there are no levels of ability, a less able player gos up against the elitist gamers that have to win! So after gettin their ass kicked a dozen times, switch the console off, is that good for the games industry??

Something to think about. . .

Maybe the success of the Wii is largely down to the back seat view to online gaming Wii users have, the Wii proves games don't need to be online to be fun. Take note software companies.

If the current tread towards short single player games in favour of online continues, I for one will be leaving my console to gather dust.

I don't know much about the Wii, but I think it's a great start to gaming and TV technology in general. I remember reading an article a couple years ago predicting that using the same technology the Wii uses (whatever it's called), television shows will have advertisements inside them, meaning that a viewer could point the remote at any product on the screen, click, and an Internet browser will pop up, displaying info about that specific product. To me, that's kind of like a game, and I'm sure other girls will agree!

Personally, I have chosen to get into the Computer Games career track because it is a growing field. I have studied a lot about 3D graphics and animation for my age and I honestly have a lifetime passion for computer games and digital graphics. My main interest for the future of gaming is virtual reality. That type of gaming is already being used in video games, for example, FPSs, but I want to make games way more realistic.

Besides virtual reality, there is another growing trend based on communities of gamers: player-created content. I forget how that started, but it's not just for online games anymore. Will Wright is pretty much behind a ton of new trends of gaming, especially with the Sims, SimCity, and now Spore. These aren't classified as online games, but they definitely have their own community of gamers across the world who connect with each other.

I think online gaming is really going in many directions, but it's NOT falling back. There are many high quality online games out there, but I agree with you, we are starting to see less of them. There are always new styles being developed for games. If you'd like to see titles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_and_video_games), for (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game#Types) example (http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=26421055), click (http://www.amazon.com/Most-Original-Unique-PC-Games/lm/338QS8WTEH4OX) here (http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2841396).

My absolute favorite kind of games are those where there's the game and then there's the community -- my top two favorite games are RuneScape (http://www.runescape.com) and iSketch (http://www.isketch.net) because they each have the obvious game with whatever objectives you as the player can create for yourself, and they each also have their own community. Each of those games require no excessive registration, NO downloads, and they give incredible ease to create an online persona each time a user logs in. I think they each can also be as complicated as the player wants.

By the way, I don't mind n00bs. I am one!

When I played Pro Evo online last year, it was just annoying and frustrating.

When in a group with other players, we'd play against opposition and one time we were leading 7-0 so one of their players had a method of disconnecting the ethernet cable and the game became void, so there was no result :mad:

I also played in a competition, the first half, the connection came from the opposition's and the 2nd half, from mine.

The 1st half lagged soooo much, no doubt the other player was intentionally cheating by slowing down the connection but in the 2nd half I battered them and passed the ball around and started to make some not so nice comments :P

He deserved those comments (all loving ones ;) ) and I love to annoy those who lag intenionally. Pro Evo is the only game I've played online on my PS2 but you find a lot of cheats on there and I didn't find it to be regulated much cos I got some very nice death threats from those who I annoyed :twisted:

The 1st half lagged soooo much, no doubt the other player was intentionally cheating by slowing down the connection but in the 2nd half I battered them and passed the ball around and started to make some not so nice comments :P

The government did this to us! They should kick start the release of high speed fiber connections to each and every one of us, not leave it all down to BT (lol sorry I'm from the UK)!! :embarrassed:

The government did this to us! They should kick start the release of high speed fiber connections to each and every one of us, not leave it all down to BT (lol sorry I'm from the UK)!! :embarrassed:

Lol, it was intentional lag. The other user would have either have someone fiddle around with the ethernet cable or started a download, so that their connection would run perfectly fine whilst the oppenents connections (i.e. me) would have been seriously slow.

It's how people cheat online and can only be sorted out by the quality of the servers and admin, who can check to see if there's abuse of the system.