Warcraft 3 Reign of chaos

Warcraft is a real time strategy computer game released by Blizzard Entertainment on Jully 3, 2002 in U.S. An expansion pack of this game was released on July 1 , 2003.
Warcraft contains four playable races:mans and Orcs, which had previously appeared in Warcraft: Orcs & Humans and Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, and the Night Elves and Undead, which are new to the Warcraft mythos,wacraft 3’s single-player campaign is laid out similarly to that of StarCraft, being told through all four of the game's races in a progressive manner. Multiplayer mode allows for play against other people, via the internet, instead of playing against computer-controlled characters as is done in the single-player custom game mode. This game is also a team based game. Tourneys are organized in all over the world and in Pakistan also. We have one of the biggest player of this game in Pakistan whi is none other than our team member Muhammad, his team is best in pakistan and he plays for International level with players of other countries. This game had made a lot of profit for its developer and owners.
Posted by:
Abdul Basit

Medal of Honor Airborne ( MOHA)

This is a first person shooting game and this game was based on World War 2. This game is one of the biggest games of all times. And when there comes the name of big games, there also comes the name of EA Logos. They are also the makers of this game. This game was launched in September 2007 for PC and Xbox 360. After some time it was launched on other gaming consoles like pap and ps3. This game is the 11th installment of medal of honors series. And this one creates a lot of market place in first person category.

Interesting things about this game is that we can play this both as single player and multiplayer. In single player, Missions include various insertions into Italy, Northern France, Netherlands and Germany, each one beginning with a jump behind enemy lines, and success requiring completion of given objectives. We can multiplay on lan ( Mostly in gaming cafes) and on the internet(online).
Tournaments are organized in all over the world for this game. Pakistan also organizes tourneys like DJUICE NATIONAL GAMING CHAMPIONSHIP 2009, wateen cybergaming, etc. International events are also organized for this game like ESWC and WCG ( World cyber gaming ).
Posted by:
Muhammad

Counter Strike

Counter Strike is a game based on half life's engine, it was first released in 1999 but gained huge popularity in the past 6 years. It is an extremely professionally and some people from all around the world get paid to play this game. It is an extremely hard and fast paced first person shooting based game and it is very addictive and attracts people with competitive spirit. Internationally every year 2 events take place, WCG(world cyber gaming) and ESWC(electronic sports world cup). Counter Strike is the star game played in these tournaments and the winners get $100,000 prize money. They take palce in diffrent places around the world each year. Last time they took place in California, USA.
Posted by Abdul Basit

Current situation of gaming in pakistan

The consoles dominated the gaming market for a decade but now PC games are more famous now and are played more often than console games. Once there was only 1 cafe in lahore, millennium bug, but now there are at least 15 gaming cafes around Lahore. The most famous and with the strongest base is neomatrix. It has 4 branches around Lahore and maintains a high slandered. The total revenue genrated by LAN gaming in pakistan is in millions. Gaming cafes are now in the smallest of cities, like bahawalpur has gaming heads, sheikhupura has 3 cafes, multan has scorpio. In every major market in every city there are definitely gaming shops where you can purchase games for PC or your consoles. It is a hugely growing market and people are entering in it everyday. But alas the whole industry is mostly based on a few multiplayer games that were released years before but have gathered cult like followings and on these games all the gaming cafes in pakistan rely upon to generate profits. These games require extreme skill and they have no limit to as far you can improve, they are addictive and people get attractive towards it due to the competitive spirit or because they are really fun. Some of these games are Counter Strike, Dota, COD4 and medal of honor.
Posted by Muhammad

HISTORY OF GAMING continued

Decline of arcades:
With the advent of 16-bit and 32-bit consoles, home video games began to approach the level of graphics seen in arcade games. An increasing number of players would wait for popular arcade games to be ported to consoles rather than going out. Arcades experienced resurgence in the early to mid 1990s with games such as Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat and other games in the one-on-one fighting game genre, and NBA Jam. As patronage of arcades declined, many were forced to close down. Classic coin-operated games have largely become the province of dedicated hobbyists and as a tertiary attraction for some businesses, such as movie theaters, batting cages, miniature golf, and arcades attached to game stores such asF.Y.E..
The gap left by the old corner arcades was partly filled by large amusement centers dedicated to providing clean, safe environments and expensive game control systems not available to home users. These are usually based on sports like skiing or cycling, as well as rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution, which have carved out a large slice of the market. Dave & Buster's and GameWorks are two large chains in the United States with this type of environment. Aimed at adults and older kids, they feature full service restaurants with full liquor bars and have a wide variety of video game and hands on electronic gaming options. Chuck E. Cheese's is a similar type of establishment focused towards small children.
Handhelds come of age
In 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy, the first handheld console since the ill-fated Microvision ten years before. The design team headed by Gunpei Yokoi had also been responsible for the Game & Watch systems. Included with the system was Tetris, a popular puzzle game. Several rival handhelds also made their debut around that time, including the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx (the first handheld with color LCD display). Although most other systems were more technologically advanced, they were hampered by higher battery consumption and less third-party developer support. While some of the other systems remained in production until the mid-90s, the Game Boy remained at the top spot in sales throughout its lifespan.
Mobile phone gaming
Mobile phones became videogaming platforms when Nokia installed Snake onto its line of mobile phones in 1998. Soon every major phone brand offered "time killer games" that could be played in very short moments such as waiting for a bus. Mobile phone games early on were limited by the modest size of the phone screens that were all monochrome and the very limited amount of memory and processing power on phones, as well as the drain on the battery.
Fifth generation consoles
In 1993, Atari re-entered the home console market with the introduction of the Atari Jaguar. Also in 1993, The 3DO Company released the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer, which, though highly advertised and promoted, failed to catch up to the sales of the Jaguar, due its high pricetag. Both consoles had very low sales and few quality games, eventually leading to their demise. In 1994, three new consoles were released in Japan: the Sega Saturn, the PlayStation, and the PC-FX, the Saturn and the PlayStation later seeing release in North America in 1995. The PlayStation quickly outsold all of its competitors, with the exception of the aging Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which still had the support of many major game companies.
The Virtual Boy from Nintendo was released in 1995 but did not make high sales. In 1996 the Virtual Boy was taken off the market.
After many delays, Nintendo released its 64-bit console, the Nintendo 64 in 1996. The consoles flagship title, Super Mario 64, became a defining title for 3D platformer games.
PaRappa the Rapper popularized rhythm, or music video games in Japan with its 1996 debut on the PlayStation. Subsequent music and dance games like beatmania and Dance Dance Revolution became ubiquitous attractions in Japanese arcades. While Parappa, DDR, and other games found a cult following when brought to North America, music games would not gain a wide audience in the market until the next decade.
Other milestone games of the era include Rare's Nintendo 64 title GoldenEye 007 (1997), which was critically acclaimed for bringing innovation as being the first major first-person shooter that was exclusive to a console, and for pioneering certain features that became staples of the genre, such as scopes, headshots, and objective-based missions. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) for the Nintendo 64 is widely considered the highest critically acclaimed game of all time.[36] The title also featured many innovations such as Z-targeting which is commonly used in many games today.
Nintendo's choice to use cartridges instead of CD-ROMs for the Nintendo 64, unique among the consoles of this period, proved to have negative consequences. While cartridges were faster and combated piracy, CDs could hold far more data and were much cheaper to produce, causing many game companies to turn to Nintendo's CD-based competitors. In particular,SquareSoft, which had released all previous games in its Final Fantasy series for Nintendo consoles, now turned to the PlayStation; Final Fantasy VII (1997) was a huge success, establishing the popularity of role-playing games in the west and making the PlayStation the primary console for the genre.
By the end of this period, Sony had become the leader in the video game market. The Saturn was moderately successful in Japan but a failure in North America and Europe, leaving Sega outside of the main competition. The N64 achieved huge success in North America and Europe, though it never surpassed PlayStation's sales. The N64 was also successful in Japan, even though it failed to repeat the tremendous success of the Famicom and Super Famicom there due to stiff competition by PlayStation.
This generation ended with the PlayStation discontinuation in March 2006.
Transition to 3D and CDs
The fifth generation is most noted for the rise of fully 3D games. While there were games prior that had used three dimensional environments, such as Virtua Racing and Star Fox, it was in this era that many game designers began to move traditionally 2D and pseudo-3D genres into full 3D. Super Mario 64 on the N64, Crash Bandicoot on the PlayStation, and Tomb Raider on the Saturn (later released on the PlayStation as well), are prime examples of this trend. Their 3D environments were widely marketed and they steered the industry's focus away from side-scrolling and rail-style titles, as well as opening doors to more complex games and genres. Games like GoldenEye 007 or Legend Of Zelda Ocarina of time were nothing like shoot-em-ups or RPG's before them. 3D became the main focus in this era as well as a slow decline of Cartridges in favor of CDs.
2000s
The most recent decade has shown innovation on both consoles and PCs, and an increasingly competitive market for portable game systems.
The phenomena of user-created modifications (or "mods") for games was one trend that began around the turn of the millennium. The most famous example is that of Counter-Strike; released in 1999, it is still the most popular online first-person shooter, even though it was created as a mod for Half-Life by two independent programmers. Eventually, game designers realized the potential of mods and custom content in general to enhance the value of their games, and so began to encourage its creation. Some examples of this include Unreal Tournament, which allowed players to import 3dsmax scenes to use as character models, and Maxis' The Sims, for which players could create custom objects. Other examples are warcraft3 and Medal of Honor.
Online gaming rises to prominence
As affordable broadband Internet connectivity spread, many publishers turned to online gaming as a way of innovating. Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPGs) featured significant titles for the PC market like World of Warcraft and Ultima Online. Historically, console based MMORPGs have been few in number due to the lack of bundled Internet connectivity options for the platforms. This made it hard to establish a large enough subscription community to justify the development costs. The first significant console MMORPGs were Phantasy Star Online on the Sega Dreamcast (which had a built in modem and after market Ethernet adapter), followed by Final Fantasy XI for the Sony PlayStation 2 (an aftermarket Ethernet adapter was shipped to support this game). Every major platform released since the Dreamcast has either been bundled with the ability to support an Internet connection or has had the option available as an aftermarket add-on. Microsoft's Xbox also had its own online gaming service called Xbox Live. Xbox Live was a huge success and proved to be a driving force for the Xbox with games like Halo 2 that were overwhelmingly popular.
Rise of casual PC games
Beginning with PCs, a new trend in casual gaming, games with limited complexity that were designed for shortened or impromptu play sessions, began to draw attention from the industry. Many were puzzle games, such as Popcap's Bejeweled and Diner Dash, while others were games with a more relaxed pace and open-ended play. The biggest hit was The Sims by Maxis, which went on to become the best selling computer game of all time, surpassing Myst.
Console gaming largely continued the trend established by the PlayStation toward increasingly complex, sophisticated, and adult-oriented gameplay. Most of the successful sixth-generation console games were games rated T and M by the ESRB, including many now-classic gaming franchises such as Halo, Resident Evil, the latter of which was notable for both its success and its notoriety. Even Nintendo, widely known for its aversion to adult content (with very few exceptions most notably Conker's Bad Fur Day for the Nintendo 64), published its first M-rated game, Silicon Knights's Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, and the Nintendo GameCube was the temporary exclusive platform for Capcom's Resident Evil 4. This trend in hardcore console gaming would partially be reversed with the 7th generation release of the Wii.
Other casual games include Zygma Games like Mafia Wars, Cafe World, among many others, which is tied into social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook. These games are offered freely with the option buy in game items, and stats for money and/or reward offers.
Seventh generation consoles (since 2004)
A major rift opened in console gaming philosophy and design in the seventh generation, with some calling the identification of video game "generations" questionable and arbitrary, while PC gaming began to go into relative decline as major publishers steered their efforts to consoles.
The generation opened early for handheld consoles, as Nintendo introduced their Nintendo DS and Sony premiered the PlayStation Portable (PSP) within a month of each other in 2004. While the PSP boasted superior graphics and power, following a trend established since the mid 1980s, Nintendo gambled on a lower-power design but featuring a novel control interface. The DS's two screens, one of which was touch-sensitive, proved extremely popular with consumers, especially young kids and middle-aged gamers, who were drawn to the device by Nintendo's Nintendogs and Brain Age series, respectively. While the PSP attracted a significant portion of veteran gamers, the DS allowed Nintendo to continue its dominance in handheld gaming. Nintendo updated their line with the Nintendo DS Lite in 2006, the Nintendo DSi in 2008 (Japan) and 2009 (Americas and Europe), and the Nintendo DSi XL while Sony updated the PSP in 2007 and again with the smaller PSP Go in 2009. Nokia withdrew their N-Gage platform in 2005 but reintroduced the brand as a game-oriented service for high-end smartphones on April 3, 2008.
Apple Inc. entered the realm of mobile gaming hardware with the initial release of the iPhone and iPod Touch in the summer of 2007. The greatest shift brought by Apple's entry was to abandon the traditional reliance on "brick and mortar" retail sales for software purchases; instead, the iPhone platform relies entirely on digitally-distributed content.
In console gaming, Microsoft stepped forward first in November 2005 with the Xbox 360, and Sony followed in 2006 with the PlayStation 3, released in Europe in March 2007. Setting the technology standard for the generation, both featured high-definition graphics, large hard disk-based secondary storage, integrated networking, and a companion on-line gameplay and sales platform, with Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network, respectively. Both were formidable systems that were the first to challenge personal computers in power (at launch) while offering a relatively modest price compared to them. While both were more expensive than most past consoles, the Xbox 360 enjoyed a substantial price edge, selling for either $300 or $400 depending on model, while the PS3 launched with models priced at 500USD and 600USD. The PlayStation 3 was the most expensive game console on the market since Panasonic's version of the 3DO, which retailed for little under 700USD.
Nintendo was not expected to compete credibly at all, with most industry analysts predicting a distant third place finish for its new Revolution console, later renamed Wii, introduced a couple days after the PS3, and one even going so far as to predict a market exit similar to Sega. Instead, Nintendo pulled off an industry turnaround in business. While the Wii was more powerful than all of the previous generation consoles, it had lower technical specifications than both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Nintendo refused to publish or confirm technical specifications, instead touting the console's new control scheme, featuring motion-based control and infrared-based pointing. Many gamers, publishers, and analysts dismissed the Wii as an underpowered curiosity, but were surprised as the console sold out through the 2006 Christmas season, and remained so through the next 18 months, becoming the fastest selling game console in most of the world's gaming markets.
In June 2009, Sony announced that it would release its PSP Go for 249.99USD on October 1 in Europe and North America, and Japan on November 1. The PSP Go was a newer, slimmer version of the PSP, which had the control pad slide from the base, where its screen covers most of the front side.
Increases in development budgets
With high definition video an undeniable hit with veteran gamers seeking immersive experiences, expectations for visuals in games along with the increasing complexity of productions resulted in a spike in the development budgets of gaming companies. While many game studios saw their Xbox 360 projects pay off, the unexpected weakness of PS3 sales resulted in heavy losses for some developers, and many publishers broke previously arranged PS3 exclusivity arrangements or cancelled PS3 game projects entirely in order to cut losses.

Posted by Sabeeh ur Rehman

HISTORY OF GAMING

The origin of video games lies in early cathode ray tube-based missile defense systems in the late 1940s. These programs were later adapted into other simple games during the 1950s. By the late 1950s and through the 1960s, more computer games were developed (mostly on mainframe computers), gradually increasing in sophistication and complexity. Following this period, video games diverged into different platforms: arcade, mainframe, console, personal computer and later handheld games.. when Mr. Brandon Leyva and his two co creators mr. Robert P.H and Dr. Daniel Palma had the idea to use the technology of the missile defense to make this happen.
The first commercially viable video game was Computer Space in 1971, which laid the foundation for a new entertainment industry in the late 1970s within the United States, Japan, and Europe. The first major crash in 1977 occurred when companies were forced to sell their older obsolete systems flooding the market. Six years later a second, greater crash occurred. This crash brought on largely by a flood of video games coming to the market resulted in a total collapse of the console gaming industry worldwide, ultimately shifting dominance of the market from North America to Japan. While the crash killed the console gaming market, the computer gaming market was largely unaffected. Subsequent generations of console video games would continue to be dominated by Japanese corporations. Though several attempts would be made by North American and European companies, fourth generation of consoles, their ventures would ultimately fail. Not until the sixth generation of video game consoles would a non-Japanese company release a commercially successful console system. The handheld gaming market has followed a similar path with several unsuccessful attempts made by American companies all of which failed outside some limited successes in the handheld electronic games early on. Currently only Japanese companies have any major successful handheld gaming consoles, although in recent years handheld games have come to devices like cell phones and PDAs as technology continues to converge.

Maybe some of you might remember the early games that came out around the early 90’s, games like Pac man, Sonic, Mario, Doom, Wolfenstien and Half-life. They were the games that introduced gaming around the world, they were addictive, fun and something totally new, furthermore they could be played on any computer, they were so easy to play and everyone could enjoy them. These were the games that introduced gaming all around the globe and gave the idea that a computer could be used for something other than typing or calculations. These games were all free to play and received a very good response from the public, people were picking up on this. Software houses like Atari, Sega, Sony and Nintendo decided to cash up on this opportunity and focused a lot on gaming.
Atari made the first ever gaming console called Atari, it had built in games and had no input but people liked it.
Sega is responsible for the console Sega 16-bit and Sega 24-bit, and they made one of the most famous characters in gaming ‘’Sonic the hedgehog‘’.
Sony is the most successful of all the early game developers they made the ‘’Sony play station’’ and made the most out of the early industry.
Nintendo made the game cube and created many famous gaming characters like Mario.
All of these consoles were important in their own way but the most successful one was sony’s play station, it dominated the market in Pakistan for a long time. But still no one expected it to go this big. These are all called consoles and the games on these are console games. The 1990s were a decade of marked innovation in video gaming. It was a decade of transition from pixels to full fledged 3D graphics and gave rise to several genres of video games including the first-person shooter, the real-time strategy, and the MMO. Handheld gaming began to become more popular throughout the decade, thanks in part to the release of the Game Boy Arcade games, although still relatively popular in the early 1990s, begin a decline as home consoles become more common.
The video game industry matured into a mainstream form of entertainment in the 1990s. Major developments of the 1990s included the beginning of a larger consolidation of publishers, higher budget games, increased size of production teams and collaborations with both the music and motion picture industries. Examples of this would be Mark Hamill's involvement withWing Commander III or Quincy Jones' introduction of QSound.
The increasing computing power and decreasing cost of processors as the Intel 80386, Intel 80486, and the Motorola 68030, caused the rise of 3D graphics, as well as "multimedia" capabilities through sound cards and CD-ROMs. Early 3D games began with flat-shaded graphics (Elite, Starglider 2 or Alpha Waves), and then simple forms of texture mapping (Wolfenstein 3D).
In the early 1990s, shareware distribution was a popular method of publishing games for smaller developers, including then-fledgling companies such as Apogee (now 3D Realms), Epic Megagames (now Epic Games), and id Software. It gave consumers the chance to try a trial portion of the game, usually restricted to the games complete first section or "episode", before purchasing the rest of the adventure. Racks of games on single 5 1/4" and later 3.5" floppy disks were common in many stores, often only costing a few dollars each. Since the shareware versions were essentially free, the cost only needed to cover the disk and minimal packaging. As the increasing size of games in the mid-90s made them impractical to fit on floppies, and retail publishers and developers began to earnestly mimic the practice, shareware games were replaced by shorter game demos (often only one or two levels), distributed free on CDs with gaming magazines and over the Internet.
In 1991, Sonic the Hedgehog was introduced. The game gave Sega's Mega Drive console mainstream popularity, and rivaled Nintendo's Mario franchise. Its namesake character became the mascot of Sega and one of the most recognizable video game characters.
In 1992 the game Dune II was released. It was by no means the first in the genre (several other games can be called the very first real-time strategy game, see the History of RTS), but it set the standard game mechanics for later blockbuster RTS games such as Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, Command & Conquer, and StarCraft. The RTS is characterized by an overhead view, a "mini-map", and the control of both the economic and military aspects of an army. The rivalry between the two styles of RTS play Warcraft style, which used GUIs accessed once a building was selected, and C&C style, which allowed construction of any unit from within a permanently visible menu continued into the start of the next millennium.
Alone in the Dark (1992), while not the first survival horror game, planted the seeds of what would become known as the survival horror genre today. It established the formula that would later flourish on CD-ROM based consoles, with games such as Resident Evil and Silent Hill.
Adventure games continued to evolve, with Sierra Entertainment s King's Quest series, and LucasFilms'/LucasArts' Monkey Island series bringing graphical interaction and the creation of the concept of "point-and-click" gaming. Myst and its sequels inspired a new style of puzzle-based adventure games. Published in 1993, Myst itself was one of the first computer games to make full use of the new high-capacity CD-ROM storage format. Despite Mysts mainstream success, the increased popularity of action-based and real-time games led adventure games and simulation video games, both mainstays of computer games in earlier decades, to begin to fade into obscurity.
It was in the 1990s that Maxis began publishing its successful line of "Sim" games, beginning with SimCity, and continuing with a variety of titles, such as SimEarth, SimCity 2000,SimAnt, SimTower, and the best-selling PC game in history, The Sims, in early 2000.
In 1996, 3dfx Interactive released the Voodoo chipset, leading to the first affordable 3D accelerator cards for personal computers. These devoted 3D rendering daughter cards performed a portion of the computations required for more-detailed three-dimensional graphics (mainly texture filtering), allowing for more-detailed graphics than would be possible if the CPU were required to handle both game logic and all the graphical tasks. First-person shooter games (notably Quake) were among the first to take advantage of this new technology. While other games would also make use of it, the FPS would become the chief driving force behind the development of new 3D hardware, as well as the yardstick by which its performance would be measured, usually quantified as the number of frames per second rendered for a particular scene in a particular game.
Several other, less-mainstream, genres were created in this decade. Looking Glass Studios' Thief: The Dark Project and its sequel were the first to coin the term "first person sneaker", although it is questionable whether they are the first "first person stealth" games. Turn-based strategy progressed further, with the Heroes of Might and Magic (HOMM) series (from The 3DO Company) luring many mainstream gamers into this complex genre.
The first true MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) were developed in the early 90s. Id Softwares 1996 game Quake pioneered play over the Internet in first-person shooters. Internet multiplayer capability became a de facto requirement in almost all FPS games. Other genres also began to offer online play, including RTS games like Microsoft Game Studios Age of Empires,Blizzards Warcraft and StarCraft series, and turn-based games such as Heroes of Might and Magic. MMORPGs (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game), such as Ultima Onlineand EverQuest freed users from the limited number of simultaneous players in other games and brought the MUD concept of persistent worlds to graphical multiplayer games. Developments in web browser plug-ins like Java and Adobe Flash allowed for simple browser-based games. These are small single player or multiplayer games that can be quickly downloaded and played from within a web browser without installation. Their most popular use is for puzzle games, side-scrollers, classic arcade games, and multiplayer card and board games.
Few new genres have been created since the advent of the FPS and RTS, with the possible exception of the third-person shooter. Games such as Grand Theft Auto III, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell, Enter the Matrix, and Hitman all use a third-person camera perspective, but are otherwise very similar to their first-person counterparts.
Posted by:
Sabeeh ur rehman

Introduction

If we go 15 years back there were no gaming cafes, there were no cult like followings of certain games, there were definitely no events or tournaments in which gamers from all over Pakistan could socialize and no one could have imagined that gaming would turn into a profitable industry. But now everyone has heard of gaming and played it at least once. But how did gaming become such a huge phenomenon and what were the factors contributing to it and what are the events that take place once every 2 months all around Pakistan? This is what our blog is all about.

Posted by Muhammad