Massively multiplayer online game in the context of Distributed computing

A cooperative video game, often abbreviated as co-op video game, is a video game that allows players to work together as teammates, usually against one or more non-player character opponents (PvE). Co-op games can be played locally using one or multiple input controllers or over a network via local area networks, wide area networks, or the Internet.

Co-op gameplay has gained popularity as controller and networking technology has developed. On PCs, consoles and mobile devices, cooperative games have become increasingly common, and many genres of games—including shooter games, sports games, real-time strategy games, and massively multiplayer online games—include co-op modes.

A massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) is a video game that combines aspects of a role-playing video game and a massively multiplayer online game.

As in role-playing games (RPGs), the player assumes the role of a character (often in a fantasy world or science-fiction world) and takes control over many of that character's actions. MMORPGs are distinguished from single-player or small multi-player online RPGs by the number of players able to interact together, and by the game's persistent world (usually hosted by the game's publisher), which continues to exist and evolve while the player is offline and away from the game.

A virtual economy (or sometimes synthetic economy) is an emergent economy existing in a virtual world, usually exchanging virtual goods in the context of an online game, particularly in massively multiplayer online games (MMOs). People enter these virtual economies for recreation and entertainment rather than necessity, which means that virtual economies lack the aspects of a real economy that are not considered to be "fun" (for instance, avatars in a virtual economy often do not need to buy food in order to survive, and usually do not have any biological needs at all). However, some people do interact with virtual economies for "real" economic benefit.

Despite primarily dealing with in-game currencies, this term also encompasses the selling of virtual currency for real money, in what is sometimes called "open centralised marketplaces".

The video game industry in China currently is one of the major markets for the global video game industry, where more than half a billion people play video games. Revenues from China make up around 25% of the nearly US$100 billion global video game industry as of 2018. Since 2015, China has exceeded the contribution to the global market from the United States. Because of its market size, China has been described as the "Games Industry Capital of the World" and is home to some of the largest video game companies. China has also been a major factor in the growth of esports, both in player talent and in revenue.

China has not always been a major factor in the industry, having been on the verge of economic recovery during the industry's formulative years in the 1970s and 1980s. With the introduction of the second-generation home gaming consoles in the mid-1980s, a new black market of illegally-imported goods and video game clones arose to avoid the high costs of imports, driving away foreign companies. Notably, China imposed a near-complete ban on video game consoles in 2000, fearing the addiction-like impact of games on its youths; the ban was ultimately lifted in 2015. During that time, China's video game market greatly expanded in the area of computer games (including massively multiplayer online games, browser games, social network games, etc.) and later mobile games, all which could be free to play titles with monetization to appeal to the average lower income of Chinese players. This massive growth from 2007 to 2013 led the games' publishers and operating companies like Tencent and NetEase to become large global companies. Despite the legitimate growth of the industry, China's video game market continues to be offset by illegal importing, copyright violation and intellectual property theft.

Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems, defined as computer systems whose inter-communicating components are located on different networked computers.

The components of a distributed system communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another in order to achieve a common goal. Three challenges of distributed systems are: maintaining concurrency of components, overcoming the lack of a global clock, and managing the independent failure of components. When a component of one system fails, the entire system does not fail. Examples of distributed systems vary from SOA-based systems to microservices to massively multiplayer online games to peer-to-peer applications. Distributed systems cost more than monolithic architectures, primarily due to increased needs for additional hardware, servers, gateways, firewalls, new subnets, proxies, and so on. Distributed systems can also suffer from fallacies of distributed computing. Conversely, a well-designed distributed system is more scalable, more durable, more changeable, and more fine-tuned than a monolithic application deployed on a single machine. According to Marc Brooker: "a system is scalable in the range where marginal cost of additional workload is nearly constant." Serverless technologies fit this definition but the total cost of ownership, and not just the infra cost must be considered.

A quest, or mission, is a task within video games that a player-controlled character, party, or group of characters may complete in order to gain a reward. Quests are most commonly seen in role-playing games and massively multiplayer online games. Rewards may include loot such as items or in-game currency, access to new level locations or areas, an increase in the character's experience in order to learn new skills and abilities, or any combination of the above.

Quests often fall into several types, such as kill quests, gather quests, delivery/"fetch" quests, and escort quests. However, quests can include more than one mission, such as gathering something and transporting it somewhere. Quests can be linked together to form quest series or chains. In this manner, quests are used to provide the player with further background to the setting their characters are in. This mechanism is also used to advance any story or plot the game might have.

Buy-to-play (B2P) is a revenue model for video games where a game can be played after a one-time purchase, as opposed to a subscription model where the player must pay a subscription at regular intervals to continue having access to the game.

Buy-to-play, while a form of premium games, generally apply to games where there is continued ongoing content or support from the developer or publisher well beyond the period of purchase, such as through maintenance of online servers or through the production of ongoing content and expansions, as often the case in massively multiplayer online games (MMO). This support can be monetized through additional microtransactions or through an ongoing subscription fee. Microtransactions are becoming evermore entwined with the buy-to-play revenue model as most recent games allow for some sort of additional purchase. For example, buy-to-play title Guild Wars 2 allows players to purchase additional in-game items with microtransactions, while Destiny 2 lets users purchase season passes for additional content.

Happy Farm was a social network game and massively multiplayer online game based on farm management simulation. It was played predominantly by users in Mainland China and Taiwan, and was the most popular in terms of players; At the height of its popularity, there were 23 million daily active users, logging on to the game at least every 24 hours.

Happy Farm was developed by Chinese social game developer 5 Minutes. Its development was complete in May 2008, testing was complete in July the same year, and the game was released in late 2008. It allows players to grow crops, trade with others, sell produce, and steal from neighbors. The game was influenced by the Japanese RPG series Story of Seasons.

Mafia Wars is a defunct freemium multiplayer social network game created by Zynga. Players assume the roles of gangsters while building their own Mafia-type organization. The players fight and "rob" other players online - completing jobs, missions, and operations to gain rewards and strength in an endless game.

Mafia Wars won the 2009 Webby Award People's Voice Winner in the Games category.

Richard Allan Bartle (born 10 January 1960) is a British writer, professor and game researcher in the massively multiplayer online game industry. He co-created MUD1 (the first MUD) in 1978, and is the author of the 2003 book Designing Virtual Worlds.

Club Penguin was a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) that ran from 2005 to 2017. The game featured a virtual world that included a wide range of online games and activities. It was created by New Horizon Interactive (now known as Disney Canada Inc.). Players used cartoon penguin avatars and played in an Antarctic-themed open world. After beta-testing, Club Penguin was made available to the general public on October 24, 2005. It expanded into a large online community, such that by late 2007, Club Penguin reported that there were more than 30 million user accounts. In July 2013, Club Penguin had more than 200 million registered user accounts.

While free memberships were available, revenue was predominantly raised through paid memberships, which allowed players to access a range of additional features, such as the ability to purchase virtual clothing, furniture, and in-game pets called "Puffles" for their penguins through the usage of in-game currency. The success of Club Penguin led to New Horizon being purchased by the Walt Disney Company in August 2007 for the sum of 350 million U.S. dollars, with an additional 350 million dollars in bonuses if specific targets were met by 2009.