In the beginning there was Space War. A two player game, the object of which was to destroy your opponents space craft. Interestingly, this very first game introduced a concept which was forgotten for many years after its inception. Very simply, computer gaming could be a social form of entertainment. However, people soon forgot that sharing is caring, and a spate of one-player only games shot on to the market.

The multi-player market began to pick up again with the advent of the 3D first person shooter. While the original FPS was a single player game, the clever chaps at Id software came up with DOOM (released in 1993). DOOM was revolutionary in many ways. It pioneered true 3D texture mapped graphics, but more importantly, it introduced the concept of multi-player network gaming. A concept that grew immensely in popularity from that point onwards. It’s hard not to find a game today that does not support multi-player gaming in some form. But why is multi-player gaming so important?

The evolution of the computer game has been fast tracked in the last few years due to several rather interesting developments. First of all, hardware has become cheaper, and extremely powerful. That means that game designers can create very beautiful and visually complex game worlds for us to explore. But I think more importantly, the internet has gotten faster. With broadband technology, it’s possible to play games against players from any country. So what does that have to do with social media? Quite a lot. You see, a big component of social media is community building. When you have a group of people that are doing any activity together, that discuss that activity on-line, give each other hints and tips regarding that activity, blog about that activity, you no longer have a group, you have a community. A big part of what makes games like Word of Warcraft and GuildWars so popular is the community behind these games. The people that are willing to help noobs (people that are new to gaming), to discuss tactics, and to participate in bettering the product. The communities are gigantic, and they’re growing every day.

Maybe it’s time that we here in the more corporate world of social media took some time to review how the gaming world does it. You never know, there might be something revolutionary we could learn.