Maybe you heard the predictions about this time last year: 1998 would be the year of the online game. But it wasn't – not even close, especially if you look at a few visionaries' ideas of online gaming. So, the big question is: will 1999 be the year?

　　What will happen in 1999 is very much influenced by what worked and what didn't in 1998, or what really started to fail. Remember those online services that offered sometimes exclusive online games and places to play multiplayer games for pay? Toast. Well, not completely, but the online ventures are proving so disastrous that many either consolidated with other online ventures (or conglomerates), tailed back their offerings or costs, or went under altogether.

　　In my opinion, the big two, Mplayer and TEN, despite everything, are in trouble. It's not a big secret – there are only three real advantages to using one of these pay online gaming services: you can chat with people, you can win prizes, and you can sometimes play exclusive games (something like Magic the Gathering on TEN). But these advantages no longer (if they ever did) garner the gamer's attention. Mplayer is offering more and more for free, but is more and more turning into a glorified chat room than anything else.

　　SegaSoft, with diverse projects in the offline and online world, literally couldn't take the heat and decided to solely stick with its online service, HEAT.NET. Both SegaSoft and Kesmai's GameStorm service couldn't just stay like that, however, and needed to diversify even further. Both now allow access to each other's services and certain games, while Kesmai took in a lot of refugees from Interplay's Engage (AOL as well) and SegaSoft catered to TCI cable modem customers.

　　Recently, Interactive Magic had a similar revelation and decided to go with the online venture as well, though it will still publish some offline titles. Because Interactive Magic Online couldn't do it alone with their flight simulation expertise, the company decided to bolster their popular online titles by snatching MPG-Net, one of the longest running online gaming providers around.

　　Microsoft was still doing well with the Gaming Zone, though they eventually consolidated it into MSN.

　　And Dwango, well, Dwango just plain died.

　　What WorkedSo the big pay online gaming providers either needed to diversify, consolidate, or liquidate in order to survive, because what they were doing didn't work.

　　What worked instead was the model provided by Blizzard Entertainment and battle.net – the free, easy-to-use company-supported game service. All you needed to do was to buy the game and you were in.

　　Other companies followed the Blizzard model and witnessed similar success – Westwood had Westwood Chat, Sierra really started to cook with WON, Bungie bounced high with bungie.net, and Cavedog unveiled its Boneyard. GameSpy allowed people to take an easy look at which servers offered the best connections for many of the games that didn't have a service, and free online gaming flourished. It wasn't a new idea by any means, but in 1998 it finally took hold in a big way.

　　But online gaming is far, far from being perfect. Connections are the biggest hassle on the internet – astronomically bad ping times that can ruin the gaming experience and give everyone a headache. The influx of cable modems, ASDL lines, and even ISDN only solve a very short term problem. Connections are better for some people, but others suffer because the differences in ping times can be the difference between winning and losing. Unfortunately the net won't be getting better any time soon, so any true online gaming nirvana will be long in coming.

　　For some games it's not as important, but developers continually underestimate programming games to run on the net. Many games have teething problems because the code may work in an ideal situation, but the internet is far from an ideal situation. Unreal and to a lesser degree Half-life are prime examples. Developers need to fully test out these games in real conditions before unleashing them on the gaming public.

　　Cheaters also happen to prosper in online games, and developers never seem to realize it until the game is out the door and gamers are beating at the door, complaining about cheaters.

　　Coincidentally, these problems can be related with the big individual internet game ventures, like Origin's Ultima Online, whose popularity and overhead was greatly underestimated by Origin from the beginning. With more of these big games on the way, it is important that developers heed these warnings – some of which have been sounding for years and have gone largely unheard. Meridian 59 was a virtual wreck when it first came out, and that was before UO.

　　1999I hate predictions, but I don't think 1999 will be the year of the online game. Oh sure, there will be more of them, more to choose from, and more money to shell out, but problems will continue. One important idea is to not just build a game and let it die in obscurity six months later – a concept that Cavedog has just tried to solve with its Boneyards and Total Annihilation universe concept.

　　UO has entered its Second Age and mostly learned its lesson the hard way – something Sony and Microsoft have already experienced at some point and will now be more ready when their big titles start rolling down the isle (with Everquest and Asheron's Call).

　　More publishers and developers will start up their gaming services – some will ultimately be better than others – and most, if not all, will be free of charge. Some of pay gaming services may go under, which or when is hard to say. They've survived so far and have been incredibly lucky in staying that way, one way or another.

　　Unfortunately the internet will only get more crowded, and connections are unlikely to improve to any great extent.

　　But in the end there needs to be something else. Developers seem to be scrambling, looking for the right idea or the online “killer app” as it were, and some have a better clue than others do. I'm not entirely sure what that will be, but with any luck we'll see it surface sometime in 1999.