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From: ant@zimage.comANT (Ant)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: A Nostalgic Ramble: Online gaming services of yore
Date: Fri, 16 May 2025 02:03:37 -0000 (UTC)
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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I bought and still have Kali game. I remember a local MajorBBS tried 
running Kali (http://kali.net still works and you can get a free full 
code for its outdated software) on dial-up and it actually worked like 
with Descent 1 shareware. And then, SirDOOM for DOOM based games. I also 
tried MPlayer briefly for a game (can't remember -- it was like Star 
Control but with multiplayer). I avoided those subscription based 
services.


Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
> <ramble type=nostalgic>

> I know we got some old timers here; how many of you remember having to
> pay to play your games online? 

> The other day, a few friends and I were reminiscing, and we brought up
> services like TEN and Kali and other programs, which were middleware
> necessary to meet and play games over the new fangled internet. Even
> though there were a lot of games of that era (we're talking mid to
> late 90s here) that supported network multiplayer, this was either
> through IPX or direct modem-to-modem connections.  The TCP/IP of the
> Internet had yet to dominate as a gaming standard. This was fine if
> you were gaming on the same LAN, but if you're friends were in
> different cities, it wasn't really an option. As such, you often
> needed software to act as an intermediary to translate. And this
> software often wasn't free; the idea of advertising-supported apps had
> yet to be invented.

> Kali was the one I remember most, but there were others: Gamespy was
> another big one, and publisher-specific platforms like Blizzard's
> Battle.Net and Microsoft's MSN Gaming Zone started out serving similar
> purposes. Sometimes games came built in with their own translation
> software, but they tended to be specific to certain games; products
> like Kali or TEN also offered chat-rooms where you could meet and then
> use to play any game in your shared libraries. 

> Like I said, a lot of these software packages --especially the bigger
> ones-- weren't free. A few were a buy-once-and-you're-good deal, but a
> lot of them required monthly subscriptions to keep using. Thus, in
> addition to paying for your Internet and the game, you'd also be
> paying $10-15 per month for matchmaking. This added cost meant a lot
> of people just didn't bother with Internet multiplayer, and those that
> did tended to be siloed off from one another because there was no easy
> way for Mechwarrior 2 players to meet up with Duke Nukem 3D players. 

> As Internet broadband phased out dial-up connections and TCP/IP
> connections became the norm, software like that became less necessary.
> Eventually, they were pretty much all killed by Steam, which offered
> matchmaking for every game on Valve sold on the service. It's just
> another way that Valve helped invigorate PC gaming.

> Like I said, I best remember Kali but I'm pretty sure I tried TEN and
> Gamespy. I know for a while I paid a monthly subscription for some
> service (I can't remember which one though! Maybe it was HEAT.Net?
> MPlayer? INN? There were a lot of them back then). I didn't stick with
> it long because none of my IRL friends were on there, playing with
> strangers only had limited fun, and most of the games I was interested
> in supported direct IP connections anyway (even if they were trickier
> to use). 

> But it still makes me smile remembering that this --something we now
> take for granted will be included for free-- was a service we once
> paid extra for. How things have changed.

> Did any of you ever use these services (assuming you were gaming back
> then?) Or did you avoid them because of the cost, or for other
> reasons?

> </ramble>

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