Whoever said that online games are only for kids is either a disgruntled old man or a boring rock. In this digital age wherein people do most things on the internet, it is no wonder that online gaming is turning into a massive market that is changing and growing at breakneck speed. A good chunk of the world is now wired, even third world countries, offering easy access to the Internet. This makes online gaming all the more available to millions of people coming from different countries, races, sexes - and yes, even age groups.Andreas Neus said that online gaming is not exactly a new phenomenon.

According to an online gaming expert and consultant for IBM Germany, this trend started ten to fifteen years ago with MUDs or multi-user dungeons being its most primitive form. Being text-based, MUDs require players to enter texts to interact with the game’s environment. Whether the player wishes to go forward or backward, north or south, he is compelled to key in syntaxes to create any form of activity.The next major milestone did not come into fruition until about 1997 with the release of Ultima Online, a graphics-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

Then in 2004 entered World of Warcraft, universally praised by critics since then, and which has more than 12 million subscribers as of October 2010.So who are these more than 12 million online gamers? A recent study sponsored by PopCap, creator of popular games such as Bejeweled and Insaniquarium, reveals that most people who play online games (including Facebook favorites like Farmville and the likes) are 42-year-old women. Contradicting the time-old belief that only small children are drawn to the online game craze, the study confirms that this form of entertainment caters to a huge portion of the world’s population, including adults.

Then again, it should be noted that online games are not solely about hunting down the game boss, slaying evil wizards or wielding Tommy guns, all the while keeping your virtual self alive. Many online games are, in fact, more complicated than that and would require not only hasty fingers but also logic. Thus, as the online games grow in numbers and mature in themes, so do its avid fanatics of diverse demographics. And unless you are a hermit living under a rock for the last twenty years, this fact should not come out as a surprise anymore. Online Games2